Failure to Disclose Layoffs and Human Capital

This was written 22 years ago by Marleen A. O'Connor and not much has changed:

We often evaluate companies as if human capital doesn't matter.

And so a company like AT&T can lay off 40,000 knowledge

workers, and the market will respond positively because expenses

are trimmed. If corporations booked their investments in workers

as capital assets, as I believe they should, AT&T would not have

been able to eliminate those jobs without writing down $4 billion

to $8 billion of assets. Then the market response would be

different. Instead of applauding the company's executives, we'd

be looking to give them the boot.

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OP here- There would be no need to improve earnings past single digits if Senior Leadership did not go on a buying spree of non-core assets. If Fiber was overbuilt (core competency) in all 21 states we could have charged FANG for priority access (Netflix bought thousands of circuits several years back). Owing 180 Billion dollars? That puts us between Poland and South Korea in terms of debt load. A disgrace in my opinion.

Earnings are grown by increasing revenue and keeping capital costs and expenses at an appropriate level. But companies don't care about sharing those earnings with employees. Their compensation is the result of need to the company, and market competition/comparison. Apple has gobs of money, but not for employees. And, Randall would have been reprimanded by now (if not already in secret) by the Board of Directors (BOD) if they thought he was way out of line in what he's doing. But also remember the BOD is often elected by the institutional investment funds that presently hold a 55% majority of the stock. And they drive the direction of the company.

@xoi How about start with surplussing Randal and the Johns to improve earnings. They are Ts biggest liabilities and expenses.

improvement will come when Randall is ousted

Written by a clueless person (marleen). We are not assets, we are liabilities and expenses, thats the reality . It would be great if we are treated like Southwest airlines treats its employees or like Richard Branson says employees should be treated.

What are your suggestions on how to improve earnings?

Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Failure to Disclose Layoffs and Human Capital

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