Cutting Costs, Destroying Lives: The Circuit City’s of Yesterday Live On
--This March will mark the one-year anniversary of Circuit City’s laying off of 3,400 employees nationwide. What is especially disturbing about this ‘cost-cutting’ crusade—besides its scale--was its explicit targeting of higher-paid employees. And after being told literally on the day of in some cases, workers were told that they could re-apply for open positions after a ten-week “cooling off” period. The audacity of this measure nearly escapes words: experienced workers could re-apply—after ‘waiting’ two and half months--for lousier positions, and work lousier hours for lousier pay? The fact that such a measure was taken—and that it was so sparsely covered in the media—is highly indicative of the often-demoralized and neglected state of retail workers today.
But that measure is over and done, so why should we care now? We must care because of the impersonal nature of ‘cutting costs’ in general. ‘Cutting costs’, ‘reducing inputs’, ‘restructuring’, and the abundance of other euphemisms for the same essential practice—getting rid of employees—don’t care WHO is getting laid off, nor do they care WHO is doing the laying off. It is for this reason that we must not forget what happened last year at Circuit City when we think about the security and treatment of retail workers in general.
Finally, we should also recognize that Circuit City was, and continues to be, one of the top electronics/entertainment retail giants in the country. Over the past several months, another electronics/entertainment giant, CompUSA, began similar ‘cost-cutting’ measures, eventually deciding to shut down permanently. While its workers were not treated as deplorably as Circuit City’s, there are still a variety of qualms among CompUSA workers regarding low severance pay, little time of notification, and lousy treatment by upper-management.
Again, these are just two examples of the many instances where retail workers are laid-off under harshly insensitive circumstances. What makes these cases particularly interesting, though, is that Circuit City and CompUSA were both major firms in the electronics/entertainment market. Why does it matter? It matters because it shows that, today, no worker is safe from the cost-cutting pressures facing businesses in general, and that retail workers especially need to become recognized, emphsasized, and above all, organized.
Yesterday it was Circuit City, today it is CompUSA. Let us not forget these workers’ sacrifices as we move into tomorrow.
--AldousOrwell
Campaigner, Brandworkers International