How come when a company fails, it's managements fault, but if they are succeeding it's the workers who are responsible?
It's always managements fault when a company fails, just as it's always managements achievement when a company succeeds. The management of a company establishes the objectives, plans the strategy and executes the strategy of the company. Management hires all employees and contractors and is responsible for the supervision and performance of the employees and contractors. Bottom line is it's managements job to hire qualified employees, train the employees, communicate with the employees, motivate the employees, provide the employees a safe work environment and compensate the employees with competitive wages and benefits. Employees have the obligation to perform the job they are trained for and paid to do - to the best of their ability....period. That's where the employees contribution to and responsibility for the success and failure of the company begins and ends. The success or failure of a company resides with the management of the company.
When management goes to the employees of a company and demands reductions in compensation and benefits - and when they go to the local governing bodies demanding incentives
because they truly need these contributions in order to remain profitable and viable, it is because management (current or prior) has done their job poorly and mismanaged the company thru either poor long term planning, poor strategic planning or poor execution of their strategic plan. When management makes such demands, the first thing they should do is humbly apologize to the owners of the company, the employees of the company and taxpayers for failing in their obligation of responsibly and profitably managing the company. And the board of directors should evaluate the performance of these executive managers and determine if they are fit for their compensation and positions.
Current Harley Davidson executive management has stated they believe they have excess capacity for their markets and they feel they have uncompetitive labor agreements. They have stated they feel they need concessions from their labor force and they feel they need concessions from the government (and taxpayers) in the form of incentives to achieve long term stability and profitability.
It is of course possible that perhaps Harley Davidson executive management feels the time is ripe to increase profits by taking advantage of the weak labor market and by taking advantage of the taxpayer by demanding state and local government incentives by threatening to relocate their factories and production to more accommodating locations - regardless of whether they truly need these concessions to operate profitably. Perhaps they feel it is their obligation to their owners to make the most profit possible by whatever means available - to the detriment of their employees and and to the detriment of taxpayers. It becomes a matter of how much is enough...
To me - there is a line in there somewhere where moral ground is crossed - and greed has surpassed the good of the company and country. And I think a lot of companies explore this line.
And I say all of this as someone who has been a senior executive in both public and private companies for the past 25 years.