Of course there will be more layoffs in 2018, 2019, 2020 and beyond. Nike is witnessing its own bonfire of the vanities. It wallowed in excess for years and is now collapsing under the weight of its own arrogance. Nike's only responses is to chase endorsements with recycled powerpoints, launch the umptenth varient of the same tired product and waste millions supporting someone else's political agenda. Nike inks a billion dollar contract for a single aging athlete while its competitors sign all the new talent. Nike supports millionaire ballers who bemoan their contrived injustice while driving their luxury cars and beating their wives. Nike celebrates groups whose sole mission is to divide our country and destroy our democracy. Nike builds new factories run by robots in other countries but declares it can't afford to manufacture in America because of the high cost of labor. Nike lays off thousands while erecting monuments to the egos of its executives. Nike discarded its best and brightest and outsourced its future to countries that steal from it without hesitation or remorse. Nike maintains a facade of inclusion while purging its ranks of anyone who fails to conform to its cultural dictates. Too old, too tenured, too conservative, too white, too American, etc., all forced out. All the while its stock withers as its competitors push it out of the arena. Nike will soon find itself sitting in the cheap seats watching someone else play a game they once owned. Those who are remaining will hold out hope for a pittance of a severance. Nike will only have itself to blame but will cast the blame elsewhere, just like their failed presidential candidate. What happened?
1 reply
The short version is this: As a brand-new college grad (or other youngster new to the work force), you haven’t yet had the chance to get laid-off and blacklisted forever. Every year that you work (the older you get), the greater your chances of having been blacklisted forever. It’s that simple!
Caveats and Details.
This kind of logic (here and below) would not find traction in court for a smaller employer. So you have 15 employees, and you forever blacklist those who you lay off? Big deal. Not that much impact.
You have thousands of employees, and sometimes hundreds of thousands in a given metro area? Your workers are a HUGE fraction of the local community, especially in certain specialized job areas? Your laid-off older folks will have to move long distances to find new work? NOW we’re talking!
But the biggest caveat here is we’re talking “probabilities”. The offending companies (when accused) will doubtlessly try to pull the following garbage: “Oh, no, there’s nothing that’s “probabalistic” or random about our performance reviews and resulting selections for layoffs; They are all 100 percent totally factual and rational and objective. No subjectivity involved! None at all!” . Unless your workers are driving “X” measurable lug nuts per day… Those kinds of jobs being long-gone in the USA today… Then this is just flat-out not true! Let’s say, for example, that you are trying to persuade a jury of this… (Make sure your selected jurors have worked for a boss at some time in their lives). Any rational common-sense juror will KNOW that there’s subjectivity in performance reviews! So dealing with “the probability of your getting laid off” (alluding to some randomness) is NOT an unrealistic assumption (or approximation), and most jurors will KNOW this!
Before doing the math, for you TOTAL geeks, we are dealing with “prior” probabilities here… The perspective of a brand-new hire, who does NOT know when the axe will eventually fall. Yearly “posterior” probabilities are not of much interest… Say the axe-chopping-rate is 1percent per year. After each year passes, it is still 1% for the next year, assuming you’ve not gotten chopped yet… Otherwise you’ve already been chopped, and your probability is 100% ! That’s not of much interest…
Assume 1% then… 99% chance you still have your job one year from now. 5 years from now, it becomes 100% minus (0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99) or 100% minus (0.99 to the fifth power), or 95%.
If you run the numbers, it looks about like this:
Rate 1 yr 5 yrs 10 yr 15 yr 20 yr 30 years (Prob. Of Still Have Job)
99% 99% 95% 90% 86% 82% 75%
98% 98% 90% 82% 75% 67% 55%
97% 97% 86% 75% 64% 54% 40%
96% 96% 82% 66% 54% 44% 29%
95% 95% 77% 60% 46% 36% 21%
(That last 21% means you’d have a 79 chance of being laid off by then).
Does anyone know the current rough numbers of employees v/s how many are laid off every year, for a sample company? That would give us a rough “probability” of being laid off…