We have layoffs for exactly the same reason we have homelessness. Both are expensive, harmful, and unnecessary. Both are sustained anyway because capitalism requires that work is compulsory. Both exist to be used as a threat to compel work and deference from workers.

So, I don't know. Keep writing papers and articles about the real effects of layoffs, I guess. But please understand that you'll never convince boards and CEOs to stop doing them, because the harm of layoffs is the desired outcome. So make your audience the people who've been taken in by their lies, and the people who should be protecting us from them.

To be extra clear, homelessness is what makes layoffs effective as a threat and punishment. And in the USA, withholding health care also plays a large part. These are all escalating levels of violence to the same end of making work compulsory so that they can dictate what work you do, when, where, and to whose benefit.

That power to compel and dictate work is what capital is. Money is only a loose proxy for capital, and they will sacrifice enormous amounts of money to retain and expand their power.

I need to mute this, but I'll check back in on it. I'm glad it's resonating, because if we have any chance at all to survive this fight, we have to understand that it is a fight.
@jenniferplusplus Commerce and Exchange
When you engage in a purchase or barter it is a relationship between three entities: the receiver, the provider and the commodity and each of these entities must benefit from the relationship. Your work for another or at the direction of a council is the same. Where your labor is the commodity and must be respected as the other entities in the exchange are. *Visualize a balance with three trays: buyer, seller and commodity must in balance. OWOP