The News That Surrounds Me

With all of the news that surrounds most of us, it is easy to understand why Americans are 6 in 10 against the bailout of the auto companies. It is hard to emphasize with the UAW when the realities of your own situation pale in comparison to their privileged world:

There are rumors that my husband's company is ready to do a significant layoff next week. It is a large company but it has significant debt that creates an almost permanent negative impact on the books; there are always quarterly losses prompting quarterly layoffs over the last few years. The rumors are usually true since the layoffs have become more regular now, the corporate culture is one of uncertainty, about people holding onto their jobs for a paycheck until they are the next to go; no one expects a week without upheaval. There is no union preventing people from being laid-off at-will or exacting the promise of a paycheck even if the work dries up. Most employees now work at their own risk, the propects of a similar job for similar pay are slim since the industry has been suffering a downturn since 2001 from which it has never really recovered.

The other major aspect is that management has changed little, with the layoffs coming bottom up, not top down. Unfortunately, this scenario gets compounded by the fact that management usually has the most management experience even if they have done a terrible job. If you listen to the logic of most companies, they have to preserve bonuses and other perks to keep their managers from absconding; how can they run without experienced managers? Unfortunately, many of these managers may be the very same people who ran the company into the ground in the first place. It is clear that my husband's company has been badly run for some time but those people are not getting rid of themselves anytime soon.

My husband is grateful that he has a job and receiving a decent paycheck for his hard work and so am I. Hopefully he will survive the next round but we still could tighten our belts even further and save even more money just in case. I double-checked with my benefits representative that if he loses his job and we lose our health benefits that I qualify to sign us all up for the health benefit at my job; I am currently waiving mine since both of our plans cost about the same and there is no reason to upset the cart, for now.

Since I have only been at my job for 3 months, I simply have no comfort zone at all. I don't think I will ever settle in since the job trimmings continue despite the assurance after the layoffs last month that we were the crew going forward, in fact the executive who told us that is no longer with the company having been terminated last week.