This is from "Fresh Air" program that airs daily on NPR. The host (T. Gross) is interviewing Rick Wartzman, the author of "The 'End Of Loyalty' And The Decline Of Good Jobs In America" - there is a segment on layoffs and GE and Jack Welch are discussed (see below - the link is at the bottom):
GROSS: Jack Welch, who was the longtime CEO of GE, became a corporate superstar. What was his reputation by the time he left?
WARTZMAN: ...some have said that Welch ended up through cuts and attrition and other means getting rid of 170,000 jobs at GE during his tenure. And he became known as Neutron Jack, as I'm sure many of your listeners know, because supposedly he just left the building standing, right? All the people were gone.
And you know, there's a real complication to Welch's story. In many ways, Jack Welch did a lot of good for workers at GE in that he made the company much more of a meritocracy. He was somebody who flattened the organization. GE, when he came in 1980, '81, was a very high-bound, bureaucratic company. And he blew it up, and he made it so that people's ideas were welcome no matter where they were in the enterprise right down to the front lines. He instituted all kinds of programs. Work-Out is one that got a lot of attention - to be able to pull in ideas from anywhere, the best ideas. And that was exciting for many and terrific.
And so in some ways, he's reflective of a time when many companies actually began to engage their workers much more and not just have sort of this top-down management structure. And work for many became more interesting, more exciting. There was more fulfillment in it. But at the same time, this other part of the social contract - namely job security, you know, what you were earning, your benefit levels and things like that - that was all eroding at the same time. And so, you know, Welch came in and downsized to a degree. It was shocking when he first did it, and then that level of downsizing just became kind of normal throughout corporate America.
- Source:
http://www.npr.org/2017/07/05/535626109/the-end-of-loyalty-and-the-decline-of-good-jobs-in-america