The No-Layoff Approach To Cutting Labor Costs

A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.

And in some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school's 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[BryantG]

A characteristic of america during it's rise to economic supremacy was that we made things. We made everything from electronics to clothing. We raised our own food. We mined the raw materials and carried out every step in transforming them into finished goods. Today we make very little and we import most of the finished goods we purchase.

How was this economic transition good for the country and why was it inevitible? How does an offshore call center benefit the american worker? Middle class wages have been stagnant. We import more than we export. The gap between the wealthy and the poor has widened.

[munki]

Have you forgotten those fat checks to executives?
Wouldn't you agree to narrow the gap?

[KillTheMessenger]

We still make most of the electronics in the world. There is almost no technological leadership in the electronics industry outside of the US. What we do not do, however, is to assemble our electronic products into consumer products. That's the sweatshop aspect of the business and it has moved away a long time ago.

[Motes]

What do you mean by electronics?

The majority of the electronics in terms of packaging the final product is made outside of the US and most of it from foreign companies: sony, samsung, haier, nokia, HTC...

The majority of the silicon parts that go into the electronics are also made outside of the US, with the sole exception basically being some percentage of intel.

Most of the technical expertise in these fields also reside outside of the US now.

There is plenty of leadership in the electronics industry outside the US, both from a technical and business sense.

[spinns17]

we can send more jobs overseas.this will help us out .ya right

[curiousasheck]

Cheap Labor Conservatives

[KillTheMessenger]

I wish I could go on a four day work-week. But my company won't allow it... business is too good.

:-(

[curiousasheck]

We'll all be better off when we return to quality rather quantity.

[Grabby]

Or...we can cut this http://www.revver.com/video/1391607 and fix everything!

[KataVideo]

Has anyone else noticed that the photo accompanying this story shows a logo for "S&M Movers"?
Your furniture is absolutely guaranteed to get there on time.. OR ELSE.

[Roberta]

I've been doing some reading lately about the Great Depression of the 1930's. When it first hit, all firms did this exact thing - cutting hours, working part-time, job-sharing and agreeing to lower wages. It didn't work. Within 6 months, this strategy was used up. The businesses failed.

[WIpatriot]

Expect the same.

[getoffmedz]

Too little, too late.

Mass layoffs will only increase in severity and frequency.

[boomer1949]

My employer implemented a freeze on discretionary spending last spring. This step covers everything from limits on travel, limits on office supplies, any type of office party, meetings without excessive food, a hiring freeze unless a position is essential, etc., etc. They've told us they would rather cut back this way instead of cutting back labor. It's amazing what we've learned to live without in order to keep our jobs.

Bless top management for their ability to forecast this economic down turn -- even if worse than expected.

[treetracker]

Yeah, my company did the same thing --- but guess who got the money? Managment! They got bonuses at the end of the year for cutting their budgets for the rest of us. We only found out about it when our supervisor retired. They had kept it quite the secret from the employees.

[Erdgeist]

Good idea (for once)! Now we need our economists to tell Congress to junk free-trade so this country can get back to providing its own goods and services instead of off-shoring and out-sourcing them for the profits of a few traitor American corporations who dodge their taxes to the tune of 100 billion a year.

[Paul]

Exactly.

[ProfessorDuh]

When you hear the auto workers being blamed, remember that what's happening here is that corporate America is lowering American wages, benefits and standards of living drastically to the Chinese level. Everything else is just window dressing to keep you distracted.

[treetracker]

Agreed. The plan has always been to lower American wages - I can't recall the name of the Congressman (R), but he said as much a few months ago. It wasn't until the Dems gained enough power in Congress to increase the minimum wage act. We the workers are not part of Bush's base the, "haves and haves mores." We are expendable. As long as the masses keep sending the GOP to Congress and the White House, we'll continue to be expendable. It is really questionable whether Obama can clean up the mess they have left us in the next 4 (or even 8 years). But, hey, you all can send another GOP (Palin?) back to the White House in 4 or 8 years and they can finish off the working class in this country. We can go back to serfs and Lords, then! Whoopee!!!

[BryantG]

This is not just a blue collar phenomenon. They've done the same thing with high tech positions by first bringing in low-cost H1B visa workers and then outsourcing entire IT departments. The average salary of an IT worker hasn't risen in a decade.

[Desmo]

We tried that already after the crash of 1929, we raised protectionist tariffs and started a trade war severely cutting US exports and sinking the country deeper into depression.