偷懒的老板爱裁员

    如今，或许没有哪个工薪族尚未经历过裁员，就算一次也没有，身边也总会有一两个亲历者。裁员是可憎的——它一方面给无辜的被裁者带来痛苦，另一方面往往是决策者不负责任的表现。

    2006年，就在金融危机前夕，路易斯•乌奇捷利在他的新书《美国的“一次性”雇工：裁员及其后果》（The Disposable American: Layoffs and their Consequences）中发出警告，指明了公司裁员后可能付出的惨重代价。这本书追溯了美国的就业保障和裁员史，探讨了企业以“调整规模”的名义胡乱裁员给员工带来的心理创伤。

    新书上市后不久，乌奇捷利告诉我，他“有一次在美国精神分析协会（American Psychoanalytic Association）的会议上演讲。演讲结束后，他让现场三十多名精神分析师表决。表决的问题是，‘就你的经验看，是否觉得被裁员是一次创伤性的体验？’，结果所有人都举了手。”

    如今很多工薪族已经对裁员习以为常，但是裁员并不总是这么普遍。1992年，我在纽约参加了一次救灾会议，IBM在那次会议上宣布了公司成立以来的首次裁员计划。当时与会员工脸上的惊愕表情我至今还记忆犹新。面对“蓝色巨人”过河拆桥的举动，他们纷纷表示，对IBM的印象再也无法回到从前。

    二十年后，劳工统计局（Bureau of Labor Statistics）发布报告称，仅在2012年一年，美国国内的大规模裁员事件就有17,000多起。（按照劳工统计局的定义，大规模裁员事件是指单个企业一次性裁员50人或50人以上的事件。）

    有些公司宣布的裁员计划规模大得惊人。惠普（HP）近日宣布将裁员29,000人——裁掉的员工比美国很多城镇的总人口还要多。这在上世纪50年代、60年代、乃至70年代都是无法想象的事情。

    “我们的国家是一个在实践中投资的国家，”乌齐捷利在这里说的是美国。“我们投资了一些有意义的事情，其中一项就是就业保障。”

    乌齐捷利表示，从19世纪末开始，大企业、劳工和政府逐渐意识到，稳固的就业保障能使三方的共同利益最大化。20世纪30年代，裁员现象真正开始出现时，政府进行了干预。各派政治人士一致认为，就业保障很重要——随着时间的推移，就业保障也变得日益稳固，直到20世纪70年代中期。自那以后，“我们就一直在背道而驰。”

    企业纷纷裁员，背离就业保障的同时，高管却开始拿高额奖金，全球竞争也在升级。咨询公司看准了这个时机，纷纷出谋划策，帮助企业裁汰员工。

    但是咨询公司会给出什么方案也可想而知，他们从来不会建议雇主裁汰自己的高管，就算有这种情况，也少之又少。

    优厚的薪水也使大多数高管有能力抵御被裁员的冲击。自上世纪70年代中期以来，高管的薪资水平发生了很大的改变。如今，高管领取着高额的奖金，完全可以积攒大笔财富，就算被裁员，也不至于陷入困境。与此相反，最容易被裁汰的普通员工薪资水平普遍较低，积攒财富相当吃力，无法获得同等程度的经济自由。

    裁员往往会破坏被裁员工的社交圈子和身份认同感，这一点同样也会波及其家庭成员。金融危机期间，由于企业大规模裁员，很多人丧失抵押品赎回权，流离失所，丢掉了工作，却依然得在严酷的就业环境中挣扎。

