THE theme song of the 90s in middle class America might be:
"Have you ever been down sized? Have you ever been blue?"
Here's what happens. You work for a big company all your life.
It is making money. You have a mortgage and a nice car. Then you get a summons to see the manager. You are told you are being "downsized".
Downsized is the corporate term for "fired", "sacked", "dismissed", "given the boot". It is done to improve stock ratings.
Lay offs happen when business is bad, downsizing when it is good.
The conversation goes something like this.
Worker: "I can't believe this is happening to me."
Manager: "I know this is a difficult moment for you. But it is happening.
Worker: "But why me?"
Manager: "Because your position is one of those affected in the restructuring.
Worker: "OK. OK. But how about a transfer, a lower paying job, a delay?"
Manager: "We looked at all possible alternatives. I'm sorry."
Worker: "I'm going to the president."
Manager: "This has been approved all the way to the president."
Worker: "How am I going to tell my wife?
Manager: "Deal with the situation honestly. Tell your wife you are eligible for severance pay."
This is the model for responding to a fired worker prepared by Manchester Partners International and reproduced recently in USA Today.
The meeting never lasts more than IS minutes, when shock may give way to temper. Other employees are given extra work to curtail angry gossip.
Managers are trained to deal with shock, silence and anger. They study videos and scripts approved by lawyers, and learn not to criticise workers, which could provoke lawsuits. They never say "I know how you feel." Teams of facilitators quickly remove company cars and credit cards and change computer passwords.
The interview office is usually near the exit. The firing is done late in the day as management does not want workers going home to empty houses. The axe is not wielded on a Friday, as a weekend allows workers too long to fret before counselling.
It happens twice a minute, 24 hours a day, across the US.
In September, AT&T sacked 8,500 workers in a US subsidiary. On January 2nd, the telephone company announced (by e mail to workers) that it was downsizing another 40,000 jobs. AT&T stock jumped seven dollars. Between the two sets of firings, the personal stockholding of AT&T chairman, Robert Allen, went up five million dollars. Seven job counselling centres eased the workers out.
In his book, Executive Blues, G. J. Meyer described his own firing by McDonnell Douglas. The first, rehearsed, words of the human resources officer were "God, this is going to be hard."
"Once the geek has delivered his message and demonstrated the depths of his humanity, he'll ... come round from behind his desk," wrote Mr Meyer. "Together the two of you will glide out the door and down the hall to some smaller office." There an outplacement geek guides the victim through the transition.
Dismissed employees rarely get good jobs again. Seven out of 10 of the 5.5 million workers downsized in 1991 and 1992 ended up in lower paying work.
The repercussions of a decade of downsizing are being felt in the debate for the soul of the Republican Party. Populist candidate, Pat Buchanan, draws cheers and whoops when he blames corporate greed for the deep insecurities among American workers.
AT&T was a byword for two way commitment. You gave loyalty to the company. The company was loyal to you. Loyalty has been replaced by corporate disloyalty, which hits the workers at work and at play.
Fans of the Cleveland Browns, who spent a lifetime of Sundays cheering on their football team, were downsized by owner Art Modeil when he sold the Browns to Baltimore - because Maryland gave him a rent free stadium with high rent sky boxes for rich people.
It's normal corporate practice.a The Houston Oriels are going to Nashville, the Los Angeles Rams went to St Louis, the St Louis Cardinals went to Phoenix, the Oakland Raiders went to Los Angeles and back. The fans are sick.
The sky box crowd wear the world like a cashmere sweater, wrote Henry Allen in a devastating Washington Post article on the death of loyalty in an America where the ratio of a chief executive's salary to a worker's is now 175-1 compared to 40-1 two decades ago. "So much for loyalty down and the Protestant work ethic," he said.
In this "You're fired have a nice day" landscape, Mr Aaron Feuerstein is a modern American hero. When his factory in Methuen, Massachusetts, burned down, he continued paying his 2,400 employees for a month while the factory was rebuilt. His action was a big story.
"I don't deserve credit," he said. "Corporate America has made it so that when you behave the way I did, it's abnormal."