A Sad Day for Loyal Workers of Circuit City

In the article, "Circuit City Cuts 3,400 'Overpaid' Workers" which appeared at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802185_pf.html?reload=true, the author Ylan Q. Mui talks about the story that firings of loyal employees in Circuit City yesterday. According to the article, Circuit City fired 3,400 employees who were paid relatively higher in order to reduce its expenses. However, by firing many employees, about 9% of its total employees, many employees feel negative about the situation. As an example, Steven Rash who worked for Circuit City before, fired immideiately without any prior notice. Also, as Circuit City admits, there are no faults to hime at all. He mentions that he has to find another part time job to pay his student loan and he is not sure whether he deserves to have this kind of situation or not. Another example is also shown at the end of the article. Jose Macias, an employee of Circuit city, could barely avoid being fired. However, as seeing firings of other co-workers, he strongly criticized to the decision of Circuit City.

After I read this article, I also got angry about what Circuit City did to its employees. Among 3,400 employees who were suddenly fired yesterday, many of them worked for Circuit City for several years. Personally, I believe it is not an ethical thing to do so. The reason is that it is more important for Circuit City to keep fellow and hard workers of the company rather than firing them all of a sudden in the long term. It is about the credibility between employees and the company. Even though Circuit City can expect some savings of its expenses in the short term, I strongly believe that the possible serious problems can be occurred in the future by losing strong credibility between employees and the company. Those problems could eliminate the postivie effects that Circuit City might have now by firing its loyal employees and would even cause more negative impacts to the company as a whole in further years. It might be impossible to save all loyal employees to Circuity City. And this kind of incident happens all the time in real world. However, I recommend Circuit City to think about the long term effect rather than short term effect when it makes a decision especially regarding firings of its "loyal" employees who contributed many things to the companry during the last several years.