Do corporations care about their employees?

[Mairead]

[eleny]

1. A good example of "Cheap Labor Economics"at work! n/t

[Brucey]

2. No, I've seen very few managers or administrators or owners

of private corporations, or even public institutions, who cared about the employees. Where I work there is nothing but slavery. When an employee retires, they kick him/her out the door and usually say good riddance. Once in a blue moon we get a boss who cares, but that goes sour quickly, and he/she is fired, transfered, demoted, or they quit. Some say that's the way it should be (my brother says that). But it seems a weird way to run a society to me.

[RandomKoolzip]

3. No, they don't.

As a food service industry employee, I see this first hand. When the company wants to increase profits so that the Owner can afford another diamond-studded golf club, what do they do? They cut labor costs by firing a few of us.

It's time that we all realized that we are all expendible laboring scum in the eyes of the CEOs. At best, we are parasites to them. "Class Warfare?" You bet, pal. If they weren't busy trying to make my life harder than it already is (I'm working THREE jobs to make ends meet...) so that they can "keep their hard earned money" (Ha! What bullshit!), I wouldn't have to be so resentful. They're the ones declaring war, not us in the service indusrty.....

[Iverson]

4. No.

People might care. Corporations do not because they cannot.

[Redleg]

5. Some managers do, but I believe many really don't.

Research tells us that managers value an employee more the more the employee is perceived to contribute to the organization. In that sense, managers tend to view employees as being a means to an end.

It is possible (and desirable) for managers to value employees in a more holistic way and to treat the employee with fairness, dignity, and respect. Unfortunately, managers tend to provide the most socio-emotional (and material) support to employees they value the most (see the first point above). This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which employees who are initially valued highly will perform at higher levels because they have the support from management while employees who are initially valued lower will perform at lower levels.

I could go on and on about this but I won't. I have to finish grading papers for my Organizational Behavior class.

[Touchdown]

6. Of course they do.

Just look at the mantra... Our employees are our best asset.

Think about the words "asset" for a minute. It basically says we (employees) are Company property. That we are not humans, and are not even sentient beings. We are nothing more than tools for profit. My name at work is a 7 digit number...you can't get more dehumanizing than that.

Then there's Wall Street, which includes employees as "expenses" or "financial liabilities". In other words, by the shareholder view, we're not even "assets" but considered a hinderance to profit.

How these people got allowed to take over the world is beyond me.

[Trek234]

14. Doesn't surprise me

In my high school economics book it refers to employees as "work units".

[goddess40]

7. No they demand loyalty but don't give it.

They don't give any respect or appreciation either. Your paycheck is all you deserve, if your lucky.

[Nikia]

8. Corporations don't, sometimes people do

A corporation's goal is to make money. Caring does not make the corporation money. It might provide benefits to hire and retain good employees and to get workers to work better but it does not "care" about them.
People vary quite a bit. It seems that the further away a manager or owner is from his or her employees, the less they care. When faced with personally knowing employees, some will care more than others. I have heard antedotal evidence of owners of small corporations paying for more additional days off for employees who have suffered major illnesses or accidents, managers that refused to cut their employees wages, and owners that have employees major pay advances to help them cover an urgent bill because they have felt that it was the right thing to do. If you work in a place with people in charge like that, you are lucky. Most of us cannot expect things like that though.

[NoMoreRedInk]

12. I agree. Corporations care about their employees exactly....

as much as their employees care about the corporation.

[Bandit]

9. Well I can see I am totally outnumbered here but in my case the answer

is yes I care. I am the owner/president/CEO of a very small corporation that employees ten people. I care very much about our employees and I try and do right by them the best I can. I can not afford health insurance for them. It isn't because I don't care it is because we just don't make that much money. My lowest paid employee gets twelve-fifty an hour which after my share of payroll taxes is about fifteen dollars an hour.There are many many small corporations just like mine and I do believe those do care for their employees also. It has always been my belief that a happy employee is good for business.

[Touchdown]

10. Now you see how the "a few bad apples" cliche works

You might not even be in the minority in treating your employees as well as you can, especially when it comes to privately held companies, but when Wall Street gets their hands on any company, it's conform or be sold off for scrap, and employees across the board aren't blind to that.

The perception by the working class of all employers is ruined by those few HUGE ones who make the newspapers with announced layoffs, and Wall Street applauding those layoffs, because it will make the stock price rise. A truly disgusting way to think (and I think about time somebody said it in public!).

Want to fix the perception, fix the system.

[Silverhair]

11. Bottom line trumps all

A corporation has to care about the bottom line first. If it doesn't, it goes out of business and all the jobs are lost. If they also have effective competition, then the competitive pressure for both customers and good employees will force them to have a reasonable bottom line and good working conditions and decent pay. (Usually good working conditions and pay are cheaper than empoyee turnover.) If they don't have competition, then everything goes to hell.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

15. This sort of thinking is part of what's wrong with America

The bottom line should not trump all. In most cases, sadly, it does trump all. Sad.

[corporalclegg9]

21. Exactly!

Look at industries with competition (especially the technology sector), and I think you'll see a higher percentage of companies that treat their employees well. I may be biased because I work for a large corporation in the technology sector, but from my experience everyone here is treated very well.

