"CloseTalker," a Chicago-area Fark reader, offered a different perspective in the Fark comments:

I was laid off from Andersen in Chicago back in July of last year. A cost cutting/reorg move. I, along with about 10 others with less than 1 year at the firm were called into an office with a manager who had been with the firm for 16 years. A guy read a prepared statement and said we had 3 hours to pack up and get out. Then an HR lady laid out our severance choices - I got a month after only 9 months service. Couldn't believe they did the manager the same as us peons!

I completely understood it as a business decision, but then about 3 months later while on a job interview, I picked up a copy of Crain's Chicago Business. There was an interview with the then-CEO, Berardino. He was talking about the earlier layoffs and said they were done to increase per partner profits. I know it's basically the same thing as increasing earnings per share or other such phrases used by public corporations, but "per partner profits" is more real--like, "Hey, me and the other guys at this table needed to pay for our greens fees for this year so you and you and you, you're gone. Thanks.

When a company decides to "downsize," or fails outright, it is the everyday workers, with student loans to pay off and mortgages and kids in school who get screwed—but executives escape unscathed. Top Enron management, for example, kept their multimillion-dollar bonuses. Yet, the rest of the Enron employees trooped off shame-faced to the unemployment line, forced to contend with government bureaucracy to reclaim the paltry funds. It is not unlike some medieval battle, where the foot soldiers from the defeated army are slaughtered, but the knights are kept for ransom. And, meanwhile, the schools teach our kids that America is an egalitarian society.

Why is it that, just because someone has a college degree, they are denied the right to collective bargaining? Education is almost not worth the effort any more, since the only thing that is guaranteed is a lifetime of insecurity. My brother, a paramedic in Buffalo, is a member of the Teamster's Union. A friend of his who makes engine blocks at GM is a member of another union, the United Auto Worker's Guild. My mother, a New York City schoolteacher and thus a government employee, is a member of the United Federation of Teachers, and thus one of the rare white-collar union workers. They cannot be fired without cause. They cannot be asked to work overtime without being paid more. Furthermore, they are guaranteed health coverage and disability insurance.

In many prosperous countries, such as Canada and Germany, some of these benefits are provided for by the government. It is a particular historical accident-actually, a New Deal compromise—that in America, health care, retirement, and other benefits should be privatized. Yet, even so, many firms do whatever they can not to have to provide their employees with even a bare minimum. When I took my first job after grad school, the company made us wait six months to contribute a large chunk of our salaries for some paltry health benefits, and we could be hired and fired with impunity, leaving us cold. Furthermore, many companies take an end-run around these requirements, hiring workers as "freelancers" whom they do not have to provide any benefits to us at all.

The business of America is business, not taking care of its workers. It is plain that we must do for ourselves. Alone, we are powerless. United, we have the power of collective bargaining—more so than other workers, since so many jobs are sufficiently complex that you can't just train a scab to take over the position in a few hours.

Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your fear of the future.