Where Have All The Jobs Gone? Redux

The stock market is doing well; banks are profitable; companies are paying back the government what it loaned them; consumer confidence is up; there is upward pressure on home prices; some suggest jobs are getting easier to find.
All I have is anecdotal evidence from one small area in West Michigan. Maybe it’s real; maybe it’s a blip; maybe it’s an aberration—I can’t say. But it sticks in my mind.
A neighbor of mine is foreman for a defense contractor in the area. A year ago I asked him how his plant was doing, and he told me that they had five years of contracts lined up. After all, there’s a war on isn’t there? Not to worry.
He has several family members working in his plant—they’re all hard workers. One of them is a son who just bought a new home and has a new baby. This Christmas my neighbor had to lay everybody at the plant off for two weeks because it was so slow.
Last week, he had to lay off 40 workers. Included among the casualties was his own son. His guts hurt; he even shed private tears—but he had no choice. Some of the survivors are now working three and four day weeks. The guys who were laid off were told not to expect to come back, certainly not for a year or more.
This morning my wife stopped at the local community college. She’s thinking about taking some art courses there. She sat down to talk to an old friend who works there. Another, mutual friend, who worked there isn’t there anymore.
What happened? On orders from the capital the college was told to tell anyone near retirement to take it and go—or face having their benefits slashed. The college must reduce its workforce by 83 additional people by next fall. This lady knows her benefits will be cut, but she’s divorced and cannot afford to retire right now.
Five art and theater full time faculty members have retired in the past few years. So far they have been replaced by one full time instructor—and lots of low paid, benefit-less adjuncts. College tuition has climbed from $35 a credit hour to $150 in the past dozen years.
I overheard the principal at one of the high schools I substitute teach in responding to a faculty member’s question (“What are we going to do?”) with, “We’re going to privatize, privatize and privatize.” Already the bus drivers, custodians and subs have been privatized. So, who or what is next?
It saves bushels of money to privatize people. Lower, or no, benefits. Less pay. No company paid retirement plan—they can buy into 401K’s on their very low pay. Another member of a high school administration put it to me bluntly, “Next year we’re going to have to lay off teachers”. Have you ever taught in a room with 35 kids? Ha.
Incidentally, substitute teachers are still working at 20th century wages—there are so many people desperate to work as subs that there is no need to raise the pay. Oh yes, and there are a lot fewer conferences scheduled that require subs—fewer jobs, more workers.
I took my car in to get my oil changed today. The establishment, decades old—and located in an affluent neighborhood—had only one customer. Me. I commented on how slow things were, and the proprietor said, “I’ve had a lot of days like this.”
He told me the story of a friend of his who owns a business. Last year the man laid off 80 people. This year—minus all those workers and their benefits—he is making more money than ever before. He has no plans to hire anybody.
I’ve just totaled up a lot of people who have less money to shop in a society that depends on consumer consumption to maintain the economy. That can’t be good. Is this the only place that is happening? I somehow doubt it.

Customers--What's Loyalty Worth?

A couple of years ago Hewlett-Packard offered my college age son what seemed like a good deal. The warranty on his laptop was expiring (if you’ve EVER owned a laptop without a warranty, I’m sure you have cursed yourself for that oversight) and for the nominal fee of $250 they would sell him a warranty for two more years.
Trust me, on a laptop that’s a decent deal. So he sent in $250 of his limited funds and got the extended company warranty good through October, 2010. At least that’s what the paperwork in his hand says. A few days ago he was having trouble with his mouse pad and decided to invoke the warranty.
He called Hewlett-Packard. They denied all knowledge of such a warranty. Said it couldn’t possibly be. He brought out his credit card record showing that Hewlett-Packard accepted his money. They passed him on to someone else.
He went through the explanation again. He got passed on to someone else. This person passed him back to the first person—who passed him on to yet someone else. Each time he was put on hold for as much as ten or fifteen minutes before being passed on.
After three hours they gave him yet another number to call. It was dinner time and he gave up for the day. But he and his mother did check out a blog site on Hewlett-Packard. It seems a whole lot of people who bought similar extended warrantees from HP are having the same problems.
Interminable waits on hold, being passed back and forth, denial of all knowledge, a purported “supervisor” who obviously is not—and so forth.
Sometimes a problem with customer service is obviously—even on this end of the phone—a problem of too many people having been laid off, leaving survivors overwhelmed. (I’ve talked about the local grocery manager who transferred to a different department—“They doubled my product and cut my staff in half”.)
Sometimes a company is so frantic to save money that it appears to repent of its own foolishness in making promises (or selling warranties) that now, in more straitened circumstances, it has no plans to keep. So it ducks, dodges and weaves.
Hewlett-Packard makes an excellent machine. It sells, by far, the most computers of any company in the world. Perhaps they feel the quality of their product trumps any need for good customer relations—or even merely honest ones?
(General Motors thought that way once—when it had over 50% of the American market. Seemingly, Toyota has come to think that way in the past decade or so. My wife worked part time at a major retail chain a few years back. She recalls that the company attitude went from “Anything to make the customer happy” to “forget service—get them out of the door”. Associates who didn’t make that transition fast enough were penalized.)
I recall an elderly man I met years ago. During the Depression, when no building supplier in his right mind was giving contractors any credit, he offered credit to his good customers. He carried them for months, even for years. When I met him, decades after the Depression was over, he was a very rich man with a stable of loyal customers.
Just read a piece on Singapore Airlines. When carriers all over the world are charging you for luggage, cutting back on food, drinks and amenities, Singapore is not. Service remains full. Luxury remains luxury. They—in contrast to lot of other airlines, are doing nicely.
There is a passage in the Bible that says, “Do unto others as you wish they would do to you.” It will no doubt make you virtuous and well liked. It just might also make you rich.
Next time we look at computers, do you suppose we just might look at somebody else’s line? What about all those other bloggers out there—who can’t seem to locate anyone who knows anything about their extended warranties?