Apple's Big Profits Don’t Protect Staff from Recession

— -- Early this year, while millions of American businesses were struggling to hold on to their employees, Apple Computer was cutting staff. Why? So that the best non-holiday quarter in the company's history could be just a teensy bit better. So that the $29 billion that Apple has on hand would remain totally secure.

Big companies sometimes wonder why people don't like them very much. Why many talented people want nothing to do with giant corporations like Apple.

Could it be that in a small business, like the ones where many of our readers work, owners actually know the employees and their children? And these owners care about what happens to the individuals who work for them?

A man called my radio program two weeks ago. He was a small business owner, nearly in tears because of the pressures on his business caused by the economic downturn. He told me how he was doing everything he could to keep the company afloat so his 26 employees could keep their jobs and their insurance.

He'd already cut his own salary.

There was nothing I could offer this man, besides a little encouragement, my respect and my prayers for him and his crew.

Call me naïve, but I believe businesses exist to serve the broad community. When hard times hit, business--like the rest of us--should make sacrifices to help the less fortunate. That includes keeping headcount as high as reasonably makes sense.

Apple putting 1,600 people needlessly out of work just strikes me as wrong, though the company certainly had every right to do so and will receive kudos from Wall St. for its tough fiscal discipline.

Of course, Apple is certainly not the only company cutting staff these days.

It's just that few, if any, of the others have just come off one of their best-ever financial quarters.

When I think of the small businessperson, doing everything possible to save his or her employees, I am impressed and think there really are things right in this world.

When I think of Apple, I think of a company perfectly willing to make peoples' tough times even tougher.

David Coursey only tweets when he has something to say. E-mail him using the form at www.coursey.com/contact.