Are Employers Using the Recession as Reason to Mistreat Employees?

Most of us need to work to pay our bills. During these harsh economic times, jobs are scarce. Those who are currently employed are desperately holding on to the jobs that have. Employers are also aware of this fact. It appears as if that they use the current state of the economy to justify the way they treat employees. There is no place for this type of behavior in corporate America or anywhere else.

Several years ago when the U.S. economy was booming there were many unlimited employment opportunities. Employers treated their employees as if they were irreplaceable; they made employees feel like they were making meaningful contributions to the company. The sky was the limit! Now that the economy has slowed down and jobs are no longer so plentiful the limit is the sky. Realizing this, employers that once treated their employees with dignity and respect now treat them like robots. They feel that since there is a shortage of jobs that employees will perform job tasks without question regardless of the conditions of their work environments. Employers do devious things to employees such as; deny requested leave time, retaliating against those that speak out, and subjected them to intense micromanagement. Although economic times are hard, yet nobody deserves to be mistreated for the sake of maintaining employment. According to CNN Money even though one in ten Americans is out of a job, those who are employed are increasingly dissatisfied. It further stated that in the U.S. job dissatisfaction is at its lowest level in 22 years. Employees must have a sense of pride. When employees are not happy it will affect the overall performance of the company. It affects both the company's productivity and profitability.

It is wrong for companies to use the economy as an excuse to justify their unfair treatment of employees. Employees do not deserve to be treated this way regardless of the state of the economy. I hope that as the economy gets better we will see an improvement in how employers treat their employees.