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Layoffs and Their Consequences
Knopf
March 2006
304 pages ISBN: 1400041171 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The Disposable American is an eye-opening account of layoffs
in America--their questionable necessity, their overuse, and
their devastating impact on individuals at all income
levels. Yet despite all this, they are accelerating. The award-winning New York Times economics writer Louis
Uchitelle explains how, in the mid-1970s, the first major
layoffs, initiated as a limited response to the inroads of
foreign competition, spread and multiplied, in time
destroying the notion of job security and the dignity of
work. We see how the barriers to layoffs tumbled, and how by
the late 1990s the acquiescence was all but complete. In a compelling narrative, the author traces the rise of job
security in the United States to its heyday in the 1950s and
1960s, and then the panicky U-turn. He describes the
unraveling through the experiences of both executives and
workers: three CEOs who ran the Stanley Works, the tool
manufacturer, from 1968 through 2003, who gradually became
more willing to engage in layoffs; highly skilled aircraft
mechanics in Indianapolis discarded as United Airlines shut
down a state-of-the-art maintenance facility, damaging the
city as well as the workers; a human resources director at
Citigroup, declared nonessential despite excellent
performance; a banker in Connecticut lucky to find a
lower-paying job in a state tourist office. Uchitelle makes clear the ways in which layoffs are
counterproductive, rarely promoting efficiency or
profitability in the long term. He explains how our
acquiescence encourages wasteful mergers, outsourcing, the
shifting of production abroad, the loss of union protection,
and wage stagnation. He argues against our ongoing public
policy--inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and embraced by every
president since--of subsidizing retraining for jobs that, in
fact, do not exist. He breaks new ground in documenting the
failure of these policies and in describing the significant
psychological damage that the trauma of a layoff invariably
inflicts, even on those soon reemployed. It is damage that,
multiplied over millions of layoffs, is silently undermining
the nation's mental health. While recognizing that in today's global economy some
layoffs must occur, the author passionately argues that
government must step in with policies that encourage
companies to restrict layoffs and must generate jobs to
supplement the present shortfall.There are specific
recommendations for achieving these goals and persuasive
arguments that workers, business, and the nation will
benefit as a result. An urgent, essential book that tells for the first time the
story of our long and gradual surrender to layoffs--from a
writer who has covered the unwinding for nearly twenty years
and who now bears witness.
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