Working Notes: On the trauma of job loss, retaliatory e-mail surveillance, and Costco as the good company

Dear readers, here are three articles worth your attention:

Experiencing a layoff

In an unusually personal piece, Carey Goldberg, health writer for WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, blogs about her experience of being laid off six years ago by the Boston Globe:

I went back to visit my old parking lot at The Boston Globe this week. For more than six years, I commuted to the Globe along the crawling traffic of the Southeast Expressway, travel mug in hand. But what I remember most about that parking lot is crying in it.

It was 2009. The Globe was in a major financial crisis, like much of the country. Brian McGrory, then the Metro editor, had just called me in to his office to warn me that I was almost certainly about to lose my job.

I held it together in his office, but then when I came out into the parking lot to call my best friend, I felt a wave of shame and insult engulf me. I knew better, but for just that moment, I felt — worthless.

She segues from her own experience to input from experts on the trauma of experiencing a layoff. It’s a thoughtful, informative post that all too many people will find validating.

E-mail surveillance as a form of retaliation

Ohio management employment lawyer Jon Hyman, blogging for Workforce Management, raises a thorny legal question. Most employers have the right to inspect employees’ company e-mail accounts. But what if an employer starts to do so with an individual employee only after she has filed a complaint or lawsuit, such as a claim of sexual harassment? Here’s part of his read on this:

Could the email surveillance, in and of itself, be an adverse action sufficient to support a claim of retaliation? The legal standard for an adverse action sufficient to support a claim of retaliation is very broad. Anything that “might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination,” qualifies as a retaliatory adverse action. If you don’t regularly review employee email accounts, and only start examining an employee’s electronic activities after that employee engages in some protected activity, might that dissuade others from engaging in protected activity?

Hyman’s wise advice to employers is not to engage in such surveillance in a targeted manner.

Costco’s enlightened labor relations practices

Brad Stone, in a feature article for Business Week, examines Costco’s approach to labor relations and the management philosophies of its new CEO, Craig Jelinek, and his predecessor, company co-founder Jim Sinegal. Here’s the lede:

Joe Carcello has a great job. The 59-year-old has an annual salary of $52,700, gets five weeks of vacation a year, and is looking forward to retiring on the sizable nest egg in his 401(k), which his employer augments with matching funds. After 26 years at his company, he’s not worried about layoffs. In 2009, as the recession deepened, his bosses handed out raises. “I’m just grateful to come here to work every day,” he says.

This wouldn’t be remarkable except that Carcello works in retail, one of the stingiest industries in America, with some of the most dissatisfied workers. . . . In its 30-year history, Carcello’s employer, Costco, has never had significant labor troubles.

The Great Recession has triggered some brutal treatment of workers. That’s why it’s extra important to highlight companies that are taking a different approach.

McDonald’s Big Mac ad hits a new low

From the Orange Line, Boston subway (photo by DY)

McDonald’s is now pitching Big Macs by making fun of public service ads for people who may need mental health counseling.

Here’s the ad I saw while riding the Orange Line of the Boston subway on Sunday: It features a woman looking down with her head buried in her hand, with the text including (1) a large main caption “You’re Not Alone,” (2) a much smaller caption “Millions of people love the Big Mac,” and (3) an 800 phone number at the bottom. (Yes, I called it. It’s McD’s corporate phone number.)

I don’t think I’m being oversensitive or too “PC” about this. If you ride the subway regularly, you often see public service ads depicting a person in obvious distress, captioned with a few supportive words, and listing a phone number to reach a sympathetic ear. We’re living in difficult times. There are a lot of people who are struggling with their mental and emotional health. They may be highly stressed out, depressed, or even suicidal.

The ad writers and executives in McDonald’s high-priced marketing operation missed the boat badly on this one. I’m sorry, but the ad is just too close to the real thing to be funny.

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April 10 update: McDonald’s has responded by saying this was part of an ad campaign that never got formal approval from corporate central, and they’ve ordered the ads pulled. Details here from Eric Randall at Boston Magazine, who has been following the story. (It sounds like McD’s will be be revisiting their protocols in working with advertisers because of this.)

At this point I’m a little bemused by how this story has turned mini-viral. Popular Boston blog Universal Hub and Time magazine’s Brad Tuttle also picked up the story, and I had to decline an interview with Boston’s Channel 5 News because I’m out of town.

I deliberately tried to write the post in a way that was pointed but non-inflammatory, so it’s quite interesting to see how something like this grows legs.

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April 11 update: And the Boston Business Journal‘s Galen Moore pulled the story together, including more about the Arnold advertising firm apparently responsible for the snafu.

