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This chapter recounts the events that affected Noyce's life and Intel during the 1970s. Topics covered include the meteoric rise of Intel, Noyce's wealth, Noyce extra-marital affair and the breakup of his marriage, and the decline of the semiconductor industry and the resulting mass layoffs.

Explores the link between corporate governance and accounting using the US cross-listing of Daimler-Benz as an example. The changes in Daimler’s corporate governance around the cross-listing, essentially grafting elements of a shareholder value model onto its stakeholder structure, is highlighted, and the resulting changes in its approach to financial reporting is discussed. The case study highlights the economic forces that shape accounting practice and drive accounting harmonization around the world. The eight sections of the chapter are: Introduction; Background to the events of the case; Code-law and common-law models of corporate governance, financial reporting, and disclosure; Some properties of the German institutional structure; Daimler’s 1993 events: Disclosing a loss, hidden reserves, NYSE listing, US GAAP reporting, plant closing, and employee layoffs; Daimler-Benz’s motives; Embracing shareholder value; and Limitations, outcomes, and risks.

Generally, unions bargain over wages and manning ratios. They do not bargain on total employment for the reason than in most normal cases (wherein new workers are hired), the employment level is irrelevant to existing labourers. However, where jobs are being lost, there is sometimes bargaining over layoffs. Layoffs are generally left to management discretion — and the wage bargain takes the risk of layoffs into consideration. From the firm's perspective, when the bargained wage is higher, the more powerful the labour union is, the less elastic is the demand for labour. The higher the wage, the lower the unemployment level is.

This chapter reveals how even upper-rank workers are not exempt from layoffs, financial insecurity, and the anxiety of working in a hit-driven industry. While being bought out by Digital Creatives initially provided financial security for Studio Desire's game developers, Digital Creatives' hasty, adverse investment decisions destabilized their flagship studio. When Digital Creatives eventually declared bankruptcy, Studio Desire's developers found themselves working in a perpetual-growth machine without much morale. The chapter then addresses workers' indifference toward unionization. Game developers' perception of creative work—that one needs to think outside the box, that creative work is decidedly different from blue-collar work, and that therefore unions would not be helpful—is socially structured. Yet they seem to be indifferent to facing and managing risk in more collective ways.

After earning the nickname "The Arsenal of Democracy" during WWII, Detroit’s auto plants experienced production disruptions during postwar reconversion to civilian production. This meant significant layoffs, especially for women autoworkers. Shortages of crucial materials, often caused by steel strikes and coal strikes, made auto employment sporadic. Authorized strikes in the auto industry, including the 1946 GM strike called by Walter Reuther, and unauthorized "wildcat" strikes, all contributed to ongoing instability. Cold weather, hot weather, and federal credit regulations played roles as well. As a result, autoworkers experienced persistent layoffs even though auto companies managed to earn profits during the early postwar years. By late 1948, no one in the industry thought that the postwar boom had arrived.

The 1950 GM-UAW contract, called "The Treaty of Detroit" by Fortune magazine, dominates accounts of postwar U.S. labor history because it seemed to ensure steady employment, increasing wages, and improved benefits, like pensions, for autoworkers. But the Treaty of Detroit and comparable contracts with Chrysler and Ford were efforts to achieve some semblance of stability and predictability in a volatile industry, not the confirmation and continued promise of the postwar boom. The contracts were signed after a year of national recession, marked by intensifying competition in the auto industry, with production speedups and strikes, new efforts at automation (the replacement of jobs with machinery), national coal and steel strikes, and chronic layoffs for autoworkers. The Korean War led to further instability.

During the Korean War, autoworkers experienced persistent layoffs while inflation increased the cost of living. Government allocations of raw materials did not favor the auto industry, and most military contracts did not to go to Detroit factories. Despite dire warnings from industrialists, union leaders, and civic officials, tens of thousands of people, motivated by memories of Detroit as the Arsenal of Democracy during WWII, migrated to the city. At one point in 1952, 10 percent of all unemployment in the nation was in metro-Detroit. Then the 1952 steel strike eliminated auto production. In the background, automation continued to eliminate jobs. Nevertheless, the auto industry revived in late 1952 and there was suddenly a labor shortage.

