When you think about the “jobless recovery,” think about just how U.S. labor laws favor management and hurt workers.
I couldn’t ask for a more clear example than that of my old employer, Business Week. I worked there about 15 years and for a total of 18 at its owner, McGraw-Hill. The venerable, New York-based magazine is being sold to business news giant Bloomberg because it hasn’t made money in about a decade. I believe losses were something like $45 million last year. The sales price is no more than an embarrassing $5 million.
Like many print publications, BW got caught in the for-free Internet mess and changing demographics meaning that people who thirsted for business news to get ahead in the 1980s now are too old to care.
BW was by far the best experience of my 36-year journalism career. The people there were by far the smartest and most talented I have ever worked with. Although BW, like most print media, has gone through round after round of layoffs, when a potential sale was announced last summer, I started watching. My former colleagues started a private Website open to current and former staffers to monitor the news and give people who have faced layoffs before a chance to offer advice.
The bloodbath started last week. As many as 130 of about 400 staffers were canned, including some very talented individuals who have worked at the publication for three decades, have authored excellent books and are experts in specific fields.
The firings took a “Darkness at Noon” quality. You were summed by telephone (or called if you were in a different city than New York). When you entered the room with the Human Resources people and there was a Bloomber editor, it meant you were in. If not, you were out.
But something curious has happened. BW has many bureaus overseas (I managed the one in Moscow for six years in the 1980s and 1990s). Yet, there were very few layoffs in spots such as Europe and Asia.
Why? Stricter labor laws there protect workers from such firings. In Europe and Asia, workers are considered more valuable than they are in America. Somehow, legislators see a value in the expertise and commitment that workers have made to their employers. If there is a money-losing proposition, then it is largely the fault of management., not the workers who do what they are instructed. And, curiously, top managers of companies in Europe and Asia do not get the gigantic salaries that CEOs in America do.
This lesson is especially revealing given that any economic recovery will be largely jobless. Unemployment is 10 percent nationally, the largest number in years.
Virginia is especially unfriendly towards workers and always favors management. The right to work law makes it harder to keep workers from organizing. “Employment at will” lets managers fire workers without really giving valid reasons. Pro-business cheerleaders will claim that this anti-worker attitude makes Virginia especially business-friendly.
Nothing wrong with that except that it assumes that “business” is the exclusive realm of management. Real workers have nothing to do with it. They are merely widgets or commodities that can be tossed away at a whim.
I hate to see good people who have done nothing wrong catch the blame for top management’s mistakes. At least some of my friends working overseas have some protection.
Peter Galuszka