The Evil That Men Do
If we’ve learnt anything about the world over the past decade, especially in the areas of business and politics, it’s that when you think they’ve reached the bottom, the lowest of the low, the nadir of all nadirs - they can go lower.
And so it is with great sadness but not much surprise that I came across this tweet from Mark.C.Crowley (one of the good guys, you should follow him)
400 employees at Chrysler-parent Stellantis were told to #work remotely last Thursday because the firm was “holding important operational meetings that require specific attention & participation” It was all a complete lie. All 400 were laid off at once via ZOOM meeting. #HR #CEO
Can you actually believe that? My comment on Mark’s tweet was simple - “Evil’.
This is where we are now. This is not some tin-pot little company run by a little tyrant, this is not the action of some feeble excuse for a human being who imagines themselves as a hot-shot corporate mogul when they are just out of their depth and too scared to get the therapy they need. This is a major multinational corporation, the fourth largest car manufacturer in the world, 61st in the Forbes Global 2000. A company that can trace it’s lineage back to the very earliest days of the industry and beyond.
It’s now acceptable corporate behaviour to lie to and deceive your employees. No doubt this will soon be considered ‘best practice’.
There’s not even a pretence at treating these employees fairly. The whole point of doing this is to put them at a disadvantage. There is no attempt at handling this trauma (I’ll get to this in more detail in a moment) with any care, let alone dignity.
And these companies have the fucking temerity to complain that employees see work as too much of a transaction. (Pardon my French but I’m angry, and so should we all be).
May the people who came up with this boil in hell for eternity. And when they’ve done that, boil some more.
The Eve Of Destruction
Whilst this is a particularly egregious case of callous abuse of the people in it’s care by a corporation, it is, as I said’ just the latest low in a steady decline in ethics and morality in business. Forget the Marina Trench, we’re not just plumbing the depths here, business is determined to bore it’s way to the centre of the earth.
Sacking people used to be something that was done ‘in extremis’, to stop a company going bust. Then, in the 1970 and 80s, it was justified as a measure to stop the company getting to that point of crisis. A new euphemism was invented, ‘downsizing’, to obscure the damage of the thousands of lives caught up in these programmes that swept through industry sectors (justified by the new excuse of ‘competitive pressures’).
‘Downsizing’ became an unpopular word as people began to think it was just an excuse to cut staff costs and boost the CEO’s bonus, so a new term was invented - ‘rightsizing’. It was just as bad as ‘downsizing’ but it has the word ‘right’ in it, so it didn’t sound as bad. Unless you were ‘rightsized’, of course.
There was still a pretence that this was about company performance, that it was about adjusting the ‘cost base’ to fit the size and aspirations of the company. The fact that Wall Street loved mass sackings and pushed the share price up, which made the C-suites occupants immeasurably richer, was glossed over. Just a happy co-incidence, not the motivation, you understand.
Now that pretence has been thoroughly ripped away. Sackings are used as a short-term measure to juice the numbers. Wall Street still loves it. No-one gives a sod about the impact on the people who get sacked.
Think I’m being cynical? Well, let me share these with you.
I wonder what happened in the 1970s? Oh yeah, ‘downsizing’.
And this post from the /antiwork reddit.
Is it any wonder, as I wrote about last week, that Gen Z look at this and say “No Thanks”? What’s more of a wonder is why they aren’t trying to blow the whole thing up.
Killing In The Name
Getting sacked (laid off, made redundant, let go, whatever you call it) is brutal. I know personally from experiencing it three times, it always hurts and it damages you. We know that it reduces a person’s sense of trust in the world and that this is a long term effect. It can cause devastation to someone’s career, their finances, their personal life, their whole psyche.
But it’s actually worse than that (remember what I said about here always being a new low that can be sunk to?).
It’s deadly.
There’s what Stowe Boyd (another good guy you should follow) wrote in a recent substack of his:
“The direct economic impacts of layoffs are considerable. The most critical is the direct impact on human lifespan: Layoffs increase mortality by 15-20% over the following 20 years, according to research by economists Daniel Sullivan (Federal Reserve) and Till von Wachter (Columbia) [emphasis mine]:
‘We find that job displacement (Ed: i.e. sacking people) substantially raises mortality rates. The mortality increase is particularly high in the years immediately following job loss and then converges to a persistent positive effect of 15-20%. If sustained beyond the 20 year window we can follow workers, these increases imply substantial loss of life expectancy for workers displaced in middle age or earlier. In contrast, we find little effect of job loss on mortality for workers displaced near retirement age.’ “
These rounds and rounds of sackings are killing people. Or, as Stowe puts it:
‘This means, in effect, that mass layoffs should be considered mass murder and not the inevitable outcome of free market actions. As just one data point, research shows layoffs can cause suicide rates to double or more.'