During the 1954 recession, tens of thousands of Detroit autoworkers experienced prolonged layoffs and relied on unemployment pay and secondary jobs. Industry officials and civic leaders denied that there was a recession, blamed any problems on negative thinking, and tried to convince the public that volatility in the auto industry was normal and of no great concern. Many Detroiters blamed working women and southern white migrants for high unemployment. Automation contributed to joblessness, while some UAW skilled workers benefited from building the new machinery. The demise of independent automakers and local auto suppliers resulted in thousands of additional lost jobs. While many autoworkers returned to work late in the year, most remained concerned about how long the upswing would last.

The year 1955 is the template for claims that the decade was a golden age for autoworkers. It began with auto plants operating at or near capacity, with multiple shifts. Business leaders predicted that the good times would last indefinitely. Nevertheless, unemployment remained high, and UAW leaders feared that excessive production early in the year would mean layoffs by fall. While production hummed at record rates, automakers and the UAW engaged in contract negotiations, with union leaders demanding a Guaranteed Annual Wage. Instead, the two sides settled on Supplemental Unemployment Benefits. Compared with any other year in the decade, 1955 brought high production, low unemployment, substantial profits for automakers, and steady pay for autoworkers, who were called the new labor aristocracy.

The 1955 production boom resulted in nearly a million unsold vehicles on dealers’ lots. As a result, automakers scaled back production, resulting in widespread, chronic layoffs for autoworkers. Supplemental Unemployment Benefits were of little help because the programs were not fully funded and most unemployed autoworkers did not meet eligibility requirements. Instead, they struggled to cobble together secondary support systems. Many autoworkers had gone into debt during flush times in 1955 and were now saddled with mortgages, rents, or installment payments without regular income. Detroit floundered while the national economy thrived. More accurately, Detroit's working-class residents suffered while wealthier Detroiters shared in the nation's prosperity. Federal officials and automakers blamed autoworkers, with their high wages and generous fringe benefits, for their predicament.

In 1958, conditions in Detroit’s auto industry went from bad to worse. Unemployment often exceeded 15 percent, easily double the national rate. Rampant inflation made things worse. Well over 250,000 Detroiters were out of work most of the year, and for several months more than 300,000 were jobless. UAW contracts with automakers expired that summer, but unlike in 1955, during the 1958 recession the union had no leverage to combat layoffs. Nevertheless, many business leaders insisted that autoworkers had it too good. Desperate times also brought a resurgence of scapegoating, particularly targeting married women autoworkers. Skilled workers were especially upset, as two-thirds of them were laid off by late 1958. Industry forecasts predicted a grim future

Despite the official end of the 1958 recession, massive unemployment persisted for Detroit's autoworkers amidst huge disruptions in production. Safety nets had long since frayed. Most autoworkers exhausted their unemployment benefits and few alternate employment options existed. Unemployed Detroiters lined up wherever there were job openings, no matter the type of work. Ford and GM, however, earned healthy profits, despite shutdowns caused by a national steel strike. The only bright spot in the industry, nationwide, was the trend toward fuel-efficient, compact cars. In mid-1960 the U.S. Department of Labor declared Detroit to be in the "worst-off" category among metropolitan areas. By the end of 1960, auto work remained precarious in the Motor City, and the postwar boom remained elusive.

Youngstown is a difficult place to find hope. Like many cities in the Steel Belt, it has never been the kind of town where most residents drink their morning coffee bright with optimism for the new day, even in the best economic times. If defeat is a possibility in any endeavor of life, it tends to be embraced as the inevitable result. Growing up in Cleveland, Dale Maharidge called this the “can't do” mentality. Mill towns are just that way. Of course, in the days of his youth, there were, relatively speaking, few real problems. So when a true crisis occurred, with the shutdowns and layoffs, this defeatism matured into something far more debilitating. This is true not only in Youngstown but also in much of steel country. An excellent description comes from Abigail Wendle, twenty-three years old, who grew up in Youngstown.

