What Ever Happened To The Lean, Mean Job Machine?
How quickly we forget that the 1980s were supposed to have been a decade of massive unemployment, as the number of people entering the job market exploded and big companies lost jobs on a scale previously unimaginable. Start-ups and small, growing companies saved us from such a fate back then, but don’t count on them to bail us out this time around. Not that the entrepreneurial sector is doing so badly. Many growth companies seem virtually recession-proof, and the more fleet of foot are profiting from their competitors’ miseries. But in talking with chief executives around the country, I sense a new attitude toward hiring, and it does not bode well for the economy. For one thing, we are clearly feeling the effects of the employee-litigation epidemic, abuse of workers’ compensation, and skyrocketing health-care costs. Already battered by a flood of age- and sex-discrimination suits from employees, growth companies are concerned that the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Righ
