Note: A reading is attached, which you might like to read first.

 September 3, 2006

          When I began my first job in the early 1960’s in England, I was too young to know how fortunate I was to have job security. I was not part of a union; it was just that companies behaved decently towards workers in those days. Where I came from, workers were “made redundant” only as a last resort and they received very generous money settlements. Now that I think about that term, it is truly awful—redundant means “not necessary.” My mother was made redundant from three companies. She joked that the next company she worked for had better watch out because if they hired her, their business would probably go bankrupt. She enjoyed the settlements she got and the many months of unemployment benefits before seriously looking for more work. But slowly she began to realize that she was being paid less and less as skilled jobs were fewer and were going to younger, lower-paid workers and only low-paid, semi-skilled work was available to her. By 1980, Mother earned far less than she did in 1965.

            In 1982, my father was asked to take early retirement with a lump sum payment instead of a pension. (Being asked to retire is just the same as being laid-off!) Ostensibly, this was to make way for younger workers but he knew that the young man who took his place was paid one half his salary and it was the young assistant he had trained. I wonder how that young man felt about it! Hiring younger workers was a great excuse to move higher paid skilled workers out of their jobs (and I assure you that this has been done massively in this country in the last few decades). Dad was 56 years old and never worked again even though he was willing and able. It was a blow to his dignity from which he never recovered. My mother fared better since she decided that because she now earned so little, it simply wasn’t worth it any longer and she chose to retire early on the equivalent of social security.

Have you been laid off  from a job—that is, were you asked to leave when you would have preferred to stay and work? Have you known someone who has been laid off? It is a devastating experience. What was going on in England was precisely the same as here in America for two decades now. (By the way, in the early years of when I was a teacher, I received a “pink slip” at the end of every year. This was the normal practice so that administrators could have maximum freedom to create their schedules and young teachers would never know whether they’d be working in September or not!)

Louis Uchitelle says, “…Job security unwound in America. Layoffs became the measure of our national retreat from the dignity that had been gradually bestowed on American workers over the previous ninety years.” (p. 5, Uchitelle) He tells us about one of America’s finest companies, the Stanley Works—Stanley Tools, once known as the world’s finest. Chief Executive Officers told their stories of how they always had the welfare of their workers at heart, even while negotiating with unions. They made a special point of walking the factory floors to greet employees. Tom Peters was to call this “Management by Walking About”! It was important to them to attend annual functions celebrating retired employees service of 30 and 40+ years. Layoffs were unheard of.

Labor history in the 20^th century is a sometimes magnificent one with large corporations wanting to keep their employees by treating them well and paying them well. Proctor and Gamble is a prime example and IBM, Hewlett Packard, Southwest Airlines, and Harley Davidson are others. Their thinking was to be loyal to the employees to get loyalty and hard work from them in return. We expected to work our whole lives for the same company, as you well know. Nowadays, that seems like a fairy tale.

The Depression brought government money and planning massively into helping corporations develop industry. Legislation was passed to ensure workers’ welfare. World War II helped to get the wheels of industry turning at a fast clip with government help. In the forties, fifties, and sixties, America seemed to be a confident  model for other nations. Indeed, the rest of the world, Europe in particular, was America’s market (some said “colony”). But as Europe and Japan developed their industries and fair labor laws and practices and prospered our former markets became our most formidable competitors in quality, especially Japan. Stanley tools, once the center of any hardware store became just another choice among other fine quality Japanese tools. Stanley’s Chief Officers were being replaced by new management leaders and the buzz words were restructuring, workforce reduction, retraining, layoff, and then the most horrific: outsourcing.

 It is time for a Wizard of ID break: The king asks the wizard “Is that castle efficiency expert you hired any good?”

“Good?” replied the wizard. “He’s so good he fired himself!”

This joke would be funnier if there weren’t famous examples of management gurus recommending elimination of their own jobs! I kid you not!

The 1980’s saw massive waves of layoffs and government deregulation beginning under Jimmy Carter, the “good” President. And many of us remember the Air Traffic Controllers strike that President Regan broke! In two decades, the great work of the New Deal was almost dismantled. It was not without protest, however for “The Roman Catholic Church… issued two pastoral letters in the 1980s opposing job destruction. But then the church fell silent, as did the communities, which disintegrated without the steady jobs that had sustained them.” (p. 6, Uchitelle) What was worse was that economists were coming up “new” economic theory in support of layoffs and the idea that workers must be ready to reeducate and retrain themselves for much of their lives and if they can’t, they cannot expect much in the way of good jobs. Hundreds of thousands of workers find they are working for half the pay they once did, even though they are doing the same job sometimes at the same company they previously work for but now through contract companies. (One airplane mechanic who worked for United for 15 years at $32 an hour, now works for United through an agency for $18 and hour.) Is there something wrong with this picture?

Psychologists and psychiatrists are only just beginning to see the emotional and mental ill-health fall-out that has occurred throughout the nation amongst workers of all walks of life as our workers have become disposable human capital!

I wonder what the prophets of ancient Israel would say to us if they witnessed our situation. I think they would say something like this. I will substitute “O America” for “O Israel.”

Thus says God: “Oh, America, why have you put aside the cause of righteousness in the workplace?”

Haven’t I shown you the way by my Covenant with you?

My first covenant I sent you was very basic: do not kill, steal, commit adultery and so forth.

Then, instead of spelling out my laws in your more complex society, I wrote them in your hearts and I gave you reason. Do you not have ears to hear and eyes to see the suffering of the people?

