This is the Big Story of the week in Canadian employment. Is it becoming so common we don't react any more? The press is plastered with it, but I still can't really digest this. Bell Canada has sold its telephone operator business to an American company Excell Global Services. This means 2,400 operators' jobs will be terminated with Bell Canada and some will be rehired (at a far lower salary) and some possibly relocated. Dalton Camp's column (Toronto Star, Jan.13) refers to the work of Richard Sennett of the London School of Economics a publication, The Corrosion of Character: the Perosnal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism: Downsizing has less to do with the profit-mongering than with the private lusts of senior corporate executives. Sennet points ot the modern practice of paying corporate CEOs in stock options. By cutting payrolls and corners, the CEO maximizes profits int he short term, which inflates share values to allow him to exsercise his options at maximum profit. He leaves when the fun is over, himself richer for the experience, the corporation poorer. As for the downsized, many become a charge to society as a whole...society pays whie the corpartion downsizers profit, enjoying tax breaks in the bargain.
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