Description:
If there was ever a company that epitomized corporate downsizing, it's AT&T. Between 1984 and 1995, the company managed to slash some 120,000 jobs, and in 1996, in a bit of bravado and posturing for Wall Street, it announced the elimination of another 40,000 jobs (the final number, however, was considerably less). In Disconnected, author Barbara Rudolph looks at the lives of six white-collar workers--a telephone operator, engineer, salesperson, business strategist, corporate planner, and an assistant staff planner--who in AT&T's terms were "accepted for the package," "involuntarily separated," or in real terms, were fired. Rudolph argues that the American workplace has undergone a profound and lasting change. In the '50s and '60s job security was part of the social contract in a "world of three television networks and one phone company, a single computer giant, and a small clique of regulated airlines." These days, that contract has all but disappeared in the wake of much more fluid and competitive global business environment. She writes: "Like many of their peers, these six came to see the organization as a kind of family. If they did not perceive it as benevolent, they assumed that it was more or less benign. They imbued it, too, with a rationality and coherence that did not actually exist. They lost sight of the fact that a company is not a purposeful entity but merely a set of shifting alliances that mix people and power, ego and intellect." At the heart of Disconnected is the story of how these six workers moved beyond the initial insecurity and pain of their joblessness to redefine themselves, find happiness, and at least for five of the six, move on to new and productive careers. Disconnected is a useful primer to the inevitable career changes that most of us will have to undergo as the workplace lurches forward into the new millennium. --Harry C. Edwards
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