« The Cuneiform Short Alphabet: Part 8.
Main
A New Horde of Tablets From Ur Found »
March 28, 2006
Laying Off Tens of Thousands of Laborers: No Problem
But Laying off 500 White Collar Employees: "Black Tuesday"
Seth Jayson writing today for the Motley Fool (registration may be required) made the following observation,
Maybe it's because I grew up in a blue-collar mining town, but today's press coverage of GM's (NYSE: GM) layoffs seems a bit strange. Introducing today's news of approximately 500 white-collar layoffs, one news channel I saw called it "Black Tuesday." When everyone figured that the majority of the tens of thousands of cuts would be to blue-collar working stiffs at factories across the U.S., I don't remember the same degree of histrionics.
He goes on to say some interesting and scary things about GM's future, but this point made in his first paragraph is important to keep in mind. Most professional people which includes most bloggers and, more to the point, most journalists tend to identify with other professionals rather than with the workers that add value to raw material. I have heard that one of the failings of the Soviet economic system was its failure to value properly the contribution of its distribution channel. Things just didn't get from the factory to the consumer because that process and the people that managed it were significantly undervalued. My worry is that the current economic structure in the United States fails to value fully labor while over valuing the distribution system. We, as a nation, tend to treat labor as just another commodity and not as an important source of added economic value.
Posted by DuaneSmith at March 28, 2006 08:42 PM | Read more on Current Events |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://WWW.telecomtally.com/cgi-bin/blog/mt-tb.cgi/599
Comments
Post a comment
Please read Abnormal Interest's Comments Policy.