This chapter recounts how Maine's once-great mills lost jobs as the 1990s and 2000s wore on, and demonstrates how frequent layoffs hollowed out once-great institutions and ways of life. It mentions the historic Westbrook Mill, which contracted from over two thousand jobs to only several hundred in the early 2000s and the Great Northern Paper Company's employment at three mills, which shrank by two-thirds over the same period. It also talks about historic mills that hung on after 2000 as private equity companies swooped in and bought the mills using highly leveraged sources of credit. The chapter cites the well-established influx of paper imports from advanced mills subsidized by governments and the shrinking markets for publication papers as the digital reading became widespread. It elaborates how the loss of the well-paid source of rural employment sparked a progressive depopulation of rural towns in Maine.

This chapter examines acts of religious discrimination at various stages of the employment relationship. A worker who intends to pursue a religious discrimination claim against his or her employer may turn to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). When a worker files a charge, the EEOC investigates the allegations of discrimination. That investigation typically leads either to a “for cause” finding (there is reason to believe that the worker was subjected to discriminatory conduct) or a “no cause” finding (there is no reason to believe that the employer engaged in discriminatory conduct). This chapter discusses religious discrimination claims asserted during the employment relationship, focusing on the following areas: hiring and promotions; dress codes, general attire, and personal appearance; work assignments; discipline; wages and benefits; transfers; and layoffs. It also considers a number of court cases that illustrate the problems typically encountered by workers as they pursue their religious discrimination claims before the EEOC and the courts.

This chapter addresses the case of Tolyatti, the country's largest monotown, often referred to as “Russia's Detroit.” It begins by investigating another example of Russia's industrial policy, this time through the automobile sector. The chapter details the rise of Russia's leading alternative union through that sector, and how its strengths and limitations mirrored those of the auto industry. It then focuses on AvtoVAZ, Russia's leading auto factory, located in Tolyatti. Just like the US city of Detroit, Tolyatti, along with AvtoVAZ, has experienced hard times. Indeed, the case of AvtoVAZ seems to provide a counter-example to one of the central claims of this book: massive layoffs took place here without large-scale social unrest, let alone a social explosion. Yet on closer inspection, the chapter finds that the downsizing of AvtoVAZ was accompanied with huge subsidies and considerable state intervention, some of which, rather than easing social tensions, made the situation even more combustible.

This chapter follows Dallas-area job seekers through their layoffs and into the early stages of their job search, examining what appeared to be a surprising lack of anger and anxiety about their new predicament. It outlines the ideology of career management, which represents a historic cultural shift in the mindset of white-collar U.S. workers toward employment, dependency, and security. Perhaps best described as neoliberalism for the organization man set, career management builds on a long history of management theory and American mythologies of meritocratic individualism and masculine agency. It naturalizes the absence of secure, long-term employment, casts the resulting insecurity as an empowering alternative to dependence on a single employer, and prescribes explicitly individualistic, apolitical, pro-market means by which one can best position oneself to succeed in an increasingly global and competitive world.

The transition to a market economy in Poland started in 1990 with radical and comprehensive reforms aimed at eliminating detailed state intervention in both labour and product markets. Increasing competition, restructuring and privatisation necessitated massive layoffs. The government set up social security schemes for workers losing their jobs, but due to public finance constraints the generousness of these schemes was soon substantially reduced. The introduction of market rules into the labour market resulted in increasing income inequality, with a growing wage premium for highly skilled workers. Partly as a response to rising returns to skills and partly due to reforms allowing for the establishment of private education institutions, rapid tertiary education expansion has taken place. Higher education enrolment rates increased more than threefold between 1989 and 2004.