New York Times writer speaks at USU

Times economic reporter, Louis Uchitelle, who spoke Wednesday in the Sunburst Lounge.

“[Layoffs are] a very convenient system for executives who don’t have to inhibit themselves [in conducting] layoffs, and for politicians who don’t have to come up with public policy, except maybe safety nets to pay unemployment insurance, wage insurance, health insurance after you’re laid off, and even labor unions, who, at times, participate quite a bit in retraining programs,” said Uchitelle, who authored a book, “The Disposable American,” about the phenomenon of layoffs in the workforce.

The step-by-step weakening of job security in American culture began in the mid-1970s, with the advent of globalization and the rise of the Japanese economy, Uchitelle said.

“We responded to the globalization and the arrival of the Japanese with layoffs to cut costs,” he said. “That was a legitimate response, but it got out of hand. And slowly, until the late 90s, we dismantled job security step by step by step, until we acquiesced as a people.”

This is in contrast to the century preceding the decline, during which Uchitelle said job security was a part of the culture. Starting in the late 1800s and really taking off after the 1930s and the war years, job security was “an integral part of our success as an industrial nation,” he said.

“It was the result of managers of major corporations, all of them realizing they had thousands of employees operating all across the country. They realized that if they were to have skilled, energetic, enterprising workers, they had to give them a sense of advancement, a sense of income rising,” he said.

From this realization grew the system in the 50s and 60s in which management, unions and the government were equal in power and shared the same interests, Uchitelle said. The 70s saw the beginning of the decline in this aspect of the American workforce.

“A company existed for a community as well as for its workers, for its suppliers and its shareholders. Well, most of that is gone except the shareholders,” he said.

The American worker came to believe it is a normal thing to get laid off, Uchitelle said. Often those who are laid off blame themselves instead of the system for the conditions which led to layoffs in the first place.

“We have a certain type of individualism in this country – we believe in it and we worship it and every so often it goes haywire. In this country we have acquiesced to layoffs by learning to blame the victim of the layoff and not the community around us as responsible.

“Being laid off is a trauma. In a society where work is part of a person’s identity, being told you have no value at work is damaging to one’s self-esteem,” he said.

One of the effects of layoffs is the toll they take on people’s confidence. Only one in three people who get laid off end up earning the same or higher salary than they did before the layoffs, Uchitelle said. One third of all people laid off end up quitting the industry and one third take jobs with lower pay, he said. Many who get laid off late in their careers simply choose to not go back to work. Even among those fresh out of college, the aftermath of being laid off can be hard to deal with.

“There comes a time when you must make a commitment to a job or skill and then your company comes to you and says you don’t have worth,” he said.

Another implication of layoffs is that many people are over-qualified for their jobs. If a job as a taxi driver comes open and two people apply, one who has an engineering degree and one who has a high school education, the person with the degree will get the job, he said. This leads to a percentage of those in the workforce working below their skill level

“A lot of layoffs can’t be stopped,” Uchitelle said. “We do live in a global economy. But we shouldn’t justify it with a myth. It’s not the victim’s fault.

“There are no moral or social consequences in our society for layoffs and that’s a tragedy,” he said.

-ella@cc.usu.edu