Bruce_the_vii Bruce_the_vii:
I don't think Canada is that far behind the USA in cutting employees when needed. Generally people don't like to see workers not carrying their load, it's part of the culture that these people move down the street. It's supposed to keep the system trim and competitive. We mix this hard nose attitude with social programs like EI.
The USA is going through a deep recession and we're all lucky Canada is doing much better.
I'm a little suspect of some economists in a office that takes the GDP and divides it by the number of people employed and jumps to the conclusion companies are getting the same work out of less employees. I don't believe it's that simple.
My company is. It has been shedding people and consolidating departments so that workers are expected to help out in other departments should they have any slow time.
We are expected to work at peak rates when the work load is very high and now are expected to do more work when the work load lowers. I'm expected to analyze more samples in less time and that is not a good thing when its somebodies medical specimen I'm analyzing. Worse still is workers who aren't as fast as those of us with greater expertise are told to pick it up. They do but quality suffers.
To add insult to injury our company just spent LOADS on renovating the building. Want to guess this didn't affect corporate bonuses or annual raises?
According to the article that is the reason why US companies are getting better productivity because workers are terrified of losing their job. Discrimination against the unemployed doesn't help. You have to have a job to get a job.