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April 12 update: To my surprise, the story has gone viral, with coverage ranging from ABC News to the Daily Mail over in the U.K. In addition, the mental health community has been weighing in. Here’s the lede from Marie Szaniszlo’s piece in the Boston Herald:

Mental health advocates yesterday blasted a McDonald’s ad on the MBTA that appears at first to be a public service announcement targeting people suffering from depression.

“It’s really too bad because it trivializes the whole issue of depression,” said Julie Totten, executive director of Waltham-based Families for Depression Awareness, which has been running an ad of its own on the T for its Strides Against Stigma Walk on April 27 at Boston University. “We’re trying to say when you need help, it’s not a laughing matter. We don’t want people to feel stigmatized or made fun of.”

Working Notes: Charlie Rose settles unpaid intern lawsuit, WalMart vs. Costco, and eBossWatch’s worst boss list

Credit: Intern Labor Rights

Here are some news items worth a look!

1. Settlement in unpaid interns lawsuit — Steven Greenhouse writes for the New York Times about PBS’s Charlie Rose Show settling a class action lawsuit for back wages brought by former unpaid interns (link here):

Charlie Rose and his production company have agreed to pay as much as $250,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by a former unpaid intern who claimed minimum-wage violations.

Under the settlement . . . , Mr. Rose and his production company, Charlie Rose Inc., will pay back wages to a potential class of 189 interns. The settlement calls for many of the interns to receive about $1,100 each — $110 a week in back pay, up to a maximum of 10 weeks, the approximate length of a school semester.

This is a major victory for the nascent but growing movement in opposition to unpaid internships.

2. WalMart vs. Costco on jobs — Here’s a neat little info graphic making its way around social media land, drawn from information compiled by Business Week:

Clearly, when it comes to compensation, not all big-box retailers are the same!

3. eBossWatch’s 2012 List of America’s Worst Bosses – One of my favorite sites, eBossWatch, has released its annual list of bad bosses. From the introduction to this year’s list:

The 2012 America’s Worst Bosses include a college dean, four restaurant owners, a fire department chief, five doctors, a judge, three county prosecuting attorneys, and a state attorney general.

. . . The managers who made this year’s list of America’s Worst Bosses were named in workplace lawsuits filed by their employees and were accused of workplace harassment and/or sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and/or creating a hostile work environment.

Virginia auto shops join forces to support bullied teen

We often think of a term such as “social responsibility” in highfalutin ways, associating it with grand mission statements about corporate ethics, community involvement, and safeguarding the environment.

But a bunch of Virginia auto shops led by Quality Auto Paint and Body gave us a lesson in what it really means: After learning that the car of area college student Jordan Allison had been vandalized repeatedly, including the “keying” of anti-gay slurs on its side, these businesses worked together to give the vehicle a major facelift and upgrade.

Group effort

Eric Pfeiffer, reporting for Yahoo! News (here), recounts how Quality Auto Paint and Body shop manager Richard Henegar, Jr., took the lead and enlisted others on Allison’s behalf:

Henegar says his shop and 10 other businesses (Parts Unlimited in Vinton, Advance Auto Parts, Moon’s Auto Body, Rice Toyota, Val’s Automotive, The Rod Shop, B&C Exterminating, Twists & Turns, AJ’s Landscaping, and Sunnybrook Auto Spa) went to work on Addison’s car, giving it a new paint job, tires, tinted windows, a new stereo and security system. He estimates the total value of the new parts to be over $10,000.

There’s a nice video news clip that accompanies the article, including the showing of the “new” car to Allison at the auto shop. Henegar, rather than trying to grab credit, actually is apologetic in explaining that his shop couldn’t afford to make all the repairs on its own.

Bravo

Yup, I plead guilty. Had you asked me what types of businesses are likely to take a stand against bullying and homophobia, auto shops never would’ve made my list.

Here’s to all the workers and businesses who stood up to bullying and supported a young man who had been mistreated. I’m sure that Jordan Allison will remember this kindness for the rest of his life.

Notable books — February 2012

In the spirit of looking at things anew as the new year unfolds, some of you may be looking hard at your personal finances, investments, and retirement savings. If you’re like me and need to learn about this stuff from the ground up, here are some helpful sources:

Andrew Tobias, The ONLY Investment Guide You’ll EVER Need (rev. ed., 2010) — Several years ago, a dear cousin (now sadly passed) turned me on to this book, which proved to be a great starting place for understanding investing and financial planning.

