Oofki.Net

During a time of an economic crisis, companies perform massive layoffs, reoraganizations, and other things.  Basically cutting costs and reducing ineffeciencies is the name of the game in such times.   This also may include highly paid management taking paycuts.  All of those are natural - understanable;  Like a person, a company must also survive and sacrifice to do so during bad times.

On the other things that should not be taken away once previously offered as a perk, although it does happen.  For example, many companies give their employees free coffee; that’s a pretty basic perk, a relatively in expensive perk for a multi-million or billion dollar company.  That is not to say some perks are not excessive.

In the case that a company performs massive layoffs and pay cuts employees will already be in edge.  Knowing that the economy is bad, there is a fear in a worker for being let go.  When an employees witnesses their fellow workers being let go left and right, the anxiety increases - the fear increases.

At this point people are working under increased stress and anxiety levels.  Performance is bound to decrease.  Now we add the last factor - taking away from the people who are already scared that they might lose their job at any point.  So now its time to make other cuts, little things, some could say - petty things.   Coffee, reimbursement for travel, for phone usage, for internet usage.  It is both further frightening to an employee and it causes anger and distrust at the same time.  It is frightening because questions start to be asked:  Can my company really no longer afford a coffee that costs the company 12 cents to provide to me?  Are things that bad?  And anger - it is just a natural reaction to the situation.

I am sure there are benchmarks, numbers, and statistics that have to do with the happiness of an employee to their productivity levels.  I do not have access to those, that is not my field of expertise.  However, can a cup of coffee really cost a company that much money, that it needs to be taken out of the budget?  Even if 1 Million dollars a month was spent on free coffee, how does that relate to a multi-billion dollar companies profit.  The answer is, it hardly does, it hardly scratches it.

Is this backwards thinking?  Should employees not be treated better then ever, to make up for what is being lost?  As stated before, productivity is decreased, people are in fear, people literally scared.  How can you take away even more from people.  How can you expect to work in fear?  That practice sounds familiar doesn’t it.

Without a doubt there are many flaws of the American (as well as others) justice systems.  Celeberties can afford better lawyers who have extraordinary persuasion skills.  But that is not what I am looking to focus on here.  The real problem I see is in the civil courts; how can justice truely be served after another person’s rights are infringed upon?  There may be no right answer to that question and in there lies the problem, how can justice be served when there is no way to undo what has happened?

For starters it would be helpful to understand what the word justice means.  Merriam-Webster defines justice as: “The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” To break that down, in America, justice is maintained by the court systems; the result of a hearing should be impartial (which is hardly ever the case); And if it is found that one has been wronged they are entitiled to a reward and/or the offending party will be punished.

Now that it is “clear” what justice is defined as everyone should be happy that United States has a justice system for the people of its country or in this case a disagreement arises.  A reward does not often enough, considering that in most cases when a “reward” is appointed to victim it is a reward of or relating to monetary compensation.  By definition in the case that money is awarded to the victim, that is one of the two ways to compensate for a crime that has denied a said person their own rights.  From here the first question arises; does money make your broken nose heal?  Yes, it may pay for the medical bills; but, in the case that money is awarded for “pain and suffering,” does that really compensate for the rights of the victim that have been compromised?

And we have punishments.  Here is an example of a punishment:  An argument arises and one person threatens the other then proceeds to physically harm the first person - assault and battery.  Say the case is that there is little proof of this incident and the “punishment” is that the first party is “rewarded” with a restraining order.  Now the “criminal” has been “punished” by not being able to go within a certain amount of feet of the victim.  That’s it?  What about the medical bills?  Okay, even if the medical bills are paid as part of the reward/punishment, are they supposed to be even?  The victim’s natural rights have been violated and all (s)he has to make them feel just is paid medical bills and a piece of paper saying the offender cannot be within so many feet of them.  How is money (paper) and a piece of paper saying “do not go near them” supposed to make up for what has happened?

At this time, I would like the point out one of my original statements: “There may be no right answer…”  I cannot say there is a clear cut punishment for any crime.  Nor can I say that at this moment I can think of a better way to punish a person, but how can anyone feel that a piece of paper does anyone justice?  What encourages one with the current justice system to go through the proper channels when they know they will never have that feeling of just?