Michael Winerip, a long-time reporter at the New York Times, had an excellent piece in last Sunday’s paper detailing the pervasive long-term personal suffering caused by layoffs, focusing on the difficulties of finding  a new job that pays remotely what those affected used to earn.

In a piece called “Time, It Turns Out, Isn’t on Their Side,” Winerip tracks down people he’d interviewed at a job fair a year ago, soon after they had first been laid-off,  to find out how they were doing.

“The short answer is, of the 16 I interviewed again, 9 describe themselves as struggling. Eight continue to be unemployed or are working part-time jobs that pay near minimum wage. Several were so concerned about bias, they did not want to give their ages.”

The frustration expressed by those he interviews – mostly middle aged New Yorkers who used to earn salaries just on either side of $100,000 a year – speaks to the sad reality of the layoff experience chronicled in recent years by researchers such as Hank Farber at Princeton and Till von Wachter at Columbia.

If you lose your job in a layoff, it can lead to what von Wachter describes as “large and persistent earnings losses that last over twenty years.” In fact, as I note in SPARK, depending on how old you are when you lose your job, you may never earn what you used to, even decades in the future and there is little you can do about it.

That’s why the task of creating more jobs which hold out the opportunity for stable employment, of course in return for hard work, shoud be such a high priority for the business community, MBA schools and governments at all levels.

The Lincoln Electric example suggests that it is possible.

The Wall Street Journal has just reviewed Spark, describing Lincoln Electric’s “unusual approach to managing its employees” as an “approach that is all the more striking today against the backdrop of the layoff mania that has claimed more than eight million American jobs since late 2007.”

The Journal’s review ends with former-Xilinx VP Peg Wynn ‘s lament that most CEO’s order layoffs because it’s just easier to do “what everybody else does.” Sad. Too true.

The March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review has just published  a rave review of SPARK.

In its feature book review for March, HBR calls SPARK  “a fascinating depiction of a rare human resource practice in a company with a long and hearty track record—food for thought for the rest of us.”

That’s why I wrote Spark – not to convince others to copy how Lincoln Electric operates, but to convince them that it is possible to successfully run a modern business in a a fiercely competitive economic environment – while ensuring that employees  don’t bear all the risks. In other words, it pays  over the long run to reject the all-too-easy option of pulling the layoff lever whenever times get tough.

Today was my first opportunity to visit Lincoln Electric since the North American publication of Spark. It was a chance to meet again with many of the employees who had spent so much time with me over the past couple of years and many more who kindly lined up to buy copies of the book.

Spark wasn’t written for Lincoln Electric, nor did the firm have any say in how the book turned out. But it was nonetheless extremely gratifying to find that most employees  seem to feel I fairly captured the important elements of their company’s powerful incentive management system.

My hand, however, is sore after signing more than 500 copies of Spark in the tunnel which runs under the factory. It was a great day, from start to finish

Well,  fourteen years after I first heard about Lincoln Electric, Spark is now available through Borders, Amazon.com, Chapters, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers across North America.

I’ll be in Cleveland this week for the US launch of Spark at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Many of the original papers of John and James Lincoln from the early years of the last century are housed here, and I spent many hours reading through them. If you’re in the area, please drop by this Saturday, February 27th, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Over the next few months, I’ll be back and forth between the United States and Canada to talk about the ideas in the book and my belief that we need to support more employers – and employees – who want to develop more secure work environments.

February 22^nd is a long way off – at least in Washington. That’s when the Senate is scheduled to vote on its latest proposed jobs bill.

Pared down to $15 billion from an original $85 billion, this Senate bill hopes to create new jobs or refill positions that had been emptied over the past couple of years. With 8.4 million people unemployed, that’s no small task.

But one part of the proposed legislation also gives hope to those of us who believe that government can play a role in encouraging private sector employers to work harder to keep people at work for as long as possible, not lay them off as soon as financial trouble looms.

The Senate bill offers businesses a $1,000 tax credit for each new worker hired who stays on the job for at least one year. The money would only be paid out to employers after 52 weeks of steady work.

That’s a good start.

It’s true that much of the stimulus money is targeted on building infrastructure, where construction jobs are traditionally short-term. Critics are quick to argue that this incentive can’t help make those kinds of jobs last longer because it’s a seasonal industry, by nature.

Yet this is the time to challenge what has become the default position for too many senior executives across the economy: in tough times, cutting workers is a quick way to help the bottom line.  Government needs to help change that attitude.

This idea is not new – or radical. In the depths of the Great Depression, Washington and 40 state governments offered tax breaks and other financial incentives to employers who promised – and lived up to the promises – of steady work.

Another possible incentive would be for governments at all levels to grant public contracts only after comparing – all other things being equal – which bidder has the lowest rate of layoffs or the longest average employee tenure.

Spark is a book about Lincoln Electric’s amazing commitment to its workers – which has resulted in many employees with 30 and 40 years of steady work.

Sadly, too many American see 52 weeks on-the-job as a long time. But this small proposal from the Senate should be supported as one way to change that.

After hearing Jon Greenberg’s story on National Public Radio last week, Sevencell applauded Lincoln Electric’s and Hypertherm‘s goals of  avoiding layoffs at all costs, but the author seemed worried about the apparent coldness of this kind of an employment policy. I offered up some examples from Spark which emphasize that for many decades, leaders at Lincoln Electric have seen the pursuit of profits and the protection of employees as being in absolute lockstep.

Further to NPR coverage the other day, the discussion continues on Shopfloor.org here and here:

“The reason why unions have been suspicious of no-layoff policies – much more so during the first 75 years of the last century – is quite understandable. In order to work for everyone’s benefit, these policies are based on a sense of trust throughout a company that sacrifices in hard times will be shared…”

NPR (National Public Radio) aired an item this morning  which profiled two companies – Lincoln Electric and Hypertherm – that are committed to avoiding layoffs in hard economic times. Reporter Jon Greenberg interviewed me about Spark and the long history of this idea in the North American economy.

You can listen to his reports:

1. Battered Company Says ‘No’ To Job Cuts (runs 4 mins.)
2. Some Companies Declare a “No Layoff” Zone (almost 6 mins.)