From: Jasper
Date: 6/26/01
Time: 9:02:56
AM
Jean,
This sort of thing is going on everywhere big business operates in the United States and Canada. It's even worse in counties that have no laws to protect workers from corporate greed. And "greed" is the right word for it. In their quest to maximize the bottom line (for themselves) high-ranking corporate executives are getting rid of some of their best assets in human resources. They have no idea what has to happen in the lower ranks to get the job done right.
That's why things are going so wrong in so many companies. The people who know what to do, how to do it and why, are no longer there or no longer in a position to do what they know has to be done. By law, they cannot simply can older workers. They have to have a valid, performance-related reason. Performance reviews are thus tailored to give them the appearance of having a valid, performance-related reason to lower salaries and boot older workers out of the door.
I have seen the same stunt that Sears pulled on your sister pulled on a lot of people at Ford. I've heard the same horror stories from people I know who worked for GM, Chrysler, Toyota, GE and our local phone company. It's just the "new" way of doing big business. This is why the Ford race discrimination suit of the early '90s was so important to everyone and why the Fortune 500 was looking at it so closely. It was never about race. It was about money. We were just the test case.
It's not only big government we have to worry about, it's big business, too. And let us not forget big media. It's whoever has the unchecked power to control our lives. As you put it so well, "...And then they came for me."--Jasper