Powers of persuasion

Gov. King demonstrated admirable energy in his mission to Microsoft Thursday. Although the full result of the emergency flight to urge the Washington-based software superpower to keep faith in Maine’s EnvisioNet is not yet known, it appears he demonstrated admirable powers of persuasion as well.

The entire episode, though, showed something not so admirable about modern business practices. Unless a way is found to end such conflicts between corporate giants and the small, local vendors and subcontractors, workers may more often find themselves disposable.

These events began with EnvisioNet, a homegrown technical-support company, announcing the loss of nearly 700 of its 1,900 jobs and the closing of two centers in the state. Through the leak of an internal memo and a few factual but somewhat rash comments to the press by EnvisioNet officials, it became known that the layoffs were being attributed to miscalculated growth estimates by Microsoft, EnvisioNet’s major client. This caused embarrassing ripples through the high-tech industry and reports that Microsoft was peeved enough at EnvisioNet to cut its contracts even further.

Microsoft is hardly unique among businesses in guarding its reputation. Nor is it unique among corporations in requiring – not unlike Japan’s keiretsu, the famously protective alliances of companies – complete discretion by the businesses with which it does business.

EnvisioNet, however, is among that class of businesses that have obligations beyond the corporations they serve. It, like many startup businesses, enjoys considerable public investment (such as Orono’s extremely generous tax incentive) and thus has at least a moral duty to keep the public informed on how the investment is performing.

In this case, at least for now, the investment is not performing well and in explaining why it was not, EnvisioNet broke the code of secrecy and thus, according to some industry estimates, put more jobs in jeopardy. The governor’s rapid cross-country response seems to have ended the crisis, but a troubling truth about the value of workers in the business world remains.