Recently added as a comment to my post about job performance reviews:

It is unfortunate that your experience has taught you to view the generic company-employee relationship as such. While I don’t doubt that many organizations do deal with their employees in that way, it is thankfully not true of all.

Any successful company in the capitalist system is more interested in profit than the individual welfare of workers. That’s why we have trade unions and communists.

Poor companies employ mediocre middle managers; great companies are not devoid of incompetence but most within are not of the pointy-haired variety. A truly talented and able business leader understands the value of employees who are motivated to improve themselves, and communicates this effectively to the managers beneath him.

Man, I wish people would take 10 seconds to check facts before spouting total nonsense. Average annual turnover rates for all US industries have increased in the last five years, according to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (June 2001-May 2002 vs. September 2005-August 2006).

This happens because corporations are not singular entities of a particular species; they are a composition of many individuals with varying abilities, interests and goals. A successful company is less concerned with treating employees as potential liabilities because a successful company has an very high rate of successful hires, which fosters an environment of treating employees as both valuable assets and appreciating investments.

Wrong again. If employers were hiring the right people, turnover rates would be decreasing, not increasing. People don’t quit jobs they like; and if employers were as altruistic as this person suggests, they’d simply cut profits to increase payrolls.

The evidence, of course, belies that. In February 2007, there were 935 mass layoff events (defined as 50 or more employees being laid off), up from 216 in February 2006, according to BLS. In fact, you can chart the rise in mass layoffs quite easily: Every time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in decline, layoffs were also in decline; when layoffs spiked, so did the stock market. (Download the BLS Mass Layoffs PDF for February 2007 here.)

Reason: Profits come first, payroll second. You are expendable.

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