Business Downsizing
Re “Getting Cut Off by AT&T;,” Feb. 18: Your article clearly presents the dilemma of modern business: How to downsize while continuing to reap large profits. The results are social confusion and the horrendous loss of high-quality human resources. I have dropped AT&T; as my phone carrier.
AT&T; needs to cut back 50% of its management. Maybe then AT&T; would have a clearer picture of what is happening. What AT&T; needs are robots, not human economic units, expendable at the whim of the moment.
Business is turning back to the miserable working conditions of the 19th century. It is the ultimate calamity for humans! America is rapidly becoming a Third World country.
THOMAS KARDOS
La Puente
* Strange. The White House fires a few travel agents and there is an uproar from Congress and suggested legislation to repay the fired employees for their “unjust” displacement. AT&T--in; a high-profit mode--announces the layoff of hundreds who have had longtime solid service and there is nary a whimper from Washington. To misquote Tip O’Neill, “Politics is loco!”
EILEEN McDARGH
Dana Point
* Reading your article was a wake-up call for me. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” it was deja vu triggering what happened to 30,000 of us back in 1985. However, I was one of the lucky ones, a manager given a monetary payout who had a teaching credential and now a second career.
I recall that during the 1980s, AT&T; and other corporations began hiring master’s in business administration (MBA) managers who came to the job asking: “Know how to maximize profits?” The MBA’s bottom line answer was cut overhead (read employees), regardless of their dedication, productivity or skills. And the beat goes on into the ‘90s.
The emergence of MBAs into the workplace has spawned greed and heartlessness unparalleled in our history. Their educational training was never geared to the human condition. An MBA’s allegiance is to the CEO and the stockholders.
It worked and the Dow Jones is (temporarily) at the highest point in history. One problem, though. The averages are buoyed by wage savings and not profits from sales. That’s why the bottom-line buoyancy is not destined to last beyond the next year or so.
I feel for those who no longer have a career or have to become underemployed just to survive, but take heart. Someday, the bottom line will include downsizing all those MBAs, too. That’s when their CEOs realize that so many employees are out of work that they can’t afford the product their firms are producing (overseas).
DON A. NORMAN
Los Angeles
