It's not wrong to fire expensive employees, says Doug Bandow -- and Colson's marketing guy.
In 2000, Slate's David Plotz praised Chuck Colson for being selfless, humble, the "Switzerland of the culture war," and an "equal-opportunity critic, smacking the left for its sneers at religion and the right for its intolerant moralizing." But he warned that "Colson is changing as his popularity increases ... [and] sounds increasingly like other religious-right preachers."
Eh, not so much, says Doug Bandow in an American Spectator piece today suggesting Colson is "trending left" by becoming a "corporate scourge." At issue is Colson's April 2 BreakPoint commentary on Circuit City's layoffs, "Disposable Workers."
"The mere fact that a firm fires for economic reasons an employee it originally hired for economic reasons does not, in Colson's words, leave 'people as disposable commodities and dehumanized,'" Bandow writes.
Prison Fellowship’s vice president of direct marketing, Allen Thornburgh, also criticized Colson's commentary on BreakPoint's own blog, The Point.
The "evangelical view of economics" discussion goes on.
Posted by Ted Olsen on May 4, 2007 1:01PM
Comments
I guess Colson's a heretic now, at least to the Spectator (and his own staff.)
Bandow makes a good point--Circuit City is facing economic pressure. But that only makes their decision to fire higher paid staff seem worse. Circuit City paid people on commission--and their one advantage over other discount electronic stores is their customer service. Looks like they've shot themselves in the foot. (Not to mention sending the message to all their employees that good work will be punished).
Posted by: bob smietana at May 4, 2007
I trust that your characterization of my post as "criticizing" Chuck's commentary was made in good faith, but I think that your readers would agree, upon reading my post, that it was hardly criticism, and that the connotations that follow that word certainly do not apply. Normally, I'm pleased when someone links to my posts, but - this time - such isn't the case, especially when that links me to a question as to whether Chuck is a "socialist" (!!), "trending left", and a "corporate scourge." All three notions are, of course, laughable on their face.
I address this more fully in today's post: http://thepoint.breakpoint.org/2007/05/circuit_city_ag.html
Other posts of yours are very thoughtful, insightful, and well crafted; and I enjoy them. I'd just ask for a bit more care in choosing your words as they relate to your friends on other blogs.
This matter aside, keep up the great work.
Allen
Posted by: Allen Thornburgh at May 5, 2007
Does it make one a socialist to criticize a company that cuts its most experienced workers so brazenly?
I took Colson's article as simply a recognition that, while dollars on Wall Street may adapt dispassionately to market changes, people don't respond with such flexibility.
It's also a recognition that corporate loyalty to employees has vanished while many employees, by and large, still operate from the paradigm that good work is rewarded. As Dilbert's nemesis Catbert said when Dilbert expressed such a sentiment, "False hope is Okay. Carry on!"
Bandow states the obvious: it's a corporations right to fire employees for economic reasons who were hired for economic reasons. Fair enough.
But America's corporations have benefitted at least in the past from a work ethic that taught workers to expect a quid pro quo for their loyalty and performance. These actions are training America's workers that this is no longer productive just as the baby boomers are starting to retire and depopulate the economy they built and more rank and file workers are needed to just keep things going.
Deming's management techniques succeeded because he taught corporations to remove fear from the workplace.
These actions inject fear into the workplace and destabilize it and corporations will pay ultimately even though these actions are within their "rights" to exercise.
Posted by: Mission Lawrence at May 12, 2007
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