Let me ask you something? When you were growing up did anybody ever tell you, "Hey, no matter how hard you work in school, no matter how good your grades are, no matter long you work for a company, you could come in one day and boom, everything that you worked hard for could be gone? Is that what you learned? I'll bet not. I'll even go as far as to say that you learned that no matter what you did, (be it crossing guard, fireman, doctor, lawyer), that if you were a good boy or girl, showed up for work on time, and did a good job, then you would have that job for as long as you want. If you want a change then you would make that decision and the company would never dump you.
I'll bet you never heard the word layoff when you were growing up. You either had a job or you were fired, and you had to do something bad to get fired. When people got fired there was a stigma about it. Well today there are people getting dumped everyday and it's not their fault. They are the best people there, they are at 150% of quota and they are getting dumped. Of course the companies don't want to say they were fired, that's not nice, so they come up with nice little words to make them feel better like, "Oh they were just laid off." Well, what good does that do? So what if they call it a nice little word. What do you do? Go to the store to get food for your family and say, "I don't have any money for this." Then the guy behind the counter tells you that they don't give food away to people who were fired. Then you say, "Oh, I was laid off." I'm sure they will say, "Well that's different, please take it." It doesn't matter that you were laid off, you still have the same results. And, layoff implies to me that they are laying you off temporarily then they will bring you back.
I always like to look at that articel in the paper every year of all the words that they have added to the dictionary because they have become apart of our vocabulary. Have you noticed that a lot of them have to do with employement these days? Like layoff. Do you know what the synonym for layoff is? Dumped. They come up with other words like outsourceing, there is a cute little word. It implies that a company is extreamily on the cutting edge of their industry. And what they are doing is finding out that their in source, you, cost way too much. So, they want get rid of, you, and find a outside source and use them for a project. Then when it is done they can get rid of that outside source and not have to pay them anymore. Do you know what the synonym for outsource is? That's right, dumped. How about downsizing. Downsizing means that they are getting rid of employees.
AT&T pulled this about two years ago. Imagine comming home to your wife and when she asks how your day was you tell her, "Good, we were downsized." I mean it sounds impressive. Do you know what the synonym for downsizing is? Dumped. Robert Allen, the head of AT&T, did not have the ability to make that decision. He couldn't fire 40,000 people on his own, he is just a employee, he had to go to the board of directors. Now about 6 or 7 years ago you started hearing about all these people who where getting dumped, (I'm sorry, I mean laid off, downsized, outsorced or whatever they had done to them), and it happened like never before in our history. It went up like 5 or 6 times the normal amount. When it happened to a company, and they dumped 10,000 workers, people thought "My God, somethings wrong with the company because they have to get rid of workers," so thier stock would fall. I don't know if any of you watch the stock market today but, do you know what happens to companies today that dump people? Thier stock jumps. You are the most expensive thing to a company, you cost a lot of money, and because of it their goal is to dump you. Any company who has the guts to do it, thier stock is going to go up. Remember all the money they use to pay you? They get to keep it now and thier profit goes up.
So Robert Allen, the head of AT&T, goes to the board of directors and says, "Hey, we need to dump 40,000 workers so we can stay competitive with companies like M.C.I." Do you know how the board of directors get paid? By stock. What do you think the first question they asked him was? What is it going to do to the stock? Well, we know that it jacks it up. How do you think the vote went? The AT&T board of directors voted unanimous, they said "dump the suckers." They didn't say, "You mean that guy with the family to support that I met at the Christmas party two years ago?" Guys, they don't think about you. What is it going to do to the stock? Boom, do it. No questions asked. And, if you think that it's slowing down your wrong. Its speeding up but, you don't see it on the front page anymore. They burry it on the bottom of page 6, because it happens so much that nobody worries about it anymore.
People aren't making it as it is, but what they aren't taking into account it what happens if you get dumped 2, 3, 4, 5 times in your lifetime? These aren't things that I thought about before it happened to me. Intel wasn't making as much money as they wanted to so guess what? That's right, dumped. But, don't take my word for it. Below are some articles that I found today about layoffs. Judge for yourself.
This article is most important because over 2,400 are being dumped because of a strike at another company.
Here
June 19, 1998 GM has dumped about 89,000 workers
Here
November
November 19, 1997 Stanford dumps 50 workers.
Here
April
April 7, 1998 Hadco to dump about 150 workers.
Here
April 9, 1998 Silicon Valley Group dumped 209 people.
Here
April 11, 1998 Hyundai Motor to dump more than 9,000 workers.
Here
April 13, 1998 Xerox Corp. will dump approximately 9,000 workers to save $1 billion annually.
Here
April 14,1998 Intel to dump 3,000 employees
Here
April 20, 1998 GTE will sell some operations and dump of about 1,500 employees.
Here
June
June 8, 1998 Motorola disclosed it will lay off 15,000 workers
Here
June 9, 1998 Nabisco plans to dump 3,100 jobs
Here
June 11, 1998 McDonalds to dump some 250 to 400 jobs.
Here
June 11, 1998 GM strike affects 2,360 workers from other companies.
Here
June 15, 1998 Compaq buys Digital and lays off a total of 17,000 workers.
Here
June 15,1998 National Semiconductor Corp. lays off 1,400 employees last month.
Here
June 15, 1998 13,000 to 14,000 workers strike because Kia cut their pay by 50%
Here
June 15, 1998 AT&T to dump 5,000 workers.
Here
June 18, 1998 Iomega Corp said it will layoff 600 to 700 jobs.
Here
June 19, 1998 Lockheed Martin Corp. to dump up to 2,500 jobs.
Here
June 19, 1998 Canadian Bank Note Company dumps 101 employees.
Here
June 20, 1998 Geneva Steel to dump 200 people.
Here
June 22, 1998 Texas Instruments Inc. shut down two plants and lays off 3,500 workers
Here
June 22, 1998 Computer City lays off more than 1,000 workers
Here
This area is about recent layoffs that have no links or they are outdated. If you know of somewhere I can link to these please let me know.
1996
October 15, 1996 Cypress dumps 2,000 employees.
1997
February 7, 1997 Nets Inc. dumped 54 employees.
February 10, 1997 Chevron to dump 600 jobs.
February 17, 1997 Sega to dump 65 people.
April 25, 1997 Disney Interactive dumps 90 employees.
April 28, 1997 Globelle Corp. dumped 110 employees.
May 23, 1997 Informix Software dumped 100 jobs.
May 26, 1997 Novell Inc. dumped 1,150 jobs.
June 9, 1997 Intuit to dump 350 people.
June 27, 1997 White Pine dumped 26 employees.
July 21, 1997 Alphatec dumped 180 people.
September 19, 1997 Pinnacle Micro dumped 25% of it's work force.
October 13, 1997 Apple likely to dump 2,500 employees.
December 8,1997 AST dumped 3,000 employees.
1998
January 14, 1998 Mitsubishi dumps 200 people.
January 13, 1998 Netscape to dump 400 jobs.