Ilyce R. Glink, 50 Simple Steps You Can Take to Disaster-Proof Your Finances: How to Plan Ahead to Protect Yourself and Your Loved Ones and Survive Any Crisis (2002) — Slightly dated, but still full of good advice. For me this book falls into the “do what I say and not what I haven’t done” category. Yikers, I have some work to do this year.

John C. Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (2007) — The founder of the Vanguard Group is one of the most respected people in financial services.

Ben Stein & Phil DeMuth, The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing: Do’s and Don’ts to Protect Your Financial Life (2010) — Recommends a quirky approach to assembling a retirement investment portfolio; a bit too complicated for my tastes. But at least read it for the wise and sobering commentary about saving for retirement.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future (rev. ed. 2005) — A pre-meltdown warning shot about tomorrow’s economy, interweaving economic analysis with concrete advice on personal finances. This book, more than any other, taught me about projecting how “big picture” economic trends affect our personal finances.

Edwin M. Bridges with Brian D. Bridges, The Prudent Professor: Planning and Saving for a Worry-Free Retirement from Academe (2010) — Well, I probably found this book a little too late to put into practice all the advice that might provide me with that elusive “worry-free” (yeah, right) retirement, but it’s helpful for academicians of any age.

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A note to readers — I know that for some, “financial planning” and “retirement saving” are wholly unrealistic concepts right now. Many folks are barely making ends meet (if that), and if you are in this situation, I hope that your circumstances improve markedly and allow you to plan your finances with a longer-range perspective.

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Starting in February 2012, every month I’m sharing short mentions of books related to recurring topics on this blog that I have read, reviewed, or used, a mix of newer and older works. On occasion, like above, I will emphasize a specific theme.

Is our psychologically ill economy fueled by psychologically ill business leaders?

It’s not often when mental health experts and business management scholars start to sound alike, but a December workshop address by therapist Michael Britton and a recent business ethics article by marketing expert Clive Boddy seem to be very much on the same page. Both address the twisted psychological dynamics driving the current economic crisis.

Our manic economy

In the Don Klein Memorial Lecture at the annual workshop of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network held in December (blog post here), psychologist Michael Britton described our current economic condition in psychological terms.

Our economic system has taken on “bipolar” qualities, said Britton. Using terms and phrases such as “excited,” “frantic,” “crash and burn,” “disregard for reality,” and “disregard for empathy,” he described an economy grounded in constant consumption and concentrations of power.

Britton said that instead of worshipping at the altar of national GDP and high unemployment, we should “reduce resource stripping” and emphasize how everyone can contribute to society and live a “materially decent life.”

Corporate Psychopaths

Of course, if our economy is psychologically ill, then we should search out the root causes. Clive R. Boddy of the Nottingham Business School believes that the behaviors of corporate psychopaths have fueled the economic crisis.

He makes the case in a 2011 article in the Journal of Business Ethics, “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Business Crisis” (link here). Here are a few snippets:

Although they may look smooth, charming, sophisticated, and successful, Corporate Psychopaths should theoretically be almost wholly destructive to the organizations that they work for.

…Researchers report that such malevolent leaders are callously disregarding of the needs and wishes of others, prepared to lie, bully and cheat and to disregard or cause harm to the welfare of others….

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The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that Corporate Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the crisis. . . . (T)he Corporate Psychopath’s single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement . . . has led to an abandonment of the old fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.

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When presented to management academics in discussion, the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is accepted as being plausible and highly relevant. . . .The message that psychopaths are to be found in corporations and other organisations may be important for the future longevity of capitalism and for corporate and social justice and even for world financial stability and longevity.

Felons vs. Bosses

These commentaries echo a 2005 study conducted by psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon comparing individuals housed in a British psychiatric hospital who had been convicted of serious crimes to managers and executives. As reported by George Monblot for the Guardian (link here):

On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for.

As 2012 approaches

During the three years I have hosted this blog, I’ve written a lot about the devastating effects that bullying bosses can have on individual psyches and careers. As these commentaries and studies show, many of these individuals also are wreaking havoc on our larger economic and social infrastructures.

Personally, I’ve got nothing against enterprise, entrepreneurship, and even a fair profit. And I’m not looking for a witch hunt of bad managers and executives. Instead, maybe it’s time we use the language of human resources and simply say that our “plans have changed” and that “we’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

Heaven knows it’s time we did so.

What workplace bullying teaches us about the integrity of American employers

Ståle Einarsen, University of Bergen psychology professor and a leading authority on workplace bullying, once gave a conference keynote address in which he said, in effect, that rather than using our knowledge of employment relations to help us understand workplace bullying, perhaps we should use our knowledge of workplace bullying to help us understand employment relations.

