Disposable Americans

Getting laid off brings home the full meaning of "employment at will". Your job security is totally and irrevocably in the hands of your employer. As I found out, the firing manager is your judge, jury and executioner. You can present no evidence in your defense, get no trial and have no appeal. You are on your own. How did we get this way?

As Louis Uchitelle so astutely points out in The Disposable American, until relatively recently, layoffs were avoided by corporations as

"a sign of corporate failure and a violation of acceptable business behavior. Over the years, however, the permanent separation of people from their jobs, abruptly and against their wishes, gradually became standard management practice, and in the late 1990s we finally acquiesced. Acquiescence means giving up, seeing no alternative; we bowed to layoffs as the way things have to be. Now we justify them as an unfortunate necessity."

The sad thing: today in America there is no

"loyal opposition" to unfettered layoffs. Politicians from both parties ignore the problem, while society meekly accepts current practices. Uchitelle writes: "I set out to tell the story of our acquiescence and in doing so ran into a festering national crisis. Until we recognize it, an effective opposition cannot form."

Read Uchitelle's book. We have all become "disposable Americans" - this is a "festering national crisis".

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