Quote Originally Posted by boutons_
"the long-term sustainability of their businesses. "

Exactly, the long-term sustainability of the employees quality of life is secondary to profits. Once those profits decrease or can be maintained or increased with fewer employees, the employees are let go.

Circuit City fired a lot of employees so they could hire cheaper ones.

A memo in Wal-mart said the 7-year employees made 55% more than first year employees but had the same productivity, so it's better for profits to let the veteran employees go and hire trainees.

etc, etc.

Wall Street loves it when a corp lays off 10's of 1000s of employees, but Wall Street es like when CitiBank or other Wall street firm starts firing people.
Wal-Mart and Circuit City are prime examples of soulless American-MBA-style capitalism.

However, you cannot generalize and say the entire American workplace is like that. There are privately-owned businesses, family businesses, and foreign-owned businesses out there who behave differently.

I cannot argue that a company controlled by Wall Street financiers is probably not going to be a very good place to work, unless you yourself are a financier. Those people have no souls, and will step on your neck to give themselves leverage to pick up a dime off the street.