In early 2009 about 40 percent of orders disappeared at Barry-Wehmiller, a manufacturer in the St. Louis area. Its CEO, Bob Chapman, avoided layoffs. Instead, employees took up to four weeks of unpaid time off and kept their medical insurance. Chapman asked: “What would a caring family do if a member of a family had a problem?”
In 2015 Chapman and Raj Sisodia published Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family.
On June 1, 1979, during a rain delay in a game against the Padres, Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates chose a new team song. “We are going to make ‘We Are Family’ the team song,” he said. The song was by Sister Sledge. “We felt the song typified our ballclub,” he said later.
In the World Series that year, the Pirates trailed the Baltimore Orioles three games to one. They won in seven. “We had to scratch, we had to crawl, and we did it together because we are family,” Stargell said.
Gallup asks American employees whether they agree with this statement: “My organization cares about my overall wellbeing.” In 2014, 25 percent strongly agreed. In May 2020 the share nearly doubled, to 49 percent.
By February 2022 it had fallen again. Gallup surveyed 15,001 U.S. employees and reported: “Fewer than one in four U.S. employees feel strongly that their organization cares about their wellbeing.”
In February 2022 Mark Zuckerberg gave Meta new company values. One included the phrase “Meta, metamates, me.” It was adapted from the phrase “ship, shipmates, self.” Employees became Metamates. Zuckerberg said the value was “about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates.”
On November 9, 2022, he wrote to staff: “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go.” He added: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” In the United States, severance was 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year of service.
On February 16, 1883, the Western & Atlantic Railroad gave an order to its workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee: “Any employe of this company on Chattanooga pay-roll who trades with L. Payne from this date will be discharged.” Payne sued the railroad and lost.
In 1884 the Tennessee Supreme Court decided Payne v. Western & Atlantic Railroad. It wrote: “All may dismiss their employes at will, be they many or few, for good cause, for no cause or even for cause morally wrong.” Doing so, the court said, is not a legal wrong.
For decades, IBM avoided layoffs. Its culture was called “cradle to grave.” The company held “lavish carnivals for workers and their families.” Its guiding value was “respect for the individual.”
In 1993, under its new CEO, Louis Gerstner, IBM cut about 60,000 jobs. A 2016 Marketplace series called it “the unthinkable.” A former communications manager remembered the message: “It was basically look to the left, look to the right, some of you won’t be here.” A retiree said: “It’s no longer respect for the individual. It’s respect for the stockholders.”
Sources differ on when the change began. In 1992 Time reported that IBM had begun “de facto layoffs” the year before.
Isaiah Thomas played for the Boston Celtics in the 2017 playoffs. His sister Chyna died the day before Boston opened the playoffs against the Chicago Bulls. He still played in Game 1. He was also playing through a torn hip labrum.
In late August 2017 the Celtics traded him to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a deal for the All-Star Kyrie Irving. Thomas said he had been traded by “the franchise that I scratched and clawed for, and bled for.” Later he called it “a business move by a business man.” He added: “You learn in this game and this business that there is no loyalty.”
On January 20, 2023, Sundar Pichai wrote to Google staff: “Googlers, I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles.” That was roughly 6 percent of the full-time workforce. The cuts, he wrote, meant “saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with.”
Some employees woke up to find their access to company systems cut off. Jeremy Joslin wrote that “after 20 years at Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email.” Justin Moore wrote that after “over 16.5 years at Google” he appeared “to have been let go via an automated account deactivation” at 3 a.m.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended on CBS on March 19, 1977. In the final episode, “The Last Show,” the station fires the staff of the WJM-TV newsroom. Mary Richards and her colleagues lose their jobs. Only one of them, Ted, keeps his.
Before they leave, Mary speaks to the group. “I tell myself that the people I work with are just the people I work with,” she says. Then she asks, “What is a family anyway? They’re just people who make you feel less alone and really loved.” She ends: “Thank you for being my family.”
Some American elementary schools teach children to be “bucket fillers.” Everyone carries an invisible bucket of good feelings. Filling it means “Actions or words that show that you care about someone.” Bucket dipping empties it. One example is “Making fun of someone.” A staff member at a Wisconsin school district wrote: “I also remind students every morning after the pledge” to fill a bucket that day.
Teachers trace the idea to the psychologist Donald O. Clifton’s “Dipper and Bucket” story. A 2007 educator’s edition of the book How Full Is Your Bucket? offers 18 lesson plans “for pre-K through 12th-grade students.” Carol McCloud’s books, which began with Have You Filled a Bucket Today? (2006), have sold nearly three million copies in English.