I had his remarks in mind when I realized that if you want an ultimate test of an American employer’s integrity, examine how it responds to risks and claims of workplace bullying. Here’s why:

1. Limited liability exposure – Until the Healthy Workplace Bill or something like it becomes law, most American workers will not have a direct legal claim against their employers for workplace bullying, no matter how abusive the conduct and its effects. Accordingly, employers that choose to tackle workplace bullying pro-actively are doing so out of a commitment to their workers and to the resulting benefits in terms of productivity and morale.

2. Adopting and enforcing a strong policy – Currently employers are under no legal obligation to develop a policy concerning workplace bullying. An employer that adopts and enforces a policy is making a statement about its institutional culture, while potentially exposing itself to liability in the event of a violation. This is a big step to take.

3. Power differentials – Workplace bullying in the U.S. tends to be a top-down phenomenon, with supervisor-to-subordinate mistreatment being the most common combination. This is why workplace bullying is such a threatening topic to organizations and to individuals in charge: It often implicates the very power structure of a workplace. Thus, preventing and stopping workplace bullying requires a sincere, full-blown organizational commitment.

4. Investigation challenges – Although workplace bullying is frequent and destructive, conducting a fair and thorough investigation can be a difficult and challenging task. This is especially the case when the allegations involve behaviors of a more indirect nature.

In other words, workplace bullying challenges employers to do right by everyone, even if the liability risks are comparatively low, senior managers are among those whose actions will be reviewed, and investigating claims of bullying are difficult and time consuming. Employers that embrace these priorities and practices are special indeed.

Has tackling discrimination led to a more elitist society?

Has greater social equality fueled the creation of a more elitist society? Alexander Still, in a recent piece titled “The Paradox Of the New Elite” for the New York Times, raises this question:

IT’S a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

Many of us will assert vigorously that the U.S. has hardly reached the promised land when it comes to equal opportunity. Nevertheless, it would be hard to argue that substantial progress hasn’t been made.

Concentrated wealth and opportunity

During this time of social progress, we’ve also witnessed a tremendous concentration of wealth and opportunity through what some might call the American meritocracy. As Still explains:

But with educational attainment going increasingly to the children of the affluent and educated, we appear to be developing a self-perpetuating elite that reaps a greater and greater share of financial rewards. It is a hard-working elite, and more diverse than the old white male Anglo-Saxon establishment — but nonetheless claims a larger share of the national income than was the case 50 years ago, when blacks, Jews and women were largely shut out of powerful institutions.

So…Still raises a provocative question: Are the two trends — less discrimination and the rise of a supposed meritocracy — related or coincidental?

Class struggle, if not warfare

In a recent post, I wrote about Chief Justice Warren Burger’s 1971 judicial opinion in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), where the Supreme Court struck down two job requirements — a high school diploma and passing scores on two aptitude tests — that had the effect of excluding most African American job applicants from consideration for higher paying jobs in the company. In addition to holding that the company’s hiring policy had discriminatory impact, the Court found that the company could not prove that the requirements were closely related to skills and abilities necessary for the jobs in question.

Here’s the relevant piece of Justice Burger’s opinion:

The facts of this case demonstrate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability. History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the common sense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.

In that one paragraph, the Chief Justice brilliantly anticipated the craziness to come: High-stakes educational testing at multiple levels. The U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges, universities, and graduate programs. Out-of-control anxieties over college admissions. Employer love affairs with graduates of elite institutions. Higher and higher settings of the credential bar to enter professions and obtain opportunities.

Higher education as an example

Don’t get me wrong: Discrimination still exists. Definitely.

But over the past decade I’ve seen these class-based patterns gaining a stronghold in my world of higher education. New (or resurgent) barriers of class and privilege are nudging aside the old ones of race, gender, and sexual orientation, especially when it comes to faculty recruitment. As our faculties are becoming somewhat more diverse in terms of “check-the-box” demographic categories, they are becoming even more homogeneous in terms of socio-economic and professional backgrounds, with heavy emphasis placed on holding higher degrees from a very small number of elite universities.

The implications for teaching and scholarship are enormous. Knowledge sharing and creation increasingly are being funneled through very narrow bands of life experiences and perspectives. It’s a problem that transcends standard-brand categories of diversity and political ideology, which may be one reason why it isn’t receiving much attention from within the academy.

