Spiked Pieces

Neither the piece immediately below nor the revised version following were published in the April 29 edition of the Voice & Herald. The editor said there were factual mistakes and wouldn’t run either version. I wonder, though, if I’d been commenting on identical events in, say, Topeka if she would not have published it. Ironically the optimist in me says she wouldn’t, but the realist who occasionally emerges thinks she would have.

When on the Morning of the Long Knives the suits descended from their aerie the eleven victims were doing their jobs, as far as I know with dedication and competence. It was not to help them; they were marked for elimination. We are told that budgetary considerations were paramount, that staff had to be cut as funds were down. I’m sure that’s true, as I’m sure that the salaried suits all agreed to take a pay cut in this time of economic distress.

The word on the street is that as the layoffs were announced the victims were immediately escorted out of their building in front of patrons, allowed only to take their personal belongings. No lingering good-byes, no opportunity to ask “why me?” just a security enforced exit. A person with experience in these matters reports that this is how business works and the Alliance is a business. Things have to be done this way to avoid badmouthing, bad morale and general malaise if the fired are not taken away immediately.

At the preschool the children were playing outside when their teacher was told to go upstairs to talk to the manager and hear about the layoff. When she went down to collect her things, with an escort, the kids were inside and saw her leave. There’s a lasting memory for you. “My pre-school teacher got busted. I don’t know what she did but it must have been really, really bad.”

The chief suit, the chairman of the board, responded to public outrage by throwing other people under the proverbial bus. They chose who to terminate, not me, he suggested. He then asked that we feel sorry for the poor souls—for those who chose who would be let go, not the laid off themselves. “Let us all respect the process and the unimaginable burden they had to bear. They acted with compassion, dignity, and respect,” he writes. I wonder who has the greater burden to bear—those fired or those who selected those to be fired. In his explanation of events could not the chairman of the board, a distinguished attorney and political figure in the state have chosen a phrase less offensive to Jewish eyes and ears than “The genesis of that final action…”? Was I the only reader who saw the coincidence of “final action” and “final solution”? And the word “action” of course is the very word used in the 1940s winnowing process. Is there no sensitivity? At all? Maybe not. Here’s what he also says: “Let’s remember who and what we are and focus on our future. We are social justice, lifelong Jewish learning, and loving kindness.” Loving kindness? Escorting dedicated long-term employees out the door as though they were potential criminals? He then concludes with wishes for a happy Passover. I assume that the people who were terminated so suddenly on the Monday before Passover and two weeks before Easter were either Jewish or Christian. Is it a demonstration of loving kindness to let people go before, not after, they celebrate normally joyous holy days with their families? I’m guessing that the Passover Seders in the afflicted homes were glummer than they traditionally are; I’m guessing that Easter Sunday was marred in those homes where Jews showing loving kindness fired Christian workers just before the holiday. Could it not have waited? I guess not. Loving kindness apparently has its limits.

This newspaper is published by the Alliance but is not a house organ. If you are reading this column, you know the truth of that. But I think we failed the public with our headline and sub-headline in the last issue. While in print the story of the firings occupied prime space, right corner above the fold, the on-line version was buried below “Relearning and Rethinking the Passover Saga” and “Israeli Knesset Members Try Listening”. The headline in both was deliberately sanguine despite this metaphorically sanguinary event: “Restructuring at Alliance leads to streamlined efficiencies: Even with staff reductions, no interruption of services is expected.” Our readers deserve better; so do the eleven who were terminated. The remaining staff ought to look into joining a union. It may not save jobs in a period of economic difficulties, but it might at least give the suits pause before they swoop down in such a cavalier fashion with their security guards.

After this was rejected I tried to tone it down and made some “factual” changes, but not enough, she said. No security guards, for instance. Had the opening two sentences of the paragraph above really been true these minor issues would have been resolved in the usual editorial fashion, not by spiking the piece.

This is not the column I wanted you to read. That one was spiked by the editor. She said that my criticism of the Chairman of the Alliance board of directors for his explanation of why and how eleven employees were let go was an ad hominem attack on him. She also said that some of my language was over the top and that that there were factual errors in the piece. She also objected to my contention that the layoffs just before Passover and Easter were poorly timed, pointing out that there is no good time.

As to the first complaint, I can see where she was coming from but I never attacked the man; in fact I respect him. I did think though that his justification for the way employees were treated was disingenuous. As to the second, that some of my criticism was over the top, she was dead on; it was and shouldn’t have been. My facts? Well, I referred to people being fired and she pointed out that firing is for cause; letting go or laying off is for economic reasons and that there were justifiable if unfortunate economic reasons to reduce staff (a point I never contested). That language could have been easily fixed if there were not the other problems. As to the timing of the lay offs, the editor is correct, but so am I. A draw.

I still hold with my closing paragraph which as she did not criticize it I imagine she’ll let stand. I said: “This newspaper is published by the Alliance but is not a house organ. If you are reading this column, you know the truth of that. But I think we failed the public with our headline and sub-headline in the last issue. While in print the story of the [layoffs] occupied prime space, right corner above the fold, the on-line version was buried below ‘Relearning and Rethinking the Passover Saga’ and ‘Israeli Knesset Members Try Listening’. The headline in both was deliberately sanguine despite this metaphorically sanguinary event: ‘Restructuring at Alliance leads to streamlined efficiencies: Even with staff reductions, no interruption of services is expected.’ Our readers deserve better; so do the eleven who were terminated. The remaining staff ought to look into joining a union. It may not save jobs in a period of economic difficulties, but it might at least give the suits pause before they swoop down in such a cavalier fashion with their security guards.”

In 1997 Robert D. Kaplan wrote what has become a famous essay in the Atlantic Monthly. He called it “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” He wrote about how and why democracy always fails in emerging nations with no middle class and no tradition of nationhood, but in advanced industrial societies the principal villain is corporations, those faceless though familiar entities that govern our every moment. They establish their own communities, their own rules, their own police. They have power in the halls of congress and with the presidency and work to maximize profits by becoming global, leaving the workers of their home constituency with scraps. They are the oligarchs of the modern world, the few governing for the benefit of the few. “Neither the Founders nor any of the early modern philosophers ever envisioned that the free market would lead to the concentration of power and resources that many corporate executives already embody,” he writes.

What does this have to do with the way the lay offs at the Alliance were handled? A friend of mine who defended the actions argues that this is how businesses must do things and the Alliance is a business. That may be, but some of us at any rate were working under the assumption that the Alliance was a different kind of business. Yes, the bottom line could not show a deficit, just as no business can. But the idealist in me thinks of Jews as a people apart, a light unto the nations, not a business copying the ruthlessness of corporate others but a people with an ethos allowing them to find ways to do things that must be done more humanely, and then not being disingenuous about it.