Get a Raise – Lose your Job

Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.
Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004), Republican president

Insecurity in the workforce is getting worse, according to this New York Times article. It’s bad enough that companies fire or lay off employees at will when management's bonuses are threatened, but now if you have been in the workforce too long and bring experience it will also count against you.

Circuit City, which deserves to be out of business based on my personal experience of trying to get any kind of customer service, has fired 8% of its employees (3,400 people, no doubt all frontline staff and no upper management), because their pay has inched up too high. God forbid that someone should be able to make a real living without working two jobs or even the equivalent hours of two jobs!

The laid-off Circuit City employees worked in the company’s stores and warehouses, selling electronics, unloading boxes and the like. They generally earned $10 to $20 an hour, making them typical of the broad middle of the American work force. Nationwide, the median hourly wage of all workers is about $15.

A key part of the story is that when store managers divvied up the yearly percentage increases, giving the employees 3% to 4% it apparently put them in danger of losing their positions. Hmm, I wonder what percentage increases and bonuses management passed out to themselves?

Not all is lost. These employees can apply for their old jobs, but at a lower wage. If an employee who applies for his/her job back at a lower wage, what do think the chances of loyalty to the company will be? The employee will leave in a heartbeat and a one- or two-week notice be damned. And, what if she/he does a good job and receives an increase does that put the employee at threat of losing his/her job, again?

Circuit City had already lost my business, I think it’s time they lose yours too.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.
John F. Kennedy (1917–63), Democratic president

Update: From the Wall Street Journal nightly wrap up -- Circuit City Falters, Best Buy Soars Circuit City seems to have spent the last few months stumbling around in the dark. Bruised by a price battle on flat-panel televisions, the company said in February that it would shutter over 60 of its international stores and seven of its U.S. stores as part of a huge restructuring plan. Maybe it should start with a new CEO.