[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 2] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 2090-2091] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]``ECONOMIC RESEARCH SUGGESTS LAYING OFF LAYOFFS'' ______ HON. BARNEY FRANK of massachusetts in the house of representatives Friday, February 26, 2010 Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, at my recent visit to a very important charitable organization known as Gifts to Give, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, I had a conversation with Dr. Steve Russell, who is the Superintendent of Schools in the town of Dartmouth. Gifts to Give, by the way, is an extremely creative organization that collects toys and other items important for children and distributes them to children in need. Stating it the way I have does not do justice to the extraordinarily creative, interactive organization known as Gifts to Give, and I am deeply impressed with the work of Jim Stevens, who has created something that benefits both the donors and the recipients alike, and gives people an extraordinary opportunity to engage in the most rewarding form of community service. During my conversation with Dr. Russell, he handed me a copy of an article that had appeared in Newsweek on February 15th, written [[Page 2091]] by Barbara Pfeffer. In the article, Professor Pfeffer makes a compelling case, drawing on academic research as well as sound argument, that reliance on layoffs, as a way of dealing with short-term economic distress for companies, is not only socially damaging, but economically unwise as well. Madam Speaker, it is too long an article to be printed here entirely, so I did want to give a summary and to recommend that people read the entire article. Dr. Pfeffer notes that ``In the last decade, layoffs have become America's export to the world. At a conference in Stockholm a few years ago, business executives told me,'' she noted, ``that to become as competitive as America, Sweden needed to make it easier to lay people off . . . There are daily calls for European countries to follow the U.S. and make labor markets more `flexible.' But the more you examine this universally accepted tactic of modern management, the more wrongheaded it seems to be.'' Professor Pfeffer goes on to note ``that research paints a fairly consistent picture: layoffs don't work.'' And the article closes in a strong, coherent summary, ``Layoffs are mostly bad for companies, harmful for the economy, and devastating for employees . . . There is substantial research literature in fields from epidemiology to organizational behavior documenting these effects. The damage from overzealous downsizing will linger even as the economy recovers. . . .'' Madam Speaker, I thank Dr. Russell for calling this to my attention, and I commend to my colleagues a reading of this very important article. ____________________