Do You Trust Circuit City With Your Security?

Yesterday I wrote about the Fort Dix Six, and how their super-duper terrorist plot (which involved ambushing a heavily fortified military facility with six people) was foiled by a New Jersey store clerk. I wrote about how this "hero" and other service-sector workers of this kind are consistently disrespected by the American economy. Well, now we know a little more about that store clerk, which confirmed everything I said.

He worked at Circuit Freakin' City.

A Circuit City spokeswoman has confirmed an employee at the electronics chain's Mount Laurel store tipped off police about a video showing men firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad.

Spokeswoman Jackie Foreman said the store is not releasing the name of the employee. Foreman said the employee still works for the company, but she would not say where.

Well, if the clerk worked at Circuit City, we know that he or she doesn't make a lot of money. Otherwise they would have been fired.

Circuit City fired 3,400 employees in stores across the country yesterday, saying they were making too much money and would be replaced by new hires willing to work for less.

The company said the dismissals had nothing to do with performance but were part of a larger effort to improve the bottom line. The firings represent about 9 percent of the company's in-store workforce of 40,000.

"Retail is very competitive and store operations just have to contain their costs," said Jim Babb, a Circuit City spokesman. "We deeply regret the negative impact that was had on these folks. It was no fault of theirs."

The company gave the dismissed workers severance pay and told them that after 10 weeks they were free to apply for any openings. Employees reached by a reporter said they were notified yesterday morning and told to leave immediately.

Store clerks that were targeted for this dismissal were making as little as $11.59 an hour. Even that was too steep a price for Circuit City to bear. So they cut all their "highly paid" workers loose and kept the ones who didn't tax them as much. Including this alert person who allegedly thwarted a terrorist plot. We know that the employee still works there - was he or she fired, and hired back at a lower salary, or was he or she making too little for the company to care? It's unclear, but we know now that this employee to whom the FBI is indebted doesn't make much more than 10 bucks an hour. And so everything I put in my original post holds:

That would put our sales clerk right on the edge of the poverty line.

We know that the statewide average rent in New Jersey is almost $1100/month, and 53% of all New Jerseyites couldn't afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment, for example. So if this average sales clerk has a family, he's cramped, especially if he has children.

We know that 14% of the state's citizens don't have health insurance, and that this number disproportionately affects those in the income bracket as our average store clerk. Even if the clerk does have insurance, the quality of care is among the nation's costliest while simultaneously being among the nation's poorest. And without health care, it just gets that much more expensive.

Getting sick anywhere can be an expensive proposition for those lacking health insurance, but nowhere is it more expensive than in New Jersey, a new study has found.

The state's hospitals, on average, charge uninsured patients or those who pay out of pocket more than four times what insurance companies and Medicare end up paying for the same care, according to the study published today in the journal Health Affairs.

For example, a patient without insurance would be billed $456 for the same services a New Jersey hospital charged insurance companies $100, according to the study by John Hopkins researchers, which used 2004 billing data.

That gap was the greatest of any state, and overwhelmingly affected the working poor and other low-income residents, the study concluded.

We have this very fragile open society where we all put our safety and trust in the hands of people who are consistently disrespected by the modern economy. If this attempted dubbing by the Fort Dix Six happened AFTER Circuit City decided to fire everyone who was making too much money, when morale in the stores was likely to be non-existent, would this clerk have been as perceptive? Would they have cared at all? Would they just be trying to get through the day?

Why do we deny a living wage and basic dignity to people who could credibly be called "heroes"? If I was a smart labor union organizer, I'd be asking that question. Publicly.

By the way, this store clerk may not have a job with Circuit City for very long, considering that nobody wants to go to a store with an untrained sales staff and management that hates their workers, and if it keeps up there may not be a Circuit City anymore.

Eric Savitz (Barron's) submits: Circuit City (CC) shares got clobbered this morning following its surprisingly poor May quarter earnings forecast announced after the close late yesterday. The Street is not happy about the news, understandably; analysts at Credit Suisse and Citigroup downgraded the shares [...]

The one thing that seemed most disturbing in Circuit City’s outlook was the very weak sales of large screen TVs in April. “We believe consumer expectations for TV pricing were set at an extremely low level in the last two months of 2006,” says Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves, who keeps his Outperform rating on the stock. “Since then, TV pricing has stabilized, which has likely driven many consumers to delay purchases until another round of price cuts.”

Given the specific weakness in April, maybe there is another explanation: the company’s March 28 restructuring plan, which called for the layoffs of 3,400 of its highest paid sales associates. Fire your best sales people, and then sales disappoints…ya think maybe that wasn’t such a good idea?

Heh indeedy.