General Electric was run by Jack Welch from 1981 to 2001.
David Gelles is a reporter for the New York Times.
The election of Trump was aided by aggressive layoffs and populism.
Since the 1980s, few people have heard of Jack. They know about the Boeing Max disasters and the US economic landscape that has led to populism and rising inequality.
There's a guy who made it happen when people ask why the system is like this. David Gelles is a reporter for The New York Times and author of a new book called "The Man Who Broke Capitalism".
When he became CEO of General Electric in 1981 it had 400,000 workers and was a household name making lightbulbs, but also jet engines and power systems.
Welch was a mascot for an age of deregulation and cheap thrills that ended in the late 200s.
GE was the most valuable company in the world at one point, thanks to his two-decade tenure. While rupturing the fabric of America, he left it worse than when he found it.
During his time at GE, he spent about $130 billion on over 1000 acquisitions, but many of them failed. After the 2008 financial crisis, GE Capital needed a $139 billion rescue from the US government and a $3 billion investment from Warren Buffet.
TheVitality Curve is a practice in which the bottom 10% of employees are laid off each year. That approach is still being used by companies such as Goldman Sachs.
Between 1980 and 1985 GE slashed its workforce by 112,000 people as well as outsourcing and offshoring jobs to cheaper markets.
Gelles tells Insider that the people were fired when things were doing well. The behavior of firing people to turn a bigger profit was a new development.
The co-founding director of Advanced Workplace said that it was not economics that drove the labor practices of the company.
It is said that focusing solely on labor costs is inefficient. "Some business leaders like it because the salary line is easy to measure and quick to action, but the reality of job cuts is that they address a proportionately low expenditure when compared to supplier costs in most industries."
More damaging, though, was the thinking of the man. Jim McNerney, the former CEO of Boeing, was accused of embarking on a range of cost-cutting measures that contributed to the Boeing MAX disasters.
Over the last few years, it was clear to hundreds of Boeing employees that it is just poorer because of the influence of Welch.
Actions on a large scale have political consequences. The base that put Donald Trump into the White House was formed by layoffs and outsourcing, according to Gelles.
The American working class was badly affected by the mass layoffs and factory closings.
Many of Trump's most ardent supporters came from the disaffected base. The reason they felt like it wasn't working for them was due to the rigging of the game.
Trump said they had made great deals together.
The pendulum is swinging in favor of workers according to Gelles. There are new models that have emerged, including the decision by Paul Polman to scrap quarterly guidance in pursuit of longer-term gains, as well as the move by Dan Schulman to focus on benefits for his staff.
Many companies are still focused on short-term results despite recent upheaval in the tech industry with sliding share prices.
It's crazy that one or two bad quarters is leading to mass layoffs. "CEOs feel like they need to be doing something, and it would be a decade-long battle to offset the changes that were made," Gelles said.
It matters because companies made choices about how they were going to treat workers, what they were going to prioritize, and how they were going to show up in their communities. It will take a long time to get back.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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