Layoff

“ Aptitude and ability cannot be measured on some universal scale, but only by matching an employee to the requirements of an employer's business at that time. We cannot infer an intent on the part of the contracting parties to freeze any particular order of layoff or vest any contractual right as of the Agreement's expiration. ”

“ A three-to-two majority of the Board rejected the trial examiner's conclusion that the employer could reasonably anticipate a strike. Finding the unions' assurances sufficient to dispel any such apprehension, the Board was able to find only one purpose underlying the layoff: a desire to bring economic pressure to secure prompt settlement of the dispute on favorable terms. The Board did not question the examiner's finding that the layoffs had not occurred until after a bargaining impasse had been reached. ”

“ It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer-↑ In addition to these employees, 450 employees in the unit were on layoff status.↑ The figure of 20 years was developed from a projection, on the basis of expected orders, of what the company's work force would be following the strike. ”

“ The numerous employment promotion-preference cases also ask whether the preference imposes a layoff-like burden, i.e., whether it defeats legitimate entrenched expectations of the disfavored. Layoffs raise more severe narrow tailoring concerns than a hiring preference:
In cases involving valid hiring goals, the burden to be borne by innocent individuals is diffused to a considerable extent among society generally. Though hiring goals may burden some innocent individuals, they simply do not impose the same kind of injury that layoffs impose. ”

“ Finding that the only basis for a holding of unlawful layoff would be a finding that that determination had been a violation of the Act, the Board dismissed the complaint.↑ The complaint in News Printing Co. alleged that a refusal to grant wage increases to certain employees had been motivated by displeasure at their union activities. As a substantive matter, this allegation turned on the respondent's motive at the time of the refusal, which was within the limitations period. ”

“ As of March 31, the beginning of the strike, a male employee needed seven years' seniority to avoid layoff and a female employee nine years'.↑ The Examiner had relied upon the company's employment records for his conclusion that the replacement program was ineffective until the announcement of the super-seniority awards. ”

“ As with an employee's seniority rank, a given worker's "aptitude and ability" relative to other employees may change over time, yet the right to have layoffs made according to the standard of qualified seniority could vest under the contract. Under this view, a laid off employee would have the opportunity to prove to the arbitrator that he should not have been laid off under the terms of the contract because other factors such as aptitude and ability were equal at the time he was laid off. ”

“ Article I, § 3, provided, 'It is the Company's general policy not to subcontract work which is normally performed by employees in the bargaining unit where this will cause the layoff of employees or prevent the recall of employees who would normally perform this work * * *.' In Art. ”

“ Differences in wages, hours and conditions of employment reflect countless variables. Seniority rules governing promotions, transfers, layoffs and similar matters may, in the first instance, revolve around length of competent service. ”

“ When Saturday comes round the workmen have to be paid, and their employer never wants to do that, he is too fond of his money. So he has picked out a foreman, a vagabond, too, though he wears a hat, and he says to him: ‘Don’t pay them a thing,’ says our gentleman, ‘not even a penny. They will beat you, but you must stand it. If you do, I’ll give you ten roubles every Saturday.’ So every week, regularly, when Saturday evening comes round the workmen come for their wages, and the foreman says: ‘There aren’t any wages!’ Well, words follow, and then come abuse, and a drubbing. ”

“ You can’t hurt me by quitting as much as you will hurt yourselves. My money will keep and your work won’t. But take notice that every man who does quit work will be blacklisted, 158and he can never get another job in this city from me, or any of the gentlemen who are members of the association of which I am president, and we include about all the large employers of labor in this city. ”

“ If a job is a good thing you ought to do everything you can to hold your job. You may do your work right and satisfy your boss. But you know, and everybody else knows, that many a good man who does his work right and pleases his boss gets laid off, loses his job.
The boss says, "Hard times—no orders—we have to shut down." Then the man who is out of a job says, "But I have to live! I and my children have to eat, and the grocer wants cash." But the boss only answers, "I can't help it. Business is business."
If you can't get another job when you're laid off, you can do three things. ”

“ On FidoNet, check out JVArcServ.
Job-hunting by modem —————————— Unemployment is a global problem, and losing a job is often a bad experience. If this ever should happen to you, consider checking out the BITNET discussion list LAIDOFF@ARIZVM1 - "So, you've been laidoff?" Maybe you already have a job, but are constantly searching for something better. There are many forums and conferences devoted to help you get a new job. FidoNet has the JOBS conference, for those not in a hurry, and JOBS-NOW (Job & Employment offerings/listings) for those who have no more time to wait. ”

“ Truax doesn’t, but you do know—that the whole office system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks—”
“But, good heavens! child, the employers have just as hard a time. Talk about being nervous! Take it in our game. The salesman does the missionary work, but the employer is the one who has to worry. Take some big deal that seems just about to get across—and then falls through just when you reach for the contract and draw a breath of relief. ”

“ We have to do this because the unemployment system and the patchwork of job training programs have been trapped in a time warp, frozen in bygone days when most laid-off workers could expect to be called back to their old jobs. ”

“ Many of the business men of our little city became unable to meet their obligations and had to make assignments. Indeed, the making of assignments was so much the order of the day that men familiarly asked one another on the street whether they had already made, or when they were going to make theirs. Gradually all feeling of bashful embarassment, all shamefacedness about such things vanished, and bankruptcy appeared to be the natural condition of business men who owed any money. Nor was there any atmosphere of gloom about it in our community. ”

