Our Workplace Newsletter

We publish workplace bulletins every two weeks. Below is the most recent editorial from our workplace newsletters. Older editorials are linked to the right.

EDITORIAL
Cut Profits—Not Jobs!

Nov 2, 2025

Some of the biggest companies in the U.S. are carrying out major layoffs. Amazon announced it is cutting 30,000 jobs. UPS is slashing 48,000 positions. Intel is cutting 25,000 jobs. Microsoft, General Motors, Target, Paramount and ConocoPhillips also announced big layoffs.

That’s just the beginning. According to the news media, many more companies are lining up to announce big job cuts. Don’t fall for the hype from corporate executives and the news media about AI (Artificial Intelligence) taking the jobs. It’s simply an excuse for these companies to force fewer workers to do much more work.

All these companies announcing layoffs are extremely profitable. Take Amazon, for example. On October 30, two days after it announced big layoffs, Amazon reported that its profits over three months were over 21 billion dollars, an increase of 39%. And those are net profits, after taxes.

Amazon is incredibly rich. It has the money to keep everyone on the job. It has the money to hire more workers and spread the work around. It has the money to pay workers much more than the measly wages that it pays now.

Of course, that would cost Amazon some of its profits. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s biggest stockholder and the third richest billionaire on the planet, might not increase his fortune as fast.

So, Amazon does what every company does. It tries to make sure that all the sweat and hard work by the workforce goes to make a few billionaires even richer.

All these companies are throwing hundreds of thousands of workers into the teeth of a worsening unemployment crisis. Most younger workers looking for work can’t find jobs, at least jobs that pay. Workers who have already lost their jobs are not finding new ones. The rate of long-term unemployment is higher than at any time since the pandemic.

To make matters worse, the safety net for unemployed workers is being shredded to pieces. With the federal government shut down this is getting much worse. The federal workers, who are supposed to provide vital services, are themselves getting laid off, furloughed, or are being forced to work without a paycheck. Vital programs, like food stamps and WIC, that are supposed to keep tens of millions of working people from starving, are being interrupted and could be slashed further in the future. Long lines are forming in front of food banks. As for whatever little health care coverage there is for big parts of the working class and poor, it is also being threatened.

In other words, the same kinds of attacks against the working class that are being carried out by big companies to increase their profits are being carried out by politicians of both parties. And these attacks are being carried out for the same reason, in order to provide ever more support, bailouts, and tax breaks for big corporations and the capitalist class.

It’s a total disaster that only gets worse.

But there is nothing inevitable about this crisis. Certainly, there is more than enough wealth to ensure that everyone has a decent job, that no one is threatened by hunger, homelessness, or the lack of health care.

But that can only happen when the working class overcomes its divisions and brings its forces together to challenge the control over the economy by the capitalist class and its politicians and servants at the head of the government.

Certainly, the working class has the power to defend its interests against the capitalist class. It is the working class that produces everything and keeps the economic machine running. The working class is not only powerful; it also is able to take control of society away from the capitalist class and lead it for the benefit of all humanity.