The spark when workers come first [View all]

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The spark when workers come first
Robyn E. Blumner, St. Petersburg Times, 4/15/12

‘Job security" is such a quaint expression. America's 21st century workplaces operate more like sweepstakes. You win Instagram's dream, landing in the money before the training wheels are off your company's idea. Or you live Katniss Everdeen's nightmare in The Hunger Games, trying to stay alive while those around you are slowly picked off. A few win big, more get downsized and everyone's scared.

This isn't good for the American psyche. A work environment where a relatively few people do astoundingly well while everyone else worries that their economic lifeline can be pulled away at the next downturn is not a solid foundation for long-term, broadly shared prosperity or human fulfillment. We can do better than that, by returning to some old-fashioned corporate values and norms.

I cringe when mass layoffs announcements are accompanied by CEO claims that their people are their most important asset. Clearly, they're not. But there is still one company in America that says it and means it. The Ohio-based Lincoln Electric Co. — a place where executives understand that being loyal to workers redounds to the bottom line.

Lincoln Electric is a publicly traded global company and the world's leading manufacturer of electric welding machinery — much of it produced at factories in the United States. This alone makes it special, but what makes Lincoln Electric oh-so-rare is that its U.S. workforce of about 3,000 employees enjoy guaranteed employment. Lincoln Electric promises that its permanent American employees who pass a three-year probation will not face layoffs due to a lack of work.

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