In Commemoration of Friday - Universal Corporate Layoff Day
Wage earners have no say-so in most businesses.
They are holes into which potential profits are drained away in the eyes of Company managers. Human Resources Departments have replaced Personnel Divisions in most Companies. A subtle but significant change.
Personnel Divisions recognized the worth and value of employees as assets, not liabilities.
Human Resources Departments consider workers as easily restocked from an endless pool of jobless willing to sell their labor for less than current employees are paid. Mantras are promulgated to keep the masses in line.
“Nobody is irreplaceable.” The worker puts nose to grindstone to prove differently, hoping for recognition, raises and advancement.
“You are lucky to have a job.” The worker looks the other way at wage-and-hour violations, corporate criminality – fearing retribution and hoping silence will be golden.
“Keep your head down and ask no questions.” The worker learns his true place in the corporate scheme of things. Below the bottoms of the CEO’s $2500 loafers.
We are nothing more than mules and monkeys to them. Resources. Commodities. Chattel. Slaves must be cared for until death – we are less than slaves, for we can be cast off penniless with impunity by those who have fattened themselves with our blood, sweat and tears.
Un-unionized America laughs at the poor union sots and their corrupt union bosses. They still think that their jobs are safe – that they too can move into Management or Corporate and gain those seven-figure incomes. All the empty cubicles tell no cautionary tales. Nobody can ship their jobs overseas, so why should they care that their former neighbors are now begging for food.
Then it happens.
Somebody with brains who still has a job codifies the industrial process which includes your job. With little warning, a flurry of Suits appear with smooth words. “Earnestly and sincerely concerned about your future welfare” the ax-men send you packing with a guillotine parachute – that tiny severance check in exchange for your signed release of all their potential liabilities in their clutches.
A duplicate sweatshop up and running in [India/Philippines/Zimbabwe] seamlessly provides the illusion of “business as usual” to your former customers. The plunging quality of goods and services to the end user is a small price to pay for increased profits to those at the top.
Meanwhile, remaining American workers blithely fill their Wal-Mart carts with offshore-manufactured schlock while hoping their own jobs will remain intact – not realizing that every item they purchase represents more than a hundred American jobs lost forever.
Until their jobs are gone, too.
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