This despicable practice has emerged because it has no negative consequences for those who perpetrate it. CEOs should find themselves in the dock to answer charges of manslaughter but instead are lauded by Wall Street and rewarded with ever greater salaries and bonuses. They are not even sanctioned for the evident poor management they show in executing a repeating cycle of over-hiring then mass firing, which is doing massive harm to people, the economy and society.
No, they and their organisations privatise the profits of the exploitation of human capital and socialise the costs.
Governments need to step in and stop this happening. It is destroying trust, ruining the lives of millions of citizens, undermining the very functioning of the economy. If they don’t - well, it’s unsustainable. And whilst part of me would like to see these organisations crash and burn and these executives be rightly pilloried, collapse and the ensuing chaos is not a good outcome for anyone and there’s no guarantee that what emerges will be better for humanity.
Gentle On My Mind
So, yeah, it’s a rancid dung heap out there in CorporateLand. The system is rotten, caustic to everything it touches. People, economies, societies. It needs to change but, until then, people are opting out, which is sure sign that it’s approaching a point of crisis, if not collapse.
This week The Guardian published a piece on the ‘soft life’ revolution. These are women who are quitting ‘the career ladder in favour of more fulfilment and less stress’. These are millennials who were brought up to take pride in hard work but, facing the third recession of their lifetimes, are concluding that the rewards of the corporate grind just aren’t worth it. Or as Gabrielle Judge, known online as the Anti Work Girlboss, puts it “I didn’t see the payoff”.
A ‘soft life’ is one where the goal is more time and energy for what makes you happy and as little time as possible focusing on what doesn’t. Like your corporate gig. Given the goals of the previous generation (home ownership, a family, a decent retirement) are unobtainable, and feeling that hard work is supporting a system that, if not actively screwing them over, gives nothing back, they are opting out.
They are rejecting the hustle culture, the constant busyness, the eternal striving and looking for other ways to life that are focused on personal thriving.
The piece concludes with one remarking “There’s something about softness that is not valued in the corporate world or isn’t understood. It’s seen as a weakness.” But now, she concludes, “I see it as a strength”.
She’s right. And it’s a strength that the corporate world would do well to embrace. Those organisations that do will be ready for the future.
Digging In The Dirt
A bit of an angry rant this week but the first step to resolving a problem is to fully acknowledge the magnitude of it and where we are right now. We are not in a good place, it’s systemic decay and it’s getting worse.
In some ways, I don’t care about the system and I don’t care about the organisations and companies. What I do care about is the damage that is being done to people’s lives, needlessly. The utter waste of human potential. The impoverishment of everyone’s lives, including those who think they are winning on their ludicrously inflated salaries and obscenely unequal amounts of wealth.
As someone with a degree in Economics, I see this as bad for economy, an inherent weakness that is hampering the whole system. It may prove fatal, for our democracies as well as out economies.
As an advocate of better work, I’m enraged at this movement in the diametrically opposite direction. It’s counter-productive and just plain stupid.
As a person, I am saddened and appalled at the carnage.
“Go on, then, Colin, I hear you say, “get on with it then. Show us how to Decrapify Work.”
Hmmm. Well. To paraphrase a line from a popular shark-based movie, “We’re gonna need a bigger shovel.”
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any other topic I have rambled on about. I’m interested to hear about your experience in Corporate Fantasyland and what your challenges are (especially if they are about making good trouble or getting the hell out!). Maybe I can help you figure out what to do next.
So get in touch, I’d love to hear from you
Book a call on my Calendly page
Email me at colin@colinnewlyn.com
this is such a sickness.
In contract law the parties can agree that they won't be liable for their own negligence. However, at least in US contract law, a party cannot disclaim responsibility for "gross negligence." It can be written into the contract, but the courts will ignore it because a party can't simply walk away from their own gross negligence. So at least in theory, there are limits. (The next question would be the difference between gross negligence and simple negligence, but I couldn't tell you so let's not go there.)
I make the point because ex-CEO of Boeing Dennis Muilenburg is directly responsible for the deaths of 346 people due to his own negligence, but he gets to walk away, not just scott free, but with the better part of $100 million in salary and stock. There may be limits, but we haven't even discovered the basic human decency to think that 346 dead people is beyond the limit. We're a long way from caring about layoffs.
And that hurts personally, because I was laid off a year ago and because I'm 61 I'm unhirable. 99 applications out the door, no interviews. In a year. It ain't the experience or the quality - my last position was the result of a manager switching companies and recruiting me to follow him for 19% more money. I'm the best of the best.....which apparently no longer matters, and in two months I'll be moving onto a friend's couch. A great end for a careers studded with accomplishments for the companies I worked for.
Enjoy Tahiti Dennis. You didn't earn it.