22013
On May 2, 2013 Pope Francis posted the following on Twitter:
@Pontifex: My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost.
I found the comment a bit strange because of the assumption that unemployment is caused by profit at any cost. If an organization lays off workers that are needed to meet customer demands, profit and perhaps worse will suffer. Does the Pope believe that workers who are not needed should be employed anyway?
While I agree that companies can sometimes do a much better job with workforce planning and thereby hopefully minimizing layoffs in stressful times, is it realistic to think that somehow employers are also social organizations? Isn’t the quest for retaining jobs at any cost a major contributor to the economic ills of Europe and in instances like General Motors and others with what some may see as overly generous and in the long run detrimental work rules?
What I found shocking when reading the Pope’s twitter were the comments posted in reply. There were many gross and obnoxious and others disrespectful. I won’t repeat them here but you may want to read the Tweet and see how strange this world has become.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
With all due respect I must say I tend to see the Pope’spoint. The company both you and I worked for is actually a perfect example. Back when I was hired in 1964 there were nearly 14k employees according to those old ’employee information cards’ the organization put out every year. By the time I left in 1996 there were just over 8k . Now I know computers negated the need for some of the change in numbers but I will add that instead of full time employees who earned pensions and had good benefits the compny hired many many old employees back as temps who were paid a generous hourly rate through some temp agency which by the way collected a hefty premium to that hourly rate but the company had no benefits to pay and so ultimately it saved money. Given these facts I certainly can identify with the Pope’s comments about corporate profit. O course now the company is needing to increase employment again as the brain drain has shown it’s deficit in the firm because many younger folks left and went to other entities seeing no reason to entrust their futures to the company which chose to let many good employees go. How many people do you know who worked for firms where there once were three people doing jobs now done by one employee who is stressed and unable to really perform all the tasks of the other two and so does a slipshod job just to keep any fires from burning. You tell me how many places where the quest to maximize profit has not decimated the ranks and then tell me why there is no loyalty amongst employees . They are in many instances pawns on a chess board and so corporate fealty is a thing of the past. No I really think the Pope is speaking more truth than social engineering.
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But it seems to me you can only cut staff to optimum efficiency or you can’t operate and hence no profit to worry about. The purpose of business is to make profit not be a social agency. If a company can operate effectively with 8,000 rather than ten or even fifteen doesn’t it have an obligation to do so?
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For starters I still have great respect for the company I worked for for 32 years. It is one of the better ones. That having been stated I will still counter that ‘to operate at optimum efficiency’ is a fuzzy notion. By some accounts one might say the company is at optimum efficiency and if you look at service reliablility and restoration certainly I would agree. However when you investigate billing and several other aspects of customer service mostly dealing in the non-routine issues of billing irregularities, ancilliary services like meter change , service updgrades the horror stories abound. These are the details that upper management does not focus on but which in the final analysis portray the total picture of a great company as opposed to a good one.
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