Some real “job killers”: Executive salaries, bullying managers, health care costs, and demanding stockholders

The Chamber of Commerce and other powerful trade organizations are fond of using the term “job killer” to denigrate virtually any proposed legislation or regulation that protects workers, consumers, or the environment. They claim that costs of prevention and compliance drain monies that otherwise would be used to create jobs.

Sort of true, but not really

Technically, perhaps they can make a case: If one assumes there’s a fixed pot of money marked “for wages, salaries, and benefits,” and the costs of complying with pesky labor, consumer, and environmental protections must come out of that pot, then I suppose the regulations can be called job killers.

But one does not have to be a corporate accountant to know that organizational budgeting doesn’t work that way. The costs of social responsibility can come out of other buckets of money as well.

Instead, take a look

In any event, in the interest of fair play, let’s consider an alternate list of job killers:

Executive salaries — Exorbitant executive salaries and accompanying perks surely kill jobs, especially when the high pay isn’t merited due to poor performance. A mediocre CEO earning $300,000 is just as good as a mediocre CEO earning $1 million, except that with the $300,000 CEO, there’s another $700,000 left over to hire more workers.

Bullying managers — Workplace bullying increases employee attrition, absenteeism, and health care costs, while driving down employee morale and productivity — all of which have negative bottom line impacts. In the U.S., the significant majority of workplace bullying is perpetrated by managers and supervisors.

Health care costs — Attempts to create affordable, quality health care for all are continually thwarted by corporations, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies that lobby Congress and state legislatures and form political action committees to reward their friends in elected office.

Demanding stockholders — Stockholders who pressure corporations to post sky-high profits rather than reasonable ones are, in essence, drawing from monies that could be used to hire workers and pay them a living wage.

It’s not quite so easy

Okay, I admit, it’s more complicated than that. The business, labor, and regulatory climate in the U.S. is multifaceted, to say the least. Fixing unemployment and a huge earnings gap, among other things, requires more than serving up competing bullet points.

But if we’re even going to consider the claim that safeguarding workers, consumers, and our planet kills jobs, then at least let’s look at other major factors that curb job creation and preservation.

Amazon’s hothouse of a warehouse & Amazon’s customer response

Kudos to Spencer Soper of the Allentown (PA) Morning Call newspaper for breaking what has become a national story about horrible working conditions in Amazon.com’s Lehigh Valley warehouse (link here):

Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it’s like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.

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Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said.

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During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. . . . An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an “unsafe environment” after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems.

My letter

I shop often at Amazon, and I own a small amount of Amazon stock in my retirement portfolio. I wanted to register my concerns, and early on Tuesday evening I wrote to Amazon’s customer service desk:

Dear Amazon,

I am a Prime customer who spends quite a bit of money with you. I enjoy your fast, dependable service and appreciate the remarkable convenience of shopping on the Amazon site.

However, I was very dismayed to read about the situation where Amazon warehouse workers had been subjected to such a inhumane working environment.

I realize there are legitimate differences of opinion about employee relations, but treating workers in a physically or psychologically abusive manner is inexcusable.

I would welcome assurances from your company that such practices will be addressed and stopped.  As a customer I am willing to pay more in order to ensure that workers up and down Amazon’s supply chain are treated well.

Thank you for considering my concerns.

A quick response

I received a very fast response from Amazon:

At Amazon, the safety and well-being of our employees is our number one priority. We have several procedures in place to ensure the safety of our associates during the summer heat, including increased breaks, shortened shifts, constant reminders and help about hydration, and extra ice machines.

Our fulfillment team was dealing with record hot temperatures this past summer. We have air conditioning in some of our fulfillment centers — Phoenix, AZ for example — but we haven’t historically had air conditioning in our East Coast fulfillment centers. We’re in the process of adding air conditioning to additional fulfillment centers so that we’re prepared in case what we saw this past summer becomes the new normal.

Thank you for your feedback. We hope to see you again soon.

Falls short of the mark

I appreciated the fast response but was very disappointed in its content.

Many moons ago, I worked in retail warehouses in the Midwest during college summers. High temperatures and humidity combined with the heavy-duty physical nature of the work make summer warehouse work a very hard job. Amazon’s response makes it sound like the 2011 temperatures were an extreme aberration from the past that caught them by surprise, but frankly I’m doubtful. In any event, given the health impact on their workers, extreme remedial measures were called for, and Amazon dropped the ball.

In addition, Amazon’s response did not address the general working conditions of Amazon workers as reported in the Morning Call article. It is interesting that the response centered mainly on the problem of working in excessive heat.

Overall, it appears from the Morning Call news article that Amazon fell way, way short of making employees their “number one priority.”