Do you get Upset that Folks Layed Off are BLAMED for Layoff?

[KoKo]

NYT's Reporter: Blaming People for their Own Layoffs is causing Sickness!

..AND it's making our society sick. A good read if you want to know what's happened to America since the late 1970's. Interview covers NAFTA/BuyOuts/Unemployment and the way we have been manipulated for decades by the "powers that be." When you mean nothing to a Society...and you are worth nothing..... This is an article to build a new Movement on. What has happened to America?

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Transcript of “The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences” by Louis Uchitelle
YaleGlobal, 30 May 2006

TRANSCRIPT!

Uchitelle: It’s still a mystery to me, as much as I’ve explained it. But the paradigm shift included going from a society in which we thought of ourselves as a community if you will, everyone in it for everyone else, to this individualism which has always been a strain in American society, which got out of hand. I think that it became very convenient to blame workers for their own layoffs. We got to the point where we said, “Look, we have to lay you off because you’re not worth what we’re paying you.” A tremendous psychologically damaging blow to people. And then we said the solution is training and education and you’ll qualify for the good jobs out there. There weren’t enough good jobs out there so you’re blamed again for not enough training, not moving around, not being flexible enough. Very convenient for the Republicans and the Democrats – they didn’t have to come up with policies that might challenge the layoffs, and challenge what was going on. Very convenient of course for the CEOs. They were absolved of responsibility.

But we did not measure the social damage. We used to measure in this country all sorts of social damage. And we didn’t measure, for example, the psychological damage from being told that you don’t have value. I was amazed doing this book, you know a journalist goes out and interviews somebody for a daily story, or for a story that’s done after a month’s research, and you don’t get deeply into the lives of these people until you do a book, and then you really become involved tracking families. And I only used in the book some of the people that I got to know over the years. I never thought I would be so drawn into the psychiatric aspects of layoff. I’m not talking unemployment, unemployment is a separate issue.

Chanda: Right.

Uchitelle: Just this traumatic statement that you don’t have a place in society, in the workplace. In a society where people’s identity is very much wrapped up in the workplace among other forms of identity – family, community, so forth. The workplace is very important. So here you’re doing this damage, and I went to psychiatry, they said “Yes, we run across it all the time in therapy, and we are undermining public health.” In fact I’m going to make this point to a psychiatric convention in less than a month, and we’re not putting a warning label on it. There’s something wrong. Well, we have to measure that. If we’re not going to measure that, then we’re not going to put some sort of brakes on layoffs. Again, I do not want to say that we can stop the layoffs, but I do think that if we measured the damage we would begin to say, “Well, is there a way to lay off five people instead of ten. Are there ways to make people feel better if we lay them off? Are there social ways to deal with this problem?”

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7488

The following is a transcript of Nayan Chanda's interview with Louis Uchitelle, economics writer for “The New York Times” and also the author of “The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences,” conducted on May 11, 2006. – YaleGlobal

[primative1]

1. So what else is new ..

We already pay to have our jobs sent overseas.
Only thing left is to have us pay for the bullet they use at our execution.
Hmm .. isn't that already done someplace?

[KoKo]

2. I know that for "Us, Here" it's pretty ho...hum...but a NYT's Reporter

latches onto this and reports it? That's pretty amazing to this DU'er who has spent SIX YEARS hoping for some HONEST MEDIA to tell it Like it Is!

Yeah...maybe it's old news but maybe you could send the article to folks you know who have been "downsized, merged and outsourced" and they might think thrice about voting ONCE AGAIN for any Repug. :shrug:

All I'm saying here...passing this along that I know to be true from my own experience....:shrug:

[raccoon]

6. In Nazi Germany, people were billed for the hangings of family members. nt

[AnnieBW]

3. It's Damaging to Your Psyche

When my husband was laid off, along with his whole department including the secretary, I constantly had to reassure him that IT WASN'T HIS FAULT. Even though he understood it logically, there's something visceral about being "fired" because you weren't "good enough" or whatever. It wasn't his fault that the dot-coms collapsed, and took the bandwidth providers with them. Or that the company he worked for was cooking the books. Or that they had no true business plan. Or that 25% of the computer industry was out of work prior to 9/11, and nobody gave a crap.

[murielm99]

5. My cousin's husband, at some level, knows that

his layoff was not his fault. His whole factory was shipped overseas.

They have lost their house. He has had two strokes. He is 52.

[area51]

4. I hate the nazi "blame the victim" mentality.

Republinazis love to blame the victim -- until they themselves get laid off.

Another thing they can't seem to grasp is that the more people they get rid of, the more taxes they'll have to pay to make up the gap of those who are now unemployed.

[raccoon]

7. When they do find jobs (some of them anyway), chances are

they'll be making much less than they did in their old jobs.

Therefore, paying less local, state, federal taxes, and buying less, therefore paying less sales tax too.

[wicket]

8. When the firm I'd worked at for years closed last Spring...

...I don't think I've ever felt more worthless, or made to feel that way by management. But why should they care- they all got their multi-million dollar golden parachutes while we pleebs got NOTHING.