[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 26 (Friday, February 26, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E261-E262]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           ``ECONOMIC RESEARCH SUGGESTS LAYING OFF LAYOFFS''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, February 26, 2010

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, at my recent visit to a 
very important charitable organization known as Gifts to Give, in New 
Bedford, Massachusetts, I had a conversation with Dr. Steve Russell, 
who is the Superintendent of Schools in the town of Dartmouth. Gifts to 
Give, by the way, is an extremely creative organization that collects 
toys and other items important for children and distributes them to 
children in need. Stating it the way I have does not do justice to the 
extraordinarily creative, interactive organization known as Gifts to 
Give, and I am deeply impressed with the work of Jim Stevens, who has 
created something that benefits both the donors and the recipients 
alike, and gives people an extraordinary opportunity to engage in the 
most rewarding form of community service.
  During my conversation with Dr. Russell, he handed me a copy of an 
article that had appeared in Newsweek on February 15th, written by 
Barbara Pfeffer. In the article, Professor Pfeffer makes a compelling 
case, drawing on academic research as well as sound argument, that 
reliance on layoffs, as a way of dealing with short-term economic 
distress for companies, is not only socially damaging, but economically 
unwise as well.
  Madam Speaker, it is too long an article to be printed here entirely, 
so I did want to give

[[Page E262]]

a summary and to recommend that people read the entire article.
  Dr. Pfeffer notes that ``In the last decade, layoffs have become 
America's export to the world. At a conference in Stockholm a few years 
ago, business executives told me,'' she noted, ``that to become as 
competitive as America, Sweden needed to make it easier to lay people 
off . . . There are daily calls for European countries to follow the 
U.S. and make labor markets more `flexible.' But the more you examine 
this universally accepted tactic of modern management, the more 
wrongheaded it seems to be.''
  Professor Pfeffer goes on to note ``that research paints a fairly 
consistent picture: layoffs don't work.'' And the article closes in a 
strong, coherent summary, ``Layoffs are mostly bad for companies, 
harmful for the economy, and devastating for employees . . . There is 
substantial research literature in fields from epidemiology to 
organizational behavior documenting these effects. The damage from 
overzealous downsizing will linger even as the economy recovers. . . 
.''
  Madam Speaker, I thank Dr. Russell for calling this to my attention, 
and I commend to my colleagues a reading of this very important 
article.

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