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There’s a huge and ubiquitous problem we’re not talking enough about: mass layoffs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines mass layoffs as 50 or more workers filing for unemployment insurance at a single company during a five-week span. Millions of workers have experienced them over the past several decades. Mass layoffs are driven by Wall Street’s incessant demand for cost-cutting measures to service debt payments and fund stock buybacks. The consequences of ignoring mass layoffs are enormous. Not only do they cause suffering and trauma for working families who experience them, but they are fueling the growth of far right authoritarianism. However, mass layoffs are not inevitable. They are the products of policy choices, and they can be stopped.
This is the argument of an important new book, Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It, by longtime labor educator and author Les Leopold. The book is rooted in extensive research and numerous interviews with workers, and it represents an urgent plea for progressives — and the Democrats — to take the problem of mass layoffs much more seriously.
Leopold is the co-founder and longtime executive director of the Labor Institute, which carries out research, education and trainings aimed at challenging inequality and bridging workplaces and communities. Leopold is also the author of movement classics such as Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice and The Man Who Loved Labor And Hated Work: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi.
