Labour lawyer Thomas Geoghehan quite likes The Disposable American, by NYT economics writer Louis Uchitelle.
The layoff, Mr. Uchitelle argues, has transformed the nation. At least 30 million full-time American employees have gotten pink slips since the Labor Department belatedly started to count them in 1984. But add in the early retirees, the "quits" who saw the layoffs coming, and the number is much higher — a whole ghost nation trekking into what for most will be lower-wage work. This is the Dust Bowl in our Golden Bowl, and to Mr. Uchitelle, layoffs in one way are worse than the unemployment of the 1930's. At least then, most of the jobless came back to better-paid, more secure jobs. Those laid off in our time almost never will.
Mr. Uchitelle effectively wrecks the claim that all this downsizing makes the country more productive, more competitive, more flexible. He is willing to admit that downsizing can be necessary. "The global economy is not to be denied," he writes. But to lay off is now like a business school tic, whether it makes any sense or not. With fewer employees, many companies begin to crumble. Innovation also suffers. "Rather than try to outstrip foreign competitors in innovation, a costly and risky process, we gave up in product after product," Mr. Uchitelle writes. As he points out, many of the business stars now are companies, like Southwest Airlines, that have refused to downsize at all. A growing number of economists argue that layoffs cause more problems than they solve. ...
In one of his shrewder moves, Mr. Uchitelle goes right into the enemy camp, as it were, and looks in on a reunion of Harvard graduates, the class of '68. But even Harvard grads are among the wounded now — some have received pink slips. Mr. Uchitelle makes a strong case that the whole middle class is at risk. During the Clinton era, the claim was that the United States was expanding high-wage, high-skilled jobs, and that the laid off could simply jump into jobs as good or better. But Mr. Uchitelle takes apart this argument. After all, he writes, as of 2004, more than 45 percent of American workers were earning $13.25 an hour or less. The jobs that the country has been "growing" the fastest include those like janitor, hospital orderly and cashier. ...
In this retelling of American history, Mr. Uchitelle is baffled by the collapse of any serious resistance to these mass layoffs. Even the protestors who began to sound off in the 90's generally believed that companies did have to downsize or die. It bothers Mr. Uchitelle that the mechanics and others he covers in this book and gets to know personally often blame themselves. "Whenever I insisted that layoffs were a phenomenon in America beyond their control, they agreed perfunctorily and then went right back to describing ... why it was somehow their fault or their particular bad luck."
Many readers know Mr. Uchitelle as a business journalist with an acute analytic bent. That is in this book, but there is a surprising passion as well. He urges — demands — that Americans speak up: not to give empty speeches about how more of us should go to college, or "skill up," but to stop the layoffs from ravaging us all.