The Specter Haunting Your Office

By James Lardner

The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences
by Louis Uchitelle
Vintage, 287 pp., $14.95 (paper)

The Great American Jobs Scam
by Greg LeRoy
Berrett-Koehler, 290 pp., $24.95

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
by John C. Bogle
Yale University Press,260 pp., $16.00 (paper)

1.

Donald Davis was not concerned about imports in the late 1960s, when he started out as CEO of the Stanley Works, the country's leading manufacturer of hand tools. By the early 1980s, the challenge of competing against inexpensive tools made in Taiwan, Korea, and China had swept most of Davis's other concerns aside. His first response was a plan to streamline management, reducing the company's white-collar ranks through attrition. An old-school CEO who had been with Stanley most of his adult life, Davis considered layoffs a last resort. But by the time he stepped down as CEO in 1987, hundreds of factory workers had lost their jobs on his orders.

His successor, Richard Ayers, had the advantage of knowing what he was in for. An industrial engineer by training, Ayers mapped out a long-term strategy that called for layoffs, plant closings, and outsourcing: sledgehammer and crowbar production was moved to Mexico; socket wrench production to Taiwan. But the company also invested in making its domestic operations more efficient, and Ayers took special care to preserve jobs and facilities in New Britain, Connecticut, where Stanley had been a major employer for more than a century. By the mid-1990s, revenues had stabilized, profits were up, and Ayers could reasonably tell himself that his "evolutionary" approach had worked.