Laid-Off Workers

* I noted the trailer “through no fault of their own” in promoting your article of personal stories from people losing their jobs as a result of the Orange County bankruptcy, perhaps under the assumption that the Orange County situation is somehow unique (March 19).

It may be of little condolence to those losing their jobs, but a lot more people have lost their livelihoods to much bigger management screw-ups than the one going experienced here in Orange County. Incompetence and irresponsibility at the executive and management levels of organizations are blind: They do not discriminate between large and small, public and private, or for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Workers who get laid off are rarely those responsible for the decisions and actions which result in such work-force reductions. Take heart, O.C. workers; at the least in your situation the first to go were the chief administrative boobs who fiddled while the county burned.

Orange County had better emerge from this situation a leaner and meaner--more productive and more efficient--organization. To not do so would be the harshest insult of all to those already most disadvantaged by its miserable failings.

CHARLES E. GRUBBS

Newport Beach