It's when competition goes away, and when hard to obtain skills are no longer needed that corporations have an easier time disregarding employees.

I believe that that is the major factor that needs "tweaking" for capitalism to work. I love capitalism, but somehow we must maintain constant competition BOTH among consumers and among the labor market. IMO.

[ShimokitaJer]

13. Some do... but they aren't REQUIRED to

and the larger a corporation becomes, the less incentive there is to care about their employees. A small company often relies on low turnover and high employee loyalty to survive, so it is in the best interest of the company to care for their workers. In addition, with a lot of personal contact comes a personal stake in the welfare of the people one works with.

But the larger a corporation becomes, the less necessity there is to retain the same employees (in fact, it is often cheaper to encourage a continually changing base of new employees with lower salaries) and the less incentive there is to insure the welfare of the employees. Some companies continue to do right by their workers, especially those who are led by a CEO who truly cares about the company rather than just the retirement package. But as long as the decisions are made by those whose sole motivation is increasing company profits, the stereotype of the impersonal, uncaring corporation taking advantage of its workers is likely to stay the rule rather than the exception.

[quaker bill]

16. No, corporations don't care

But some people who run corporations do. There are examples, like the man who paid his employees for a year while the textile factory was reconstructed after a fire.

These examples are unfortunately rare.

[Ugnmoose]

17. Public corporations only care about one thing

making the shareholders happy and insiders wealthy

[The Commie]

18. Which is why Capitalism will eventually fail,,,

...when people finally stop believing the anti-socialist propaganda spread by the capitalists.Capitalism does not work because the economy is controled for the needs of the elite, not for the good of society.

[gottaB]

19. Yes, some do

Even on Wall Street. Even large ones.

There's a lot of prejudice on the left against large corporations and publicly traded companies. Understandably. However, not all corporations are exploitative to the nth degree. Some are in fact quite good to and for their employees, and for the communities in which they operate.

The mission of a corporation is defined by its corporate charter. Returning value to shareholders is usually part of the charter. However, some companies have social agendas, and/or they make a case that such goals as employee satisfaction add value in the long term and are thus a priority. The belief that corporations only exist for returning profits is an over-simplification. It makes a world of difference how a company goes about making profits, what its vision of its business is, and what its priorities are.

You may have heard of the term "socially responsible investing" or SRI for short. There are many different SRI funds and screens that are used, for example Calvert's or Domini. And a whole mess of smaller funds and screens that may fit with your values. You can use these as a guide or you can develop your own criteria.

For example, I happen to think employee satisfaction is a good indicator of long term viability and potential for sustained growth, so I look at rankings of that. Also, I pay attention to lists like Fortune's "the 100 best companies to work for" or "100 best companies for women" and there are many other lists like Working Mother's "Best Companies for Women of Color" and so on. And wouldn't you know it, many Wall Street darlings do in fact make it onto these lists.

Caveats apply. Companies like to put on a good face, there are numerous instances of "greenwashing" and the like, and of course the business press is as full of lies and spin as any other subdomain of the media. But if you're diligent and look at all the angles, you can indentify successful publicly traded corporations that treat their employees with respect and in a real sense provide an environment where workers are valued as human beings.

I think this an area where we can accomplish something politically if we see some of the areas where shareholders as a class and workers as a class are aligned or indeed identical in many cases. Tens of millions of American households in fact participate in the stock market in one form or another. The vast majority of them are not superrich, although typically they would not be living in dire poverty. Most don't exercise much control over the companies that go into their pensions or 401K's. And even when they do have opportunities to invest in SRI funds like TIAA-CREF's (many universities offer this), there are still issues of shareholders' rights and real impedements to exercizing power. A prominent example would be the issue of outrageous CEO compensation. Empowerment can come through coalitions among organized labor, shareholders and public interest groups, all demanding a say in matters of corporate governance.

Really this is an area where I think Edwards is on the right track. An alignment of the middle classes with workers including the working poor against the interests of the superrich is politically stronger than an alignment of, say, the lumpen proletariat and those members of the educated elite who would speak for them. You see Edwards' vision (I'm not speaking of his voting record or any particular stance on labor issues), his vision realisitically jibes with the self perceptions of many Americans. They may have an unrealistic sense of their own wealth and status, and they tend to emulate the wealthy and live a little beyond their means. But the wealth that they do have, they believe that they have earned. That's the key right there. If you can tap into that, and not challenge the assumption (which many of us would recognize as a rationalization for certain priviliges), then you can more easily make the case for aligning with the interests of workers against the people that are frankly robbing us blind.

Once you get the point where you can make the argument one of giving concessions to workers vs. giving huge lumps of money to congenital greedheads who wouldn't use it productively even if they knew how, then your going to sway a lot of people who have a stake in corporate America and you're going to be better positioned to achieve some of your goals of stemming the flow of jobs, allowing workers to organize, to recieve better compensaation and benefits, and to have a more secure infrastructure and safety net that will better the lives of the poor, and all of us in the end.

[Brucey]

20. Good answer.

Perhaps what we should do is create a list of socially responsible companies that we can promote, invest in, and buy products from. This is not an area that I know anything about, but I'll bet at DU we have the resources to make a good list.