Why then do you worship the golden idols of profit instead of first caring for the dignity and well being of your working people?

You live under an ever present Covenant to walk together in love and justice and peace.

If you ignore my Covenant, your land of milk and honey will become a desert of dried rivers and bitter herbs and tears of despair.

Turn you, therefore, to the Covenant I wrote in your hearts and manifest in your society righteousness in the workplace where your people are valued employees. You must put your trust in them and ask them for diligent work habits, faithfulness, and creativity.

This I ask of you, O America. I will watch for your response, urged by those Unitarian Universalists, and will not withhold my blessings that flow from seeing the righteousness of my people.

Thus said God, Creator of the Universe.

We cannot continue to acquiesce to the lack of dignified treatment of workers. We must raise a voice for right relationship between workers and industry. Wherever layoffs are threatened, we must form a relationship with community leaders and coalitions for workplace justice.

When I was in my first ministry in Canada, I was part of a clergy and lay-leader coalition for justice. It was brought to our attention by the hospital workers union that the university local hospital was forming a contract to send its laundry 300 miles away to Toronto to be washed. All the laundry staff was to be laid off. The group asked Sister Catherine and me (as the two clergy members) if we would go and see the University hospital administrators. Sister Catherine called to make an appointment and specified our reason for coming to see them. They were dragging their feet on giving us the appointment. The next thing we heard was that new arrangements were being made to do the laundry locally. Whether our request to talk about this had changed the minds of the powers that be, we do not know. The important thing was that we were not going to stand aside and do nothing. In his book The Disposable American, Louis Uchitelle tells us that we have to be prepared to do precisely this—take action in civic and religious groups to raise a new perspective. Companies will respond to the threat of disgrace. We simply have to stand up for dignity in the workplace. And we must make sure that the government does not abdicate its responsibility in ensuring right treatment of workers.

Uchitelle is suggesting some bold and creative solutions:

·        Begin to restore workers’ power by restoring union power.

·        Ask government to require companies to involve workers in solutions to workplace issues.

·        Require overseas competitors to establish just workplace environments and if they do not, we must not work with them or buy their goods!

·        Subsidize industry under certain conditions when jobs are threatened.

·        Ask government to partner with industry in research and development of expensive products. (Did you know that IBM asked for help in developing flat screen monitors, our government refused. IBM formed a partnership with a Japanese company with help from its government. This research gave the Japanese an edge in developing High Definition T.V.) The extra taxes we pay for this research will pay off in having a competitive edge in the world once more and will help to develop job security for our people.

·        Develop a philosophy of valuing workers and speak of it often so that news of layoffs are considered a crisis to be addressed.

·        Stop the bidding war between states for luring companies away from one state to another. The Federal government must take a greater hand in helping all states develop so that poor southern states are not poor.

·        Religious people and coalitions of justice should be ready to raise a prophetic voice wherever injustice arises in our communities.

It is time to not sit back and be acquiescent! Our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has joined forces with living wage groups, one in particular is the nation’s only interfaith group called “Let Justice Roll.” Don’t you love the sound of that group?!? Let Justice Roll! Corporate profits have never been higher. This should mean that workers benefit, too. Nowadays, the situation is quite the opposite. Corporate profits are swelled at the expense of workers’ wages and benefits, as the cartoon in your order of service shows.

            We are fortunate to have a Coalition Against Poverty and Coalition for Social Justice in our Greater New Bedford area that we can partner with to work for justice and to elect progressive candidates to public office for without progressive, worker friendly candidates, justice for the people cannot thrive. O, America and O Unitarian Universalists, may you let justice flow down like water and righteousness in the workplace like an everlasting stream.

 

Reading: from The Disposable American:
Layoffs and Their consequences

by Louis Uchitelle
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Much of my sermon today has been informed and inspired by The Disposable American by Louis Uchitelle, a New York Times economics writer. This reading is an excerpt from his book.

            “More than two decades have passed since the modern layoff first appeared as a mass phenomenon in American life. Until that happened, companies tried to avoid layoffs. They were a sign of corporate failure and a violation of acceptable business behavior. Over the years, however, the permanent separation of people from their jobs…against their wishes, gradually became standard management practice, and in the late 1990s we finally acquiesced; [that is,] we bowed to layoffs as [if this was] the way things have to be.

            Three myths help us do that. The first myth promises a payoff. In exchange for so many painful layoffs…a revitalized corporate America will emerge, once again offering job security, full employment and rising incomes….Rebirth and stability will surely follow the current destruction….But the promised payoff is not on the horizon. The layoffs continue unabated.

            The second myth holds that the laid-off must save themselves….through education and training….What has taken place is a massive shift from a shared, we’re-in-it-together way of thinking to a go-it-alone world of personal responsibility….

            The third myth holds that the pros and cons of layoffs are entirely measurable in dollars and cents. [Sounds logical until you encounter] a layer of human damage that is difficult to quantify…. Neither the companies nor the victims easily recognize the damage that layoffs inflict on them. For the victims, a layoff is an emotional blow from which very few fully recover….layoffs [also] damage companies by undermining the productivity of those who survive but feel vulnerable ….Various studies bear this out, and some of the nation’s most successful companies—Southwest Airlines and Harley-Davidson, for example—refrain from layoffs or limit them, openly recognizing that people who feel secure in their jobs work better.

            [We have acquiesced to layoffs and so has one president after another, starting with Jimmy Carter and our] country has deteriorated [as a  result]. (pp. ix-xi, Uchitelle)