Lay offs

Last Saturday, I ran into a man from our Business Development (BD) department. BD is responsible for finding and keeping new customers. They have created “project lead” to encourage drivers to talk to customers who currently ship with the competition about switching to Big Brown. If we submit info from a company that starts to ship with us, we get a monetary bonus—the more they ship, the more we get for 3 months.

After BD guy and I exchanged pleasantries, he said, “So drivers are being laid off. Do you think you all will be more motivated to find new sales leads and grow the business?”

“No.”

He looked surprised and disappointed. “Why not? Why wouldn’t drivers want to secure their jobs by finding new business?”

“One, because there aren’t a lot of new opportunities cropping up. And two, because it won’t make a difference. Drivers are still over dispatched. We think the best way to prevent more layoffs is by stopping the over dispatching, and putting more trucks on the road. I mean, last Wednesday I got a call from my sup asking if I wanted the day off. I said no, and later that afternoon I was asked if I wanted to help someone who couldn’t finish their route. Why send drivers home when others have so much work they can’t even finish?”

“Well,” he said in an apologetic tone, “It’s all about the numbers. The company wants us to run numbers that will help us stay profitable. We have to answer to the investors.”

He rattled off that answer thinking I would see the common sense in it. Instead, I challenged him. “Why are you more worried about investors than the workers? We’re the ones who produce the profit in the first place.”

He nodded in an unsettled manner. Finally, he decided a change of topic was in order, he reached for the flyer I had been handing out to people, “So what’s this event your advertising? Who is Howard Zinn?”

Oh, the logic of Wall Street. When he says “stay profitable” he means fewer trucks equals less gas and maintenance, and fewer drivers means less benefits to pay. It’s cheaper to pay overtime. So some drivers must be overworked, so that others can be laid off.

There are many backwards aspects about Capitalism, the most glaring being the prioritization of profits above all else. The current crisis has exposed this fact in no uncertain terms.

But here’s the twisted thing, Big Brown has stayed profitable so far. In 2008, revenue was up 3.6%, and they raked in $829 million in the 4th quarter alone. To be fair, volume has fallen dramatically, so profits have declined causing stock prices to decrease also. So share holders want to know what the company is doing to minimize profit loss. What they are doing is violating the contract by eliminating full time jobs (forcing people into part time work only), and laying off drivers. This makes sound business sense, but is a disaster for the families affected.

This brings me to the question of what do I work for? Of course I work because otherwise I would be starving and homeless (Capitalism is a system that withholds everything unless you pay money for it, otherwise no profit could be made). But I do not work for me and my family. If that were the case, I would deliver at least 100 fewer packages a day and never work a minute over 8 hours, no, make that 7 hours, a day. Nor do I work for you. The service I provide is secondary to the main goal. I work so other people can get rich—the bosses, the shareholders, they all benefit from paying me less money than my labor produces. That is why I work, that is why you work, that is why we get laid off even when there is plenty of work that could be done. If our labor isn’t making a profit, what is our labor good for?

Unfortunately, the Union also accepts this logic. At the threat of layoffs, they sent around a handout for advice. They didn’t call us all into a meeting to address the problem and come up with a solution. They wrote up a flyer. Advice point number one? Accept a layoff. Two? Get on the 9.5 grievance. The 9.5 grievance still allows them to work us past 9.5 hours two days a week, so technically they could force 12.5 hours of overtime on a driver in a week without paying penalties. The last point? We have seniority over inside jobs, so we can take one of those. I wonder what the union’s advice was for the loaders.

Of course, BD guy’s advice is to find more sales leads, but that just sounds like more work for me when I already have more than I can handle.

My solution? Well, short of the advice given by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, there are still actions we could take to alleviate some of the impact today. Work-to-rule tactics can be tried. Solidarity rallies can be held with other unions to embarrass and pressure the employers. Anything that involves rank and file militancy to shift the balance of power from the bosses to the workers. If you have any concrete ideas, I’d love to hear them.

http://makeupsdeliver.org/news.php?extend.205

http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/16/return-of-marx