Judy Davis had worked for a surgical instruments maker in Cincinnati for three years -- as a contract worker, not an employee -- and when she was laid off five months ago, she burst into tears. But she was not surprised.
"I loved the work and I was devastated," Davis said. Trained in animal science, she had tested the instruments, sometimes on pigs and goats. Her performance reviews were excellent and she strove to become an employee, but she was always aware that she might not reach that goal. "The message implicit in contract work," she said, "is that the company is not doing well enough to elevate you to a job. Layoff looms as a possibility."
In mid-February, as the economy weakened, Ethicon-Endo Surgery, a division of Johnson & Johnson, dropped Davis, 44, a divorced mother of two daughters who had been earning US$17.50 an hour. Soon thereafter, she joined a job search group at a local church and, at a recent meeting, asked the 50 people present if any had ever been laid off. "Half raised their hands, and I asked them why they were not angry," Davis said. "They said the first time was the most devastating. This is my first time, but to whom do I address anger? If I were a business owner and I was not making a profit, I would lay people off, too."
For the first time since the mid-1990s, US companies are cutting loose many of their employees -- announcing in the first half of this year alone plans to eliminate some 777,362 jobs, compared with 613,960 in all of last year. But the usual protests and anger are largely missing. In the first years of the 21st century, layoffs have a new character. While it used to be traumatic to be laid off even once, some employees can now expect to get a pink slip twice or even three times before they reach 50. Layoffs are being spread more even-handedly than in the past, hitting women as often as men, top executives as well as clerks and production workers, good performers as well as bad. And often, like Davis, the laid-off worker reluctantly agrees with the business decision that put him or her on the street.
Firings and hirings
The firings, for that matter, are often going hand in hand with hirings. As companies lose workers in one department, they are adding people with different skills for another. They are, in effect, continually tailoring their work forces to fit the available work, adjusting quickly to swings in demand for products and services. To do that, companies are making ever greater use of contract workers and temps like Davis.
"Flexibility is the most important ingredient of corporate success today," said Eric Greenberg, director of surveys at the American Management Association. "That involves a certain thickening of the skin on both sides of the equation. Management is more thick-skinned about letting people go, and workers are more thick-skinned about accepting layoffs as a condition of employment."
There is balm to ease the process, though. Many companies are growing more open-handed with severance and are spending more on outplacement services for their departing workers. The outplacement industry is booming. Right Management Consultants, the biggest of the nation's outplacement operations, with 140 offices in the US, signed on 26,400 newly laid-off workers from January through June, more than double the 11,200 in the first half last year.
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