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“Yes, you are so correct. It is very difficult to fire people there, especially over the age of 40, because they are in the middle of their family dilemmas. Their children go to university or college, or they are trying to create careers for them, say get their daughters married, and lose their job at that time would be a disaster. So it is very difficult for us, there is no way that we can let them go without finding a new job for them. One of my biggest dilemmas now is what to do if I want to retire, and would have to close my Indian operations. What I do with the 500 people in my office. Only the factory that I just told you about, in Central India, counts 2000 people. Where do these people go when we want to close it? Now, at one point, we were actually thinking of closing it. Government regulation simply says, give them X amount of their salary, and they can go, legally. So, we were thinking of giving them the equivalent of one year salary, so that a full year they would not have to worry about the day of tomorrow, even without working, and might find a new job before the end. Fortunately, we did not have to come to that, and we could continue the factory. But that was our dilemma. It was so much on top of my mind, because the implications are huge. I read a book on a lady that was HR manager at IBM, in the period that they were changing from a hardware company to a software company, and had to fire about 30.000 people, across the world, but especially in Europe, and the lady was from France. She had to do the job, from Paris, and tells in her book how people of 40 to 50 years old came to her, and begged at her feet, crying, to not be fired. She finally went in depression herself, and was no longer able to do the job. It is the most difficult job. America has created the hire and fire system, with people at the top who think like that. Today, as we read in magazines, restricting can happen in bunches of 10.000 people at once, but if you can take them out at once in those numbers, and production remains the same, then, I ask, why did you hire them in those numbers in the first place?"
"In Christianity", the fourth interlocutor replied “one would say: do not do to other people what you would not want other people do to you"
"In Jainism”, R replied “it is precisely the same, in this regard it is 100% the same”.
“Would you dare to say", the fourth interlocutor replied that, in Jainism, it is maybe even somewhat stronger, because you value life so much, and do not want to destroy any life, not even that of animals, let alone that of other people that you look at as if they were yourself
"In Jainism, R replied "we believe all life is the same".
"I do not know many CEO's from Christian background", the fourth interlocutor continued that would go so far. They might speak about it, but when it comes to action, they might just close their eyes, and simply do hiring and firing. It must be very hard in reality to do what you just said, or walk your talk”.
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