When losing your job is supposed to be good for you

Salesforce.com, an American IT company located in Fredericton, which received some of our hard earned tax dollars in wage subsidies, has dumped part of its workforce.

Many workers lost their source of livelihood but their layoffs are now being presented as a good thing for them. Comments from spokespersons for IT companies are telling us that these workers are so much in demand in our region that they will not be unemployed for long, other IT companies are just waiting to offer them a job. That is great.

But these workers were living in Fredericton, had a house or an apartment, parents, a circle of friends, a social life, co-workers. Some probably had a partner with a job or children preparing to go to school. Are we saying they can just all of a sudden sell their house, uproot their family and move? Are we saying, because these workers are in the IT workforce, the so-called new economy, they must not aspire to a full-time year round job with social benefits and a chance to build a pension plan for their retirement? Do we expect them to always be at the mercy of cloudy employers like Salesforces.com who are more interested in gobbling up more competitors than in developing their workforce in a province like ours?

I hope these workers find another job quickly but I get riled up when spokespersons from the business community are trying to convince us that losing your job is in the workers’ best interest.