More about the Circuit City screwing over of its workforce

Ordinarily I don't link to Rense.com, because sometimes due diligence is lacking over there. But an e-mail list I'm on sent me a link to this well-documented article, and I think it's worth a look.

The money quote (so to speak):

I have been thinking about why Circuit City was so candid about their worker replacement. It's hard to believe that the executives were so ethically inclined to honesty they considered lying a sin. Could it be arrogance or perhaps something more insidious? Perhaps their candor was used as a pre-emptive strike to prevent age discrimination lawsuits. Companies can legally hire employees because they are cheaper as long as they don't use age as a criterion. Since the employees that have been there longer are probably higher paid, and of course older, wouldn't it suit the purpose of the robber barons to announce that all of the job terminations are based purely on cost?

As for where Circuit City is going to get the new employees for their retail stores, I suspect many of them will come from the 128 CompUSA stores that are closing -- which may be another reason why Circuit City decided to do this now.

I would like one of the wingnuts who comes to this blog via Memeorandum or Real Clear Politics to post in the comments how there is going to be the kind of thriving middle class that we've seen in our lifetimes when there is this kind of downward pressure on worker pay. Don't forget also that Alan Greenspan has advocated exactly this as a means of addressing income inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. He is strangely silent, however, on the income inequality between executives and workers at all levels.