COLUMN: The cold realities of capitalism

From Mark Fiore's, "The Right Stuff," Fall '99 From Mark Fiore's, "The Right Stuff," Fall '99In the era of cost-cutting and outsourcing, very few corporations guarantee indefinite job security for their employees. On the contrary, "employment at will" -- the notion that employees may be fired at any time, even without cause -- pervades American society today. Just look at the deluge of layoffs at some of the nation's largest companies last year. Despite such facts of life, employees of the Faculty Club -- and indeed most University staff members who have had their jobs put in jeopardy -- naively feel they deserve special treatment. In the most recent assault on capitalism, 35 Faculty Club workers and their union, Local 274, have lambasted the University for not guaranteeing their jobs when the Faculty Club comes under new management with its move to Doubletree Hotels' Inn at Penn. Robert Bosworth, a 41-year-old employee who has worked at the Faculty Club for nine years, said in January of University officials, "They talk about how they care about people but now they want to kick us out in the street." Local 274 President Patrick Coughlan added: "This is insanity. They're taking average working people, throwing them out of their job and then telling them that they can reapply for the same job." Coughlan and those he represents are missing the point of business. Like it or not, the University, as with any corporation, has little responsibility to its employees. If the University and its prime consumers -- the students -- are best served by reducing payrolls, then by all means the University should seek such cost-saving options. At times, that may result in layoffs. In an ideal world, cost-cutting would not affect job security -- but idealism is for fools. And given the impossibility of such an outcome, the University has bent over backwards to accommodate the Faculty Club workers. Executive Vice President John Fry announced late last month that Doubletree Hotels will offer employment to 70 percent of the Faculty Club's full-time employees. Those same workers will also receive tuition benefits almost identical to those offered to University employees -- even though the Faculty Club workers will no longer be employed by the University. These new promises come on top of a reasonable offer made to the union in October -- a deal that included, among other benefits, a 3 percent wage increase to all non-tipped Club employees and a union pension fund increase. Yet while the University has worked diligently to resolve the dispute, the Faculty Club employees and their union have engaged in immature and counter-productive games, often resorting to petty rhetoric. Acting like they were barely out of elementary school, several union members staged a protest during a January 18 basketball game at the Palestra. The workers distributed absurd flyers entitled, "U of P Elite Trying to Put Workers In the Street" and held banners with slogans like, "U of P -- Bad Call Ejecting Faculty Club Workers." Union members have also engaged in a relentless campaign for the sympathy vote, whining about their concerns at every opportunity. Take, for example, Bosworth's January remarks, "I want my job. We've got families, mortgages." Despite those concerns, the union has refused to respond to the University's offers for the past six months. With such behavior, it seems only right that the Faculty Club jobs have been placed in limbo. Perhaps if the Club's employees get down to business at the negotiating table, they will find that they just might have a job come September, when the Faculty Club opens in the Inn at Penn. If they do not receive a job, however, they should realize that business is business. And there's little room for warm fuzzies in business.