“暂时解雇”比裁员更好？ | 熊彼特专栏

IN MID-FEBRUARY Hilton, a hotelier, and its employees had something to celebrate. For the second year running the company came top in Fortune magazine’s list of best American companies to work for. The perks provided to its 62,000 direct employees in America included extended parental leave, Under Armour-branded uniforms and facilities to let travelling staff ship breast milk home. A mere six weeks later, on March 26th, tens of thousands of those pampered employees were given notice that they would be thrown out of work because of the covid-19 pandemic. That was the day weekly jobless claims in America spiked by 1,000% to 3.3m.

二月中旬，希尔顿酒店集团和它的员工们还欢欣鼓舞。这家公司连续第二年荣登《财富》杂志评选的美国最佳雇主排行榜榜首。它在美国的6.2万名直接雇员享受的福利包括加长育儿假、安德玛（Under Armour）品牌制服，以及帮助出差员工把母乳发送回家的便利安排。仅仅六周后，数万名养尊处优的员工在3月26日接到通知，他们将因为新冠肺炎疫情而被停职。当天，美国一周内申请失业救济的人数急升1000%，达到330万人。

The stratospheric surge of Americans seeking unemployment benefits contrasts with the situation in western Europe. Companies there are struggling just as hard but many are keeping workers on the books at reduced pay. That is a familiar story. In times of economic upheaval, European firms rely extensively on schemes in which the government picks up part of the wage bill, such as Germany’s Kurzarbeit, France’s chômage partiel and Italy’s cassa integrazione. Traditionally, America has shunned such feather-bedding. From frontier days its labour laws have given employers leave to cull jobs almost at will. Not for nothing did the country elect a president whose catchphrase was “You’re fired!”

美国申请失业救济的人数暴增，与西欧的情况形成了对比。西欧的企业虽然也在苦苦挣扎，但许多公司还是让员工减薪留职。这种做法很常见。在经济动荡时期，欧洲公司普遍依赖政府推出负担部分工资的方案，例如德国的“缩短工时”（Kurzarbeit）、法国的“部分失业”（chômage partiel）和意大利的“工资补偿基金”（cassa integrazione）。一直以来，美国对这种保护劳动者的做法绕道而行。从开拓边疆的年代开始，美国劳动法就允许雇主几乎随心所欲地裁员。这个国家选出了一位口头禅是“你被炒了！”的总统并不是偶然的。

In the current crisis it may seem fair to ask American firms to take a more European approach. After all, business activity has collapsed not because of slothful work habits, but because governments have ordered people to stay at home. This is not a slump that needs to be fixed with an orgy of creative destruction in the jobs market. And however deep the downturn, the rebound could be relatively quick. If so, it makes sense for companies and employees to maintain ties, so that production can resume briskly when things improve.

在当前的危机中，让美国公司更多地效仿欧洲似乎公平合理。毕竟，商业活动停摆并不是因为低效的工作习惯，而是因为政府勒令人们待在家中。这并不是一场需要在就业市场中大举展开创造性破坏才能治愈的衰退。而尽管衰退严重，反弹可能也相对较快。如果是这样，公司和员工维持关系就合情合理，这样一旦局面好转，就可以迅速恢复生产。