Quotes & Sayings About Layoffs

Smart development builds on a region's own skills, resources and local businesses. Dumb growth invites a big corporation in, surrenders control and profits to a distant headquarters, undercuts local manufacturers, and risks layoffs without warning. — Donella Meadows

While it is not always clear what is fair, and people's judgments of fairness can be biased by their self-interest, there is a growing sense that the present disparity in wages is unfair. When executives argue that wages have to be reduced or that there have to be layoffs in order for corporations to compete, but simultaneously increase their own pay, workers rightly consider that what is going on is unfair. That will affect their effort today, their loyalty to the firm, their willingness to cooperate with others, and their willingness to invest in its future. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Usually when there are a lot of layoffs, like in 2008 and 2009, business creation tends to spike. But that didn't happen right away, partly because people trying to start a business couldn't get credit. — Brad D. Smith

Pension reform can be hard to talk about. In the long run, reform now means fewer demands for layoffs and less draconian measures in the future. It's in the best interest of all Californians to fix this system now. — Jerry Brown

AUGUST 5, 1981. That's the date it became official. It's rare that we can point to an exact date when a business theory or idea becomes an accepted practice. But in the case of mass layoffs, we can. August 5, 1981, was the day President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers. — Simon Sinek

Without the heavy set aristocratic man snoring away on his side of the bed, without the fresh-eyed child whose hair ribbon needs retying; without the conversation at meals and the hearty appetites and getting dressed for church on time; without the tears of laughter or the worry about making both ends meet, the unpaid bills, the layoffs, both seasonal and unexpected; without the toys that have to picked up lest somebody trip over them, and the seven shirts that have to be washed and ironed, one for every day in the week; without the scraped knee and the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings that need to be cleared up, the voices calling for her so that she is perpetually having to stop what she is doing and go see what they want - without all this, what have you? A mystery: How is it that she didn't realize it was going to last such a short time? — William Maxwell

But I don't want massive layoffs of anyone - public or private. We are planning on shrinking government through attrition and reform, not through random pink slips. — Scott Walker

You cannot cheat with the law of conservation of violence: all violence is paid for, and for example, the structural violence exerted by the financial markets, in the form of layoffs, loss of security, etc., is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of minor and major everyday acts of violence. — Pierre Bourdieu

Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them. — Howard Zinn

I'm OK with firing people when they fuck up, but canning them when they've done nothing wrong - that's painful. [on the layoffs needed after 9/11 hit the business] — Marcus Samuelsson

I believe God uses a layoff as sort of a blow torch, turning up the heat in our lives, so we can not only "see the forest for the trees", but to help burn off wrong mindsets, unconfessed sin, and help us get back on the right path with Him. Layoffs are not fun, but they can and will produce much good in your life, if you respond to God and seek what it is, He is asking you to do, or not do, give, walk away from, walk towards, etc. As one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Charles Stanley, always says, "God is up to something good in your life! — Mary Aucoin Kaarto

Today's business and health care climate may not be pleasant. Cutbacks, pay cuts and layoffs do not make anyone's job easy. But that does not mean that the humor need stop. — Allen Klein

I watch too much cable, I admit. Day after day it gets frustrating. Yesterday I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout - but I know that's not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about. — Robert Gibbs

Change is difficult, but it can be managed when you stay aware of the power of your choices, even if it's simply your attitude. — Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War. — Kurt Vonnegut

If you want to teach a kid a life skill, teach him reality. Give him a picture of what the world will throw his way. Even the rich and famous have their share of heartache and loss. People go broke. People get sick. Loved ones die. There are setbacks, cutbacks, rollbacks, buyouts, layoffs, bankruptcies. Is it fair to reward a kid for everything he does until he's eighteen, filling his room with trophies regardless how he performs, and then find him shocked the first time he fails a course or loses a girlfriend or gets fired from a job? — Mike Matheny

But enough daydreaming. Our desks were waiting, we had work to do. And work was everything. We liked to think it was family, it was God, it was following football on Sundays, it was shopping with the girls or a strong drink on Saturday night, that it was love, that it was sex, that it was keeping our eye on retirement. But at two in the afternoon with bills to pay and layoffs hovering over us, it was all about the work. — Joshua Ferris

The obvious liberal rejoinders come to mind: What about the child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head? And did my [fired white-collar workers] boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It seems inexcusably cruel to tell people who have reach some kind of personal nadir that their probem is entirely of their own making ... — Barbara Ehrenreich

The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and relatives. Layoffs were about efficiency, sales figures for raw materials or refrigerators. — Susan Straight

If you really want to kill morale, have layoffs every two months for the next two years. — Tom Peters

what could be its biggest round of layoffs in history. — Anonymous

I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-'70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

So all of these companies that are going for the big growth, if it continues for any length of time, will outlast their resources and outlast their customers and go belly-up. And that's why these huge companies have massive layoffs all the time. — Yvon Chouinard

Things are bad in 2001 at Yahoo. There's been layoffs, restructuring, lots of people left. — Dave Goldberg

How we respond to something is just as important - if not more important - than our initial reaction. — Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

There's ups and downs with boxing, layoffs are part of the sport and they can either help or hurt a guy. — Floyd Mayweather Jr.

A fun thing to do to let off steam after layoffs began was to go into someone's office and send an email from their computer addressed to the entire agency. It might say something simple like "My name is Shaw-NEE! You are captured, Ha! I poopie I poopie I poopie." People came in in the morning and their reaction was so varied.
Jim Jackers read it and immediately sent out an email that we read, "Obviously someone come into my office last night and compossed an email in my name and sent it out to everyone. I apologise for any inconvenience or offence, although it wasn't my fault, and I would appreciate from whoever did this a public apology. I have read that email five times now and I still don't understand it. — Joshua Ferris

I think the state has some serious problems. Just look at the layoffs going on across the state, not just in Chicago. It affects the middle class. It pushes people down. — Richard M. Daley

He's not as bad as everyone makes out. He might buy venerable old companies and strip their assets, causing numerous layoffs and the odd corporate suicide or two, but that's business. Inside, he's a big teddy bear. — Jasper Fforde

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I see young quarterbacks just coming into the league, and they're throwing screens and layoffs right away. As funny as this might sound, I really learned a lot by going downfield, even in tight coverage. — Peyton Manning

Poet's Work
Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade
I learned
to sit at desk
and condense
No layoffs
from this
condensery — Lorine Niedecker

A recession is very bad for publicly traded companies, but it's the best time for startups. When you have massive layoffs, there's more competition for available jobs, which means that an entrepreneur can hire freelancers at a lower cost. — Timothy Ferriss

Most companies that go through layoffs are never the same. They don't recover because trust is broken. And if you're not honest at the point where you're breaking trust anyway, you will never recover. — Ben Horowitz