“ If any employer today were to resolve to pay his workmen not less wages than he would be able to live upon in comfort himself, that he would not require them to do more work in a day than he himself would like to perform every day of his own life, Mr Grinder knows as well as we do that such an employer would be bankrupt in a month ”

“ The law is not confined to the great and powerful employers but embraces those whose bargaining power may be as weak as that of the employee. It takes no account of periods of stress and business depression, of crippling losses, which may leave the employer himself without adequate means of livelihood. ”

“ You must figure the smokeless blue sky above London dotted all over with aeroplanes in which the holiday-making tenth are re-creating themselves for the labour of next week—looking down a little wistfully, perhaps, at the workshops from which they are temporarily banished. And here I scent a difficulty. So attractive a thing will labour be in the Dawn that a man will be tempted not to knock off work when his Cessation Day comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than not at all. ”

“ Those are the things that make an employer a nervous wreck. He’s got to keep it going. I tell you there’s advantages in being a wage-slave and having the wages coming—”
“But, Mr. Fein, if it’s just as hard on the employers as it is on the employees, then the whole system is bad.” ”

“ We've never had any labor troubles since Lidgerwood's time, and there are no grievances in the air to account for the present let-down. Yet the let-down is with us. Almost every day some man who has hitherto proved trustworthy falls down on his job, and there you are. ”

“ Many journeymen were discharged, some were transferred to other grades of work — that is, those who were willing to suffer reduction rather than to be thrown quite out of employment — and the whole department was put on short time, working only two or three days a week, while some of the men were shut out for weeks at a stretch. Several who protested against the change were dismissed, and others — workmen of the highest skill and of long connection with the company — had their wages mercilessly cut down for daring to interpose their opinion. ”

“ I have stood beside men whom I knew, and have seen them miss the chance of employment because they were so far weakened by the strain of the sweating system that they were incapable of the strain of hard manual labor.
Even at the best, much of the real difficulty is often the subjective one summed up in the sentence of a man who has wide knowledge of wage-earners in America, to whom I once spoke of the surprising ease with which I found employment everywhere, except in larger towns. ”

“ It was not in the character of a tramp, but as a wage-earner, that I made the journey; and the only notable fact about it was that I not only never lacked for labor, but I almost never had to ask for it, having scores of opportunities of work pressed upon me by employers hard up for hands. I am well aware of the abnormal in my experiment and of its little worth apart from the value of experience to myself, and I know how slight a connection with the deeper causes which give rise to congestion in labor centres the fact of ready employment in the country may have. ”

“ Even the labourer who loses his employment by idleness or negligence, has nothing worse to suffer, in the most unfavourable case, than the discipline of a workhouse, and if the desire to avoid this be a sufficient motive in the one system, it would be sufficient in the other. I am not undervaluing the strength of the incitement given to labour when the whole or a large share of the benefit of extra exertion belongs to the labourer. ”

“ This resignation which makes each one among you, even the greatest, only an insignificant detail-worker upon the immense labor whose completion you contemplate at an infinite remove, and the very outlines of which you ignore,—this resignation is sublime, though supremely painful to the aspiring soul. The individual laborer for his part abstains from all hope of seeing the whole truth, and works for his generation and futurity. ”

“ Well, then, little work for little wages. But now, on the contrary (he says) , I have an interest in displaying zeal and economy. All is changed. I redouble my activity, and strive to excel the others. If a comrade is lazy, and likely to do harm to the factory, I have the right to say to him: 'Mate, we all suffer more or less from your laziness, and from the injury you are doing the common weal.'"
"And then, M. Agricola, with what ardor, courage, and hope, you must set to work!" ”

“ The first appearance of hard times is followed by a decrease in the working force. The least curtailment in orders leads to part-time work. Wage rates are not cut—that method is crude and disastrous—but men and women are laid off temporarily or permanently. Bonds still draw their interest; the dividends are paid on stocks; and labor waits for a job. The defender of property income will say at once,—"If there is nothing to do, why pay labor?" ”

“ Work there was in plenty, vast quantities of labor extending into the weeks and years, and the only thought which the conclusion of one hard day’s toil could bring was that there was another exactly like it tomorrow. It had no end for the individual save in arbitrary cessation on his part, the ending of his pay, or in disintegration and death. And need drove so many to continue day after day, without rhyme or reason in so far as the individual was concerned. ”

“ But a combination among workmen to leave an employer in the lurch, and especially a combination which forces into its ranks by cajoling or menaces those who are unwilling to join it, as is so commonly the case in Strikes, is not only contrary to the inmost nature of a bargain, but is also of itself a sort of confession of the injustice of the claim. ”

“ A workingman having been thrown out of employment, or forced to give up his work by reason of age, sickness, or accident, decided to attempt to make a living in "business." In a few weeks, or a few months at most, his small savings were swallowed up, and he had to leave the store, making place for the next victim. ”

“ Layton. If everybody kept me out of my just dues as long as you have, where do you think I would be? Not in this store, doing as good a business as any one in the street, (Grasper drew himself up with an air of consequence,) but coming out at the little end of the horn, as some of my neighbours are. I pay every man his just dues, and it is but right that every man should pay me. ”

“ I know what it is to work at the lowest drudgery of a mill, and can imagine how it must seem to have no hope of ever rising to a higher position. Hard, unremitting toil, long hours with endless years of hopeless work in prospect, the lowest possible wages, a large and rapidly increasing family, with perhaps an aged parent or invalid wife to support—I tell you lots of those fellows have all that to bear, knowing the utter impossibility of ever saving anything, or of raising their own condition. ”