unit 4 Downsizing译文.doc

Unit 4 Downsizing 裁员 Adom Cohen, Cathy Booth Thomas The e-mail looked harmless enough. Be at the Renaissance Austin Hotel, 20 minutes away, in about an hour. Just another stupid meeting, no doubt. But by the time Dell information technology specialist Chuck Peterson walked into a room filled with 75 of his co-workers and a few managers he had never seen before, he knew what was up. ―None of them would look at us, he says. ―They had their backs to us or they were looking at their feet. 这封E-mail看起来并没有任何伤害。在Renaissance Austin旅馆召开会议，到旅馆的路程是二十分钟路程，大约一个小时后召开。毫无疑问，又不过是一个无聊的会议。但是，当戴尔公司信息技术专家Chuck Peterson步入房间那一刻，就知道要发生什么了，房间里是他的75个同事和几个以前从来没有见过的经理。―他们没人看我，―他说，‖他们都背对着我或是看着他们自己的脚―。 The bosses stuck to their script. The economy is bad. We can‘t afford to keep you. So we’re not. Hand in your badges on the way out. There were no individual explanations for why these workers－out of a work force of 40,000－had been picked. The members of the firing squad never even introduced themselves. It was over in eight minutes. 这些上司们除了照着讲稿没有多讲一句话。经济形势不好，我们无法支付雇用你们的开支，所以不雇你们了。出门的时候上交你们的公司证章。对于为什么是这些人从40000名员工被挑出来，没有做个别的解释。解聘小组的成员甚至都没做自我介绍。一切在八分钟内就结束了。 Peterson, 40, is one of 1,700 full-time Dell workers who lost their jobs since February, in an economy that has been shedding 100,000 workers a month since the beginning of the year. Last week Winstar Communications, once a wireless wonder, hung up on 2,000 employees－44% of its staff. TiVo, Sycamore Networks and Extreme Networks added more bodies to the tech sector‘s growing pile. AOL Time Warner has announced 2,400 job cuts in response to the slowing economy and pressure from Wall Street. By week‘s end unemployment had hit 4.3%, a slight but ominous rise. Worse, job creation was down, more evidence that recession is at hand. Peterson，40岁，是自二月份以来戴尔公司解雇的1700名全职工人的一员，整个经济环境如此，从年初的一个月就有100，000人被解雇。上周，星胜通讯公司，一度是无线行业的奇迹，解雇了2000名雇员－－占其员工总数的44％。TiVo，美国光纤网络公司和极进网络公司也加入了裁员大军当中。美国在线时代华纳集团宣布削减2400个工作职位以应对缓慢的经济增长和华尔街的压力。到周末，失业率已达4.3%，裁员人数增长虽然很