An open letter to the stockholders of Reed Elsevier
2 June 1996
Dear stockholders of Reed Elsevier,
When you recently bought Lexis-Nexis from the Mead Corporation, you made the decision to close several smaller offices, including the branch office in Arlington, VA, where my boyfriend worked. He had been a loyal, hardworking member of Lexis-Nexis for over a decade; and to be sure, Lexis-Nexis offered to relocate him to the main office in Dayton, Ohio. My boyfriend was faced with a terrible choice: he had to either move back to Ohio, thus giving up the social support network for Deaf people which exists in Washington but not in Ohio, as well as sacrificing his love for me for the sake of his career (I am in school and cannot move for several more years). His other choice was to take the six-month severance package and to try his best to find a new job on the east coast before that period ran out. After much tortured deliberation, he decided to go the latter route.
Since last October, my boyfriend has made every conceivable effort to find a new job. He had bought the _Washington Post_ and the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ every Sunday and has carefully studied the ads, making phone calls and faxing resumes on every promising lead, and even on leads which did not seem so promising. He has gone to every job fair with a neatly pressed suit and a folder of resumes, and has cheerfully sold his list of skills to countless recruiters. He has kept a close eye on the jobs listed on the Internet, acting on each lead he has discovered. Although he'd prefer to have a permanent job, he's had several consulting firms trying to match his job skills to temporary assignments. He's networked with friends and has followed each hint of a lead which he has unearthed. If there's any avenue in his search which he's failed to pursue, it is certainly not visible to me. He's come frustratingly close several times to landing a job, but each time it has failed to pan out.
My boyfriend's severance package has run out, and he has been forced to accept the shame of going on unemployment. It is enough to keep food on his table for another 25 weeks, but it is not enough for him to make the payments on his house and car. As financially careful as he is, he has no choice but to use his credit cards to make ends meet. His debts inch upward, and within a few weeks or months he may default on his loans, thus losing the house and car he has worked for.
My boyfriend cannot stand the repeated embarrassment of having to tell his friends that he has not found a job, and is becoming a social recluse. He fears that his friends will think him lazy for not having made a better effort to find employment. He can't stand to have one more person tell him to keep his chin up. His sleep is unrefreshing, and he wakes up with a feeling of hopelessness and worthlessness. He continues to diligently send out resumes and go to job fairs, but he does so mechanically, no longer able to hope that this next lead will be the one that lands him a job. I assure him that his reactions to his situation are entirely natural; he is not lazy or worthless. But this assurance, which is all I can give him, does not give him a job.
Why did you decide to close down the Arlington branch office of Lexis-Nexis? Was Lexis-Nexis losing money? I haven't seen a financial statement from Lexis-Nexis, but it would surprise me greatly to learn that the company was not turning a profit. So why shut down the Arlington office and bring such potential devastation to the individuals who had worked there? I assume that you put forward the usual public relations about a "leaner, meaner, more competitive company," about "cost-effectiveness" and "efficiency", and about "preparing now for the challenges of the next decade". But the obvious reason why you chose to devastate the lives of long-time, loyal employees was that you could increase your personal profit by eliminating some of those pesky salaries from the quarterly financial statement. You knew that many of the employees would be unable for various reasons to accept the offer of relocation to Dayton. Was your own standard of living one of such destitution that you had to make this hard choice to be able to survive? Were you unable to put daily meals on your family's table?
The suffering your success has caused, as far as I can tell, is safely out of your view. As you plan the addition to your house, as you put your next meal at a good restaurant on your expense account, as you enjoy the flight to your next business meeting, I hope that you will at least take a moment to reflect on the suffering of others which has been the price of your success. As you vacation in your summer house, as you generously take your friends out for a pleasant day on your boat, as you proudly drive the third antique car in your collection, I hope that you will at least have thoughts of gratitude for those who have lost their only house and car for your sake.
I have a certain fondness for my boyfriend, and so I have used him to illustrate what happens when the owners of companies cease to feel any responsibility toward their employees. Those human beings are simply machines, numbers on a cost sheet; and you can scrap them when they cease to produce the profit margin you would prefer. This abdication of responsibility is not endemic to Reed Elsevier; it is epidemic among the executives of the modern international business world.
For example, when AT& T recently chose to lay off thousands of employees, was it because AT& T was facing imminent financial collapse? Was there _no way_ for AT& T to save the livelihood of the thousands of men and women who had put their lives into making America's communication systems function so efficiently? Oh, certainly, there was once again the usual propaganda about "downsizing," about "a leaner, meaner, more competitive AT& T." But it's obvious to any casual observer that AT& T firmly holds the vastly largest market share in telecommunications, and has a loyal customer base in spite of slightly higher tolls. AT& T could have gotten along without laying anybody off. But the owners of AT& T knew that they could increase their personal profit by removing the salaries of several thousand employees from AT& T's budget. Certainly, one can justify this greed: the former employees will surely be clever enough to find other jobs; and even if the new jobs pay substantially less, those individuals can surely rise to the challenge of living under reduced circumstances. And for those who bust their asses trying to find a job and fail, thus becoming unable to provide for those in their responsibility and losing all they have worked for-- well, nobody ever said that life is fair. Being a leader in society means that you have to make hard decisions, after all.
There are presently no laws to prevent you from so destroying lives in the pursuit of ever greater personal wealth. You are not required to submit a report of financial crisis to any government agency to justify your layoffs, and there is no civil or criminal penalty for your unnecessary devastation of lives. There is no cap on the personal wealth which an individual or family may acquire. The worst price you might pay for your actions is some temporary public relations discomfort. Society entrusts to your ownership the means of production which all of us need to survive, and yet you control those means not benevolently, but rather to further your own ends. Do you have _any_ sense of responsibility to those who have lifted you up? Sixty percent of America's wealth is in the hands of ten percent of the population, and there is every indication that this absurd concentration of wealth is increasing.
I call on you to reconsider your abdication of moral responsibility, and to consider the consequences which your actions have on your fellow human beings. Perhaps my boyfriend will find a job sooner or later, but it does not look like it will happen before he is ruined.
Sincerely,
Sean Crist
Update: On 17 July 1996, Dennis finally got a job. Hooray! I'm still leaving this letter posted, however, since there are still many suffering because of the kind of irresponsibility I describe.