A Tip to Tom Campbell

Here's my exchange of ideas so far with Prof. Tom Campbell, leading
Republican candidate for California Governor, on a topic that's
very relevant to us in the current day - our jobs! I still believe that
the employer is in a much better position to protect the jobs of
its employees than the employees themselves. Your thoughts
are welcome!

Extracted from:
http://campbell.org/economy/#comment-22263668

v pendyala 3 weeks ago

Tom, I attended your very insightful and visionary keynote yesterday morning at SIPACON. One idea I wanted to share with you is that there cannot be a bigger loss to the economy than leaving educated, qualified workers unemployed. Recovery lies in designing ways to harness their skills more than infusing printed money into the downward stream. As can be concluded from your keynote as well, the latter only inflates yet another bubble. A better alternative is to bring legislation to make employers take better responsibility of employees' careers. You may like to consider this in your agenda. Vishnu Pendyala

TomCampbell 6 days ago in reply to v pendyala

Many thanks, Vishnu, for your kind words. The loss from under-employing our workforce is, indeed, extreme. I'm not completely clear, however, on what you are suggesting for laws to require employers to "take better responsibility of employees' careers." My approach would be to lower the costs that government imposes on hiring people, especially in California. Lowering the payroll tax, as soon as we cut government spending enough to afford it, would be an obvious choice at the federal and state level. Other than that, I have some hesitation about imposing obligations on employers that would tie employees to that employer, and if the obligation did not come with a parallel obligation on the part of the employee, it would be an additional burden on the employer. Your further thoughts are most welcome.

v pendyala 2 days ago in reply to TomCampbell

Thanks for your reply, Tom. Currently, for an employer, the most expensive and the easiest to cut-down resource seem to be employees. The resulting stress on the remaining employees, who have to cover for the laid-off employees, could be quite unproductive to the company and eventually to the society and the economy. IMHO, an “economic bubble” is a result of greed that causes prices and paychecks to inflate beyond what’s backed up by goods and services. Greed is to economy as a blood clot is to the heart. Both clog the free circulation of essential currents. So, my suggestions are to:

1) Make it mandatory for the companies to first explore ways to remove the “greed” factor from the employees remuneration and spending, before jumping on to layoffs. These could be by way of pay-cuts where appropriate, cutting-down non-essential expenses and supplies, voluntary surrender of accrued leaves, furloughs, etc. Layoffs should be the last resort. Greed is often incorrectly justified by motivation to work, but true motivation may lie in helping a co-worker to have his job and support a family.

2) Encourage companies with 50 or more employees to form an employee welfare committee drawn from and accountable to the employees to look into any unfair layoffs or career issues – something short of a union, but better than leaving employment entirely to demand and supply forces or whims and fancies of the managers. Company’s HR department may not be very effective here because they report to the management. Ideally, employers should guide, coach, and help employees to be of better use to the world and in a sense, take responsibility of employees careers. I believe there are companies which already do these and are still successful with their bottom-lines. Radical change may not be possible, but at least a thought in that direction may help in the long run.