An email at night. Not needed anymore. Your account will be blocked in a few minutes, and you won’t be able to open your email. Your office access card is now out of sync. You are fired. Without your employer informing you why, you can’t talk to your coworkers or even take the personal stuff you left at work. This is the sad end of the mass layoffs that shook the tech industry in the US and Europe at the end of last year. So far, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon have laid off over 120,000 workers—about the size of a small town—leaving tech employees shocked. The Economics of Layoffs in Tech sheds light on the financial reasons behind these cuts.
They are in the US (where the working law is usually far less secure than in Europe). They had been riding a wave of prosperity recently, They had high pay, many chances to work from home, and different salary bonuses that let them live a life that most people would envy. However, they also had to deal with a lot of problems because their jobs were under a lot of stress most of the time, which led to things like stress and burnout syndrome. In the same way, these kinds of layoffs threaten the growing movement to unionize big digital companies. Unions like the Tech Workers Coalition and the Communication.
Impact on the economy
Workers of America have had some success in the previous several years with their Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. Such advances arose when workers around the world came together to fight issues like sexual harassment at work, the lack of diversity in the business, and the development of military technologies. Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of the UNI Global Union, whose members helped organize tech workers in the industry said that it is clearer than ever that there is no way to fight against layoffs without a union, no matter how much you make. The layoffs in Europe aren’t as bad.
The Economics of Layoffs in Tech. As they are in the US thus far. Europe has made it impossible for computer businesses to do the worst things, like locking staff out of workplaces without punishment, because its labor rules are considerably tighter. But the latest wave of layoffs is also reaching tech offices in European cities like Dublin, Berlin, London, and others. In Switzerland, the layoffs led to a reaction, and workers began to organize.
Work-from-home and office dynamics
The workers launched the strike, but the Swiss union Syndicom is acting as their voice since they are afraid of being punished. Fitze adds that this uncertainty isn’t only about money. The Zurich division gets work visas for Ukrainian and Russian workers. The first one may be sent back to an open war zone to be killed, and the second one could be recruited. The current push to organize is based on the fact that workers have formed unions in the past, but there is no official union at the Google office in Zurich. In 2018, there was another strike like this one, as Google workers all across the world condemned sexual.
Others will include the workers in Zurich, who will have to wait for now. Google management now has to talk to the works council because of Swiss law. This isn’t the first or last strike that workers at Google Zurich have tried to do, though. Fitze says that the foundation is building a network. The workers know they can count on their union. I don’t think this will be simple to forget. The fact that most of the big internet companies are still making huge profits is what is causing the huge wave of injustice. This statistic shows that these corporations are ready.
Vacancy and office returns
The Economics of Layoffs in Tech. To make huge layoffs, which makes people wonder what other factors might be at play. Hoffman says it’s hard to believe that Alphabet, a huge corporation, would fire its workers in this fashion. Money has not been the issue. There was no thought given to other options besides layoffs. The tech companies are just copying each other. The Verge, a site that covers technology news, says that layoffs at big tech businesses may be related to investors demands to make the most of the personnel after the hiring process because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tech companies may still make a lot of money, but the amount of money they make per employee has gone down. Now, this, along with the predictions of the coming recession, may have given rise to the belief that huge layoffs are necessary, which may have made everyone copy everyone other. But it could be for a different motive that has nothing to do with money or the economy to keep a workforce that is miserable. In the last several years, the pay of some workers in the computer industry, especially programmers, has gone up a lot. At the same time more and more people are joining unions.
Conclusion
Maybe bosses are using layoffs to bring back discipline by making their employees scared at work. The strength of workers has led to small but real wins in the tech industry, which has always been against unions. These kinds of redundancy could hurt unionization. Merchant says that these layoffs are random and bad for business, at least based on what the workers in this field told him. The workers don’t get it. The layoffs are haphazard, and they change whole areas without thinking about how they will affect operations. A lot of individuals who had been promoted and were doing a great job were let go.
The Economics of Layoffs in Tech. But there might be another motivation that has nothing to do with money or business: to keep a restless workforce calm. In the past few years, certain computer workers’ pay has gone through the roof, notably programmers. Unionization is also becoming more and more widespread. These layoffs may be a way for bosses to scare people and bring order back to their workplaces. Workers’ influence has led to some tiny but real improvements in the IT industry which has always been fiercely anti-union. These layoffs could make it harder for workers to unionize.
