CAD's favorite and supported idea, The New American Workforce - Vagabond Gypsies.
2-18-2004 Businesses Doing More With Fewer Workers
Consider the experience of Peggy Shea, a project manager and graphic artist who lost her job in a layoff at Cisco Systems more than a year ago. Shea, who lives in Scotts Valley, Calif., has been unable to find a new full-time job despite an exhaustive search.
But since the start of the year, she's logged roughly 16 weeks of work as a freelancer for a company whose own staff is overwhelmed, but whose budget allows only outside expenses without any addition to payroll. The company's no-hire policy is at least partly rooted in its effort to boost the running tally of revenue-per-employee that it shows investors, she says.
Shea has also been offered contract jobs through agencies that supply companies with short-term workers. Several agencies have urged her to consider picking up for three-to-six month assignments out of state, including one that urged her to sell her home even though the position promised no long-term hiring commitment and no benefits. She turned down the job, but the recruiter told her he had plenty of other takers.
"OK, at the end of six months, what do I do?," Shea says. "You don't just pick up like a vagabond or a gypsy and move around every six months."
Despite a government report showing the United States added 308,000 jobs in March, many analysts continue to puzzle over the logic of employers' hiring decisions in an economy that by most measures ? from soaring corporate profits to rapid growth in output ? is in high gear.
In a plant where workers were asked last year to take time off without pay, managers have posted eight hours overtime on the scheduling board for the coming Saturday. At stations alongside Patrick, a handful of temporary workers have been added as orders for the plant's cordless nailguns climbed.And now word is spreading down the line that ITW Paslode ? which pared its work force here from about 200 to 150 even as it increased production ? is set to hire 14 new full-timers.
The pickup at Paslode's plant, 45 minutes north of Chicago, is good news in an economy that has been very slow to generate new jobs. But it comes with a big asterisk: Those are about the only new jobs that Paslode's parent, a $10 billion manufacturing conglomerate that prides itself on running lean, sees adding anytime soon.
"Why would you be hiring people right now?" says John Brooklier, vice president of investor relations for the parent company, Illinois Tool Works Inc., which has shrunk its U.S. payroll from about 36,000 to 28,000 in the past three years.
"What employers have really discovered is ... you can have just-in-time employment," says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poors in New York."That's what this really is ? I use the workers when I need them. I don't use the workers when I don't need them."
Those concerns will ease over time, and employers are likely to convert some of the jobs now staffed with temps to full-time positions. But the new approach to employment is likely to be more permanent, analysts say.
The change is evident to both workers and employers, although the two groups see it through different lenses.
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Yep, there's the human way and the CAD way.
Unfortunately humans are no longer human, just the unneccessary pieces of meat that get in the way of record Corporate profits for the few Rich Boys at the top and that's just the way Heart Surgeon, Charrison and others that make up CAD & Co like it along with the Facist RBC NeoCons of Rush, Hannitty and the President with his henchmen.
2-18-2004 Businesses Doing More With Fewer Workers
Consider the experience of Peggy Shea, a project manager and graphic artist who lost her job in a layoff at Cisco Systems more than a year ago. Shea, who lives in Scotts Valley, Calif., has been unable to find a new full-time job despite an exhaustive search.
But since the start of the year, she's logged roughly 16 weeks of work as a freelancer for a company whose own staff is overwhelmed, but whose budget allows only outside expenses without any addition to payroll. The company's no-hire policy is at least partly rooted in its effort to boost the running tally of revenue-per-employee that it shows investors, she says.
Shea has also been offered contract jobs through agencies that supply companies with short-term workers. Several agencies have urged her to consider picking up for three-to-six month assignments out of state, including one that urged her to sell her home even though the position promised no long-term hiring commitment and no benefits. She turned down the job, but the recruiter told her he had plenty of other takers.
"OK, at the end of six months, what do I do?," Shea says. "You don't just pick up like a vagabond or a gypsy and move around every six months."
Despite a government report showing the United States added 308,000 jobs in March, many analysts continue to puzzle over the logic of employers' hiring decisions in an economy that by most measures ? from soaring corporate profits to rapid growth in output ? is in high gear.
In a plant where workers were asked last year to take time off without pay, managers have posted eight hours overtime on the scheduling board for the coming Saturday. At stations alongside Patrick, a handful of temporary workers have been added as orders for the plant's cordless nailguns climbed.And now word is spreading down the line that ITW Paslode ? which pared its work force here from about 200 to 150 even as it increased production ? is set to hire 14 new full-timers.
The pickup at Paslode's plant, 45 minutes north of Chicago, is good news in an economy that has been very slow to generate new jobs. But it comes with a big asterisk: Those are about the only new jobs that Paslode's parent, a $10 billion manufacturing conglomerate that prides itself on running lean, sees adding anytime soon.
"Why would you be hiring people right now?" says John Brooklier, vice president of investor relations for the parent company, Illinois Tool Works Inc., which has shrunk its U.S. payroll from about 36,000 to 28,000 in the past three years.
"What employers have really discovered is ... you can have just-in-time employment," says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poors in New York."That's what this really is ? I use the workers when I need them. I don't use the workers when I don't need them."
Those concerns will ease over time, and employers are likely to convert some of the jobs now staffed with temps to full-time positions. But the new approach to employment is likely to be more permanent, analysts say.
The change is evident to both workers and employers, although the two groups see it through different lenses.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, there's the human way and the CAD way.
Unfortunately humans are no longer human, just the unneccessary pieces of meat that get in the way of record Corporate profits for the few Rich Boys at the top and that's just the way Heart Surgeon, Charrison and others that make up CAD & Co like it along with the Facist RBC NeoCons of Rush, Hannitty and the President with his henchmen.
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