Recent lay offs could have been avoided

(final draft for editorial 3)

Mark Schwartz, 52, and 53 other men and women are all in the same situation: little money, no job, no benefit package and a dwindling 401K. These 54 individuals are not alone in their struggle. Hundreds of Kearney and surrounding area residents have been laid off from Baldwin Filters and Eaton in recent months. Now, these residents are left with little hope of finding a new job in our current recession.

Because of our current economic situation, many companies believe it is impossible to avoid permanent layoffs. These companies are wrong. However, looking at the history of Eaton and Baldwin, it is easy to pinpoint a series of steps both companies took to avoid layoffs.

Baldwin and Eaton both ran only four days out of the week for months. Baldwin and Eaton also went into a wage freeze where employees were not able to get a raise, but were also not worried about having their pay cut. In spite of this, the wage freeze did little to affect the corporate directors of Clarcor, the mother company of Baldwin.

“If the top executives at Clarcor would give up their awards and compensation for 180 days they could save 54 (laid off) lives,” said Myron Larchick, a long-time Balwin employee and Clarcor shareholder. “Here’s the ridiculous part, that’s not giving up any of their salaries, and they still have an estimated $2.3 million to split in awards and compensation.”

To these executives of Clarcor, these 54 jobs most recently cut from Baldwin are just that, jobs. However, these jobs are people with families, lives and a future. Did Baldwin Filters and Eaton try their hardest to avoid lay offs?

Baldwin Filters and Eaton should have instated work sharing in order to keep their trained employees working and keep the morale of their company high. Work sharing is a program that is popular in California, Japan and most European countries. These places have kept their employees working instead of laying them off. Employees at Toyota, Mazda and Nissan in Japan now share jobs and work less than 40 hours a week, but are happy to still be employed.

There was no evidence found that Baldwin or Eaton thought about instating work sharing when the lay offs occurred.

Work sharing is meant to equally share the pain of coping with the flailing economy. If it was not for work sharing in other states, the unemployment rate of the United States would be much higher. Is it better to work about 32 hours a week, or be laid off in a recession?

Although work sharing was not used during the most recent layoffs at Baldwin and Eaton, it must be looked at for any future lay offs. Work sharing would have allowed Schwartz and all other laid off Kearney and surrounding area residents a glimmer of hope in our current recession. Instead of Schwartz almost losing his house due to being laid off, Schwartz could have worked at least 32 hours a week. We can’t sit back and let the unemployment rate of Kearney rise when there is a solution. Work sharing would allow people like Schwartz to continue working and not be left jobless and hopeless.