(Blog n°4)
In France, the unemployment rate reached 9,6%
in the first semester 2017 (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques,
2017). Since the unemployment touches even more the unqualified parts of the
population, every worker who loses his job will have difficulties to find a new
place in the society. Therefore, when a factory closes for whatever reason,
workers often organize strikes, afraid to lose their jobs. For example, this
happened during the last presidential election: Whirlpool decided to relocate a
washer factory from Amiens to Poland.
The relationship between this kind of event and
the reflection around finance is determined by the mediatic cover. Indeed, when
Whirlpool announced its decision, the press always reminds the turnover of the
company and the benefits it made during the year before the relocation (Le
Monde, 2017). The goal of this is to point out systematically the fact that a
company destroys jobs in France even though it makes good money. Thus, the
company is presented as the bad guy and the workers as the common people
fighting for their jobs. From the point of view of people losing their revenue
source and perhaps a huge part of their life for some of them, this vision is
relevant and true: the money earned by the company can and must be used to keep
their factory working.
The interest is that in that case ethics and
human lives appear to be joggled by the financial history. However, the
relevance of the comparison maid by French journalists must be discussed.
Indeed, they seem to claim that a company that creates value must use it to
keep its factories where there are (in that Whirlpool case at least).
From the company point of view, this relocation
has no link with the profit maid or the turnover. Relocating is a cost
management decision, not an accounting decision. The profit maid by a company cannot
be an argument against such a relocation. Simply because if the organization
does not optimize its costs, it will be eliminated in the long run.
To this can be argued that they could use the
profit maid to compensate the loss implemented by the costs of the French
factory. Additionally, the use the companies make of their earnings can seem
unreal from a worker point of view. For example, Whirlpool paid 294 million of
dollars to its shareholders in 2016. Such amounts of money not invested in the
company can only anger the humble people losing their jobs. They worked to
create this value for the company. But the organization decides to keep the
money and to fire them because it is still not enough.
Beyond the dichotomic vision of the different
stakeholders in that case, the questions of the core of a company’s goal is raised.
- Le taux de chômage diminue de 0,4 point au premier trimestre 2017 (2017, May 18) Retrieved from : https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2851776#consulter
- Tout comprendre à la fermeture de l’usine Whirlpool à Amiens (2017, April 26) Retrieved from : http://www.lemonde.fr/emploi/article/2017/04/26/tout-comprendre-a-la-fermeture-de-l-usine-whirlpool-a-amiens_5118204_1698637.html
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