Corporate Hell

[KT2000]

A new book: Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers
It is about Boeing but also about the effects on workers when their existing work culture is destroyed and replaced with cost-cutting management. One finding was that workers' health improved after they were laid off. Finally someone is looking at the effects of the corporate culture of profits above everything else.

From Seattle Times
"Between 1997 and 2003, Boeing employees seemed trapped in corporate hell.

In the years after the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, they suffered through mass layoffs, heavy outsourcing of their jobs, relentless cost-cutting and a dizzying pace of change.
snip
A new book charts in detail how that corporate turbulence devastated the morale and poisoned the attitudes of employees. It documents a sense of betrayal reaching from the factory floor to the management offices."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sundaybuzz/2013470649_sundaybuzz21.html

[Tesha]

1. Mr. Tesha and I have been through several corporate collapses.

After the first few rounds of lay-offs, a sort of cultural shift
occurs and none of the employees any longer believe that
1) their jobs will ever be safe again or that 2) they should
treat their employers as more than a day-by-day opportunity
to earn this week's paycheck. (And don't hold those checks
uncashed!) Everyone hunkers down into "CYA" mode and
no one is any longer willing to take the sort of grand risks
that occasionally bring grand successes. Résumés start flying
and the best people head out the door early.

At that point, it's all over for the corporation and it's just
a question of how quickly the end will come.

Tesha

[KT2000]

2. Yes - this is what they found

it changes people and not for the good.
Also, in reading the comments from ex-Boeing employees after the article, they outsourced engineering and development to China. They just announced a jetliner to compete with Boeing and Airbus. This was probably done with Boeing paying for it and being too blind to see what was going to happen.

[Curmudgeoness]

3. Interesting, maybe corporate managers should get this for

the Christmas gift from the employees. They just do not seem to realize what they are doing to the employees and morale. I used to care very much about my job and my company. Now I am one of the CYA people who just put up with the job for a paycheck. Too bad for me and for my employer.

A coworker was fired about six months ago, and says that she has not had a migraine since then, and her acne has completely cleared up. She says that the stress of trying to pay bills with unemployment is nothing compared to what she was dealing with daily. I envy her in a strange way.

[KT2000]

4. Good idea

The company where my brother works used to be a business where everyone worked hard to make it a success. They encouraged employing families. When it was bought by a holding company, that all changed. Now the workers could care less. They have seen too many lay-offs, the denigration of the products they made (mostly out-sourced to China now) and are treated like crap.

Also - I think the NIH funding and resulting data was pretty significant.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. I was taken by these paragraphs in the article...

"The most damning evidence of the psychological impact of this new hard-edge management comes in surveys of those who were laid off from Boeing in the worst years and chose not to return.

"Though this group lost their jobs, the authors' data show improvements in health, fewer drinking problems and less depression compared with those who stayed at the company."



Go figure. All companies today seem to manage through intimidation and feel-good mottos instead of treating employees like the assets that they are. This book will be significant, no matter what business you are in.

[KT2000]

6. Intimidation is the word

As a management style they are creating illnesses that are contributing to the cost of healthcare. They want to shed the costs of insuring their workers but they are making matters worse AND fighting against better alternatives.
Really hope the data in this book can be used to change things.

[TheKentuckian]

7. As someone that has been a part of four shutdowns and a few cutbacks/layoffs

that the whole deal is soul sapping and yeah, at least arguably even harder on lower and middle management people that have to try to keep their fellow sufferers up and functional and try to protect the burned out from losing severance or wowing out and making matters more hellish for all involved.

The work world is a toxic place anymore between declining wages, acquisitions, cost cutting, layoffs, shutdowns, a bazillion people looking for YOUR job, slave driving of dwindling workforce, and all the thousands of daily paper cuts.

Keeping this shit up till 70 is beyond comprehension. The retirement age needs to be lowered, rather than even thinking about raising it.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. Amen. Couldn't agree more.

:banghead: :argh: