San Antonio College Library

"Downsizing in America offers a range of compelling hypotheses to account for adoption of downsizing as an accepted business practice. In the short run, many companies experiencing difficulties due to decreased sales, cash flow problems, or declining securities prices reduced their workforces temporarily, expanding them again when business conditions improved. The most significant trigger leading to long-term downsizing was the rapid change in technology....

In January 1992, human resources manager Louise Moser Illes was notified, along with nine hundred co-workers, that the semiconductor plant where she worked would be closed by the end of the year. A month later, she began to document the process that she helped carry out and that left her without a job. Closing a plant takes a heavy toll on the employees, the community, and the company management. While much has been written about the effects of plant...

On Wall Street, no one has earned a bigger reputation for cutting companies down to size than corporate turn-around artist Albert J. Dunlap. As head of Scott Paper and, more recently, as CEO of Sunbeam, Dunlap carried out his time-tested formula as spelled out in his bluntly titled book Mean Business: boost the bottom line with swift, deep layoffs; sell off divisions; and move production to lower-wage states or abroad. Filmed at the height of Dunlap's...

An account of layoffs in America, their questionable necessity, their overuse, and their devastating impact on individuals at all income levels. Economics journalist Uchitelle explains how, in the mid-1970s, the first major layoffs, a limited response to the inroads of foreign competition, spread and multiplied, in time destroying the notion of job security and the dignity of work. The author traces the rise of job security in the United States to...

Dismantling dozens of firmly-held beliefs, Cox and Alm show that: "Real income" is an unreliable measure of living standards. Real wealth - the lifestyle Americans routinely enjoy - has skyrocketed; the poor have not gotten poorer. In fact, the average family living below the poverty line today is doing as well or better, in terms of material possessions, as middle-class families in 1971; corporate downsizing creates jobs in the long run; income mobility...