Understanding Workplace Stress And Job Security Challenges

Some jobs are more high stress than others. Many, many years ago, one of my first jobs when I moved to Wenatchee was in the fruit industry. I worked at an apple packing plant back in the day, which was Mannan Farrington, later it would become part of Northern fruit. 

I worked as a segregator.  

As the boxes of apples came off the packing line, they would be labeled for how many apples it took to fill the box. The boxes were then segregated by number. Stacked 5 or 6 high. And eventually palletized, placed in cold storage or loaded into semi-trucks to be shipped all across the country. 

This was a job that was easy to learn, and once you got into the rhythm of the job, required very little brain power. To my way of thinking, it was a stress-free job. Separate the boxes by number and stack them up nice and straight.  

Obviously other jobs that I’ve had over the years were Maybe a little more stressful. One of the big generators of stress in the job industry is not really knowing whether or not you were going to keep your job next week, or even the next day. 

Anxiety and stress in the workplace can be a major factor in productivity. The more stressed out you are, the less productive you can be. 

What are “forever layoffs”?

That is what’s most concerning to me about this latest new job strategy for some large companies. Rather than doing large layoffs all at once, companies are now engaging in what they’re calling. “Forever layoffs.” 

Instead of conducting a large layoff like most companies say, for instance, the way Amazon does. It would be more like rolling layoffs where, let’s say 50 people are laid off over the course of 50 days. 

According to offthefrontpage.com,
‘A growing number of companies are quietly cutting jobs in small batches throughout the year. The trend has a name now, “forever layoffs,” and it’s being described as a modern corporate strategy. But behind the buzzword is a more troubling reality: firms are using this tactic to sidestep regulations and avoid paying severance. 

U.S. companies that lay off 50 or more people at a time are required by the WARN Act 

to give 60 days’ notice of their firing. This results in a lot of unhappy people and bad press, so companies are trying to avoid that thus, we have “forever layoffs.” 

It’s about the bottom line.

This brings to mind a situation where my dad experienced working as an engineer for Boeing back when I was a kid. At the time, Boeing was in a situation where they had to contract, and their engineering staff was one of the places where they thought they could do it. One day, a couple of engineers received “pink slips” that worked in my dad’s office. Then a few days later, two more engineers would be let go. (this would go on for weeks). 

After several weeks of this process going on my dad received a pink slip and found out that no, he’s not being fired, he’s being laid off and could be rehired later. Then his boss told him that if he wanted to stay working, he could take a pay cut and help out the company and also keep working. 

A few days later, he talked to a former coworker who had been laid off and found out that he was also offered the pay cut and he took it. The company kept him on for another two weeks and then laid him off anyway. 

It turns out that when the company decides to rehire that person, they don’t have to hire him back at his previous pay scale; they can hire him back at the lower pay scale when he was laid off. 

People who are secure in their job are better workers.

To me, this is the kind of strategies that corporations have used for years. They want to increase their profitability by lowering their overhead, and they don’t seem to care how they do it or how it impacts the workers that are still with them. 

The story ends with my dad not accepting the pay cut, thanking them for their consideration and letting them lay him off. He was back at Boeing six months later. 

Corporations say they’re looking out for their investors, but if they’re using “forever layoffs” as a strategy for trimming the bottom line, they may be shooting themselves in the foot by reducing productivity.