And, like a chain reaction, a country’s access or lack of access to petroleum often moves many seemingly unrelated industries —cosmetics, plastics, pharmaceuticals— to hire or lay off workers.
Even though these priests had won the friendship of many of the people because of their liberal ways, some of their best friends told them to “lay off” the Witnesses.
The collapse of tin prices in October 1985, coming just as the government was moving to reassert its control of the mismanaged state mining enterprise, forced the government to lay off over 20,000 miners.
Anxious to align the church with the working class, the Vatican wants to escape any onus for closing inefficient plants, laying off workers or sitting on the other side of the bargaining table when unions ask for more pay. . . .