- Huge crowd join French strike
My first reaction on reading the headlines was "what bullshit"! Is this a time to go on a strike? Is this going to do any good? Isn't this going to affect the productivity of the country and deepen the economic crisis. Is this what is called a socialist nation?
Then I pondered more about it. Digging my past, it occurred to me that not only I have seen strikes but also have participated in them. During my college days, I took part in "Mandal commission protests" - It was a protest against government policy (in India) to reserve more seats for certain caste of people (who were oppressed in past) in education institution. What made me participate in those strikes? Was it my youth? Or was it my immaturity? Or was it just me being idealistic? Yes, it gave me a sense of social involvement. I believed that I had to voice my opinion, I had to speak out and change things.
If I think about it, Gandhi was believer of non-violence and non-cooperation. He encouraged people in participating in non-violent protests that ultimately lead to India getting her independence. So maybe protests and strikes create enough pressure to break the system. It forces the authority to acknowledge the people's voice and take constructive steps to give what they want. Going back to the French strike, maybe it has some sense after all. Maybe the people striking against the way the French Government is handling the economic crisis will force the administration to think hard and come up with a solution that is more appeasing to the public. Maybe after all strikes and protests are not about wasting a day but about investing a day to make the future better.
- Big Layoffs No Longer Help Boost a Company's Stock
Good! Laying off can not be the solution to the problem. Ofcourse, it is necessary in some cases but in most of the cases it is just to convince the investors that the layoffs will make their balance sheet look good. This was true before this recession was in action. Now, announcing layoffs just reflects the fact that they too are affected by the economic crisis and are going through rough patch. It is going to have less and less affect on the stock of the company. So what is this layoff going to do the company - ofcourse save some money. But then having lesser people means having less resources. This will result in low productivity and therefore will result in low sales. Low sales is going to definitely bring the stock price down. It is time now that companies think of some innovative way than laying-off to make their stock ticker attractive. Maybe it is time to adopt a company-wide salary cut. Maybe it is time to release office spaces and adopt working-from-home policy. Maybe it is time to look into reducing their electric power usage by using solar energy to lit their offices, to heat up the whole office space and to boot up their servers and desktops. Getting more people out of job is not a lasting solution - keeping them in job and working out with them during the crisis is what is going to help America come out of recession.
- President Obama signed the Lilly LedBetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
It is a shame that we still have inequality between men and women in our society! It is a shame that still women are thought lesser than their counterpart men! It is a shame that we are still talking and debating about it. Isn't it?
This bill is going to enforce equality in paper but is it going to be accepted in the society in its completeness? Well, it depends on the women in the society. I am so proud of Lilly LedBetter who at the age of 70 did not accept the inequality and fought for her rights. She still has not got her $360,000 compensation but she got something more than that - a bill with her name enforcing equality. Yes, she got the law signed, but it is upto the other women of this and the coming generation to make the law into practice.
I liked your second post the best. Your idea about "Keeping the workers while doing other things to cut costs" may be a valid suggestion but here is my take on how to make that happen.
ReplyDeleteViable business:
If the market is shrinking, the most efficient way to cut cost is laying off employees. If the total number of automobiles sold in the US in 2008 was 18% lower than 2007 (and 2007 3% lower than 2006). We are talking about cutting costs to keep the company viable! Not sure solar panels, or work from home will get us even 5% of the money we require to cut.
Retrain and retool:
One easy way to keep the peak output in a shrinking market is to retrain/retool to produce many different things. Say retool automobile factories to make tanks and armored cars, retrain software engineers to build state-of-the-art missile control software, you get the drift - War and war related economies will surely keep people employed. I can think of other examples, but nothing like war :)
Fortunately, this is not the only way I can think of. Lets look at the problem another way
Perceived health:
What is happening is more than viability driving the job cuts, and other economy measures. Complex statistical analysis and predictive models are in every aspect of a business. Decisions across the board ranging from salary ranges, to headcounts, to cafeteria subsidies, to hiring policies are either directly influenced, or controlled indirectly by a ton of numbers that define a "healthy" company.
Aside: Numbers or instinct?
Being a student of science, I strongly believe in numbers and scientific analysis.
Well, they seem to be telling me that markets are shrinking, and I have to cut jobs to be viable!
Viability is not a simple concept of whether there is a balance between the incoming and the outgoing moneys, and it can never be. Viability is heavily influenced by our concept of "healthy" and "attractive". Whats worse, like the "matrix movie dialog", our mind has made them real. What we need to accept in our minds and attitudes that efficiency is not going to be measured by turnover ratios, our stock is not going to be valued using projected growth, and our salaries are not going to be as high as they are :) Note that although it sounds like I am ditching the numbers, I am actually trying to get the ego and arrogance variables out of the statistics and doing a hard reset. We need to rethink the meaning of "progress" and its relation to "growth" for the next century. I don't understand the big picture of it all, but I have an instinct on where we should start?
Hard reset:
"Open community projects" You don't get paid to do it but it is mandatory. Imagine if you are required to work only for 3 days on your company's projects and the rest on "open source projects" as a software engineer. You get paid only for the 3 days you work by your company, but you continue to produce through the week.
This would help not just keeping the productivity high but also with community building and overall efficiency in the long run.
The tough part is getting everyone in a business do that, and getting the industry to reset numbers esp "growth" numbers for the short term. The tough part is to keep it capitalistic and socialistic at the same time. The tough part is building value, keeping your focus, and driving to get consistent results out of the open community projects.
Yes, it is essentially a "Compulsory Draft v2.0". Maybe this is the investment we need to make. Maybe this is the way out of job cuts, shrinking markets and frugality measures.
Maybe, its not practical given the realities of today and the global nature of everything we do. But I would love to find a way to make it happen.