    有一次假期跟人吃饭，我旁边坐着一个在纽约上班的投资经理。他告诉我，近几年找上门的首席执行官都说，他们最近的裁员不过是“把以前不愿意砍掉的枯枝砍掉而已”。

    我觉得这种说法有三个问题。首先，管理人员有责任判断员工的表现是否合格，如果不合格，就应该给他们安排培训项目，如果培训之后依然不合格，才应该裁汰。如果管理人员连这么简单的工作都不愿意做，那他们就没有履行自己的职责。第二，在裁员的过程中，公司砍掉的，往往不是所谓的枯枝。当然，我说的这一点，首席执行官们不见得同意。事实上，在小规模的裁员中，最先被裁汰的无非是两种人，一是打小报告的人（因为没有掌握好方法），二是冒犯了老板（或者让老板自尊心受损）的人。第三，大规模裁员就像地毯式轰炸，而不是精确打击。这样做就好比夷平整座森林，而不是砍掉几棵枯树。一定会损失可遇不可求的人才。

    Probably every worker today has experienced -- or known someone who has experienced -- at least one layoff. Layoffs are an abomination -- for the pain they cause innocent victims -- and the lack of accountability they often represent.

    Before the great recession, in 2006, Lou Uchitelle sent out a warning about the terrible costs of layoffs in his book The Disposable American: Layoffs and their Consequences. The book traces the history of job security -- and layoffs -- in the U.S. and explores the psychic trauma created by corporations' overuse of this so-called right-sizing tool.

    Soon after his book came out, Uchitelle explained to me that he "made a presentation at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and at the end, there was a vote taken among more than 30 psychoanalysts. They were asked, 'Do you, from your experience, consider a layoff a traumatic experience?' And all of them put their hands up."

    Many workers today don't know of a world without layoffs. But they haven't always been common. I was in New York attending a disaster recovery conference in 1992 when IBM (IBM) announced its very first layoff. I remember the shock among the IBMers attending that conference. The Big Blue rug had been pulled out from under them, and they told me they would never feel the same way about IBM again.

    Twenty years later, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2012 alone there were over 17,000 U.S. mass layoff events. (The Bureau defines mass layoff events as 50 employees or more laid off at a single employer.)

    Some layoff announcements are huge. HP (HPQ) recently said that they would dismiss 29,000 workers -- more than the population of many U.S. towns. This would have been unthinkable in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.

    "We're sort of a 'we invent as we go along' nation," Uchitelle said, referring to the U.S. "And we've invented some wonderful things. And one of the things we invented was job security."

    Large corporations, labor, and government all realized job security was in their mutual best interests, beginning in the late 1800s, he said. When layoffs did happen in the 1930s, the government stepped in. Politicians of all stripes agreed that job security was important -- and job security increased over time until the mid-1970s. Since then, "we've been going away from it."

    The corporate movement away from job security coincided with the advent of big executive bonuses and the rise of global competition. Consulting firms seized the moment and devised practices to teach companies how to eliminate staff.

    But the recommendations of the consulting firms are not agnostic. They rarely, if ever, recommend cutting the heads of those who hired them.

    Compensation also insulates most executives from layoff shocks. Executive compensation has changed dramatically since the mid-1970s. Today, top executives receive huge bonuses that they can stash away, shielding them from any layoff distress should it strike them. In contrast, the workers most subject to cuts are unable, given their wage rates, to scrape together that level of financial freedom.

    Layoffs often demolish an employee's social circle and identity -- and the same is true for family members of laid off workers. During the financial crisis, layoffs forced foreclosures, leaving families homeless, and many who lost their jobs then still struggle amid dim job prospects.

    At a dinner table over the holidays, I sat next to a New York-based investment manager who told me that the CEOs who have come to visit him over the last couple of years told him that their recent layoffs were just "cutting out the dead wood" that they'd been reluctant to cut earlier.

    I had three problems with that explanation. One, management is responsible for telling individuals if their performances were not up to snuff, putting them on a program to fix it, and then removing them if corrections couldn't be made. If management was unwilling to do that simple job, they weren't managing. Two, while the CEOs might claim otherwise, often it's not the so-called dead wood who are chopped during layoffs. In fact, in small layoffs, it's the whistleblowers who spoke up (inconveniently) or anyone who made one of their bosses (or their egos) uncomfortablewho are often the first to go. And three, large layoffs are like carpet-bombing, not surgical strikes. They are like clear-cutting a forest, not removing dead wood. You will lose people you wish you had not.