Laying People Off

The president of Georgia Perimeter College sent an e-mail to all faculty and staff last week regretfully announcing that the Continuing Education and Corporate Education division of the college would be closed and staff of that division laid off. More lay-offs will surely come, especially if Governor Perdue's task force, "Tough Choices or Tough Times," has its way in merging community colleges with technical colleges, a move that would surely cut many positions in community colleges as well as have other detrimental effects. (Ridiculously, Georgia Perimeter College, with its enrollment of 23,000 students, would be absorbed by a technical college such as Dekalb Tech, with its 4,000 students.)

Blogging on Huffington Post, Nanette Lepore, fashion designer, tearfully dismisses her staff as she cuts back on her business and regrets so blindly enjoying the high life during the boom times: "Why did it come to this? Where were our leaders? Why weren't enough people questioning this falsely inflated boom? Why did we all decide luxury was an entitlement?" Well, Nanette, while I appreciate your sympathy for the young staff members you wish you could keep, many of us don't live in luxury; nor do we think luxury is an entitlement. We just want to have meaningful work, to make enough money to support our families and to put our kids through college, and to enjoy the fruits of our labor in retirement. Now, according to the Georgia Department of Labor, Georgia's unemployment rate is 9.3%. I suspect it will get worse.