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The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

Billionaires Order Mass Layoffs of Tech Workers

The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

The Socialist Program

Politics, News

4.7587 Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard  Wolff discuss the mass layoffs that billionaire CEOs at Meta (formerly  Facebook), Twitter, Amazon, and others have begun. More than one hundred  thousand workers are projected to lose their jobs this year just in the  tech industry.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder  of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at  rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram.  We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you  consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more  are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thousands of worker layoffs across Twitter, Amazon, meta, and other corporate giants have sent shockwaves across the tech sector and the broader economy as bosses exercise their dictatorship over workers.

0:19.8

Is this a sign of a new dot-com economic crisis or recession?

0:26.2

We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded

0:32.3

impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. We are excited to have Professor Richard Wolf join us again for our regular weekly segment,

1:07.2

where we talk about the biggest stories related to the economy.

1:10.9

I'm your host, Brian Becker.

1:12.8

The Socialist Program brings you content three days a week,

1:16.2

thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com forward slash the Socialist Program.

1:23.1

We appreciate all of your support and encourage you to become a patron today

1:27.4

if you enjoy listening to this show.

1:31.1

Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work.

1:35.1

He's the author of many books, the latest being The Sickness is the System when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself.

1:44.4

Be sure to check out all of his work at R.D.Wolf.com.

1:48.3

That's R-D-W-O-L-F-F.com.

1:51.9

Professor Wolf, welcome back.

1:53.9

Thank you, Brian. Glad to be here.

1:56.5

There's different elements of this story, Richard, that I think are really important. Of course,

2:02.5

for now what will be actually tens of thousands of workers and their families, the sudden loss

2:10.1

of employment will be, you know, for many of them, just a complete personal catastrophe.

2:17.3

For the economy as a whole, when you see this pattern

2:21.4

of mass layoffs, not just at Twitter because Elon Musk took control and leveraged too much debt,

2:28.3

but it's happening at meta, Facebook. It's happening at Amazon. Amazon just announced, I think, a 10,000 person layoff.

...

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