A Tax Day Message about Layoffs With Consent

It’s Tax Day in the U.S., a moment when many of us think about how we fund collective life. So today’s story? It’s about layoffs — but not the kind we’ve come to expect.

See the visuals for this story and all our Week of Citizening stories here:
https://newsletter.baratunde.com/p/this-tax-day-solidarity-and-consent  

We’re often told democracy is too slow or messy for hard moments. But this episode shows that it’s exactly in those moments that shared power matters most. This isn’t just a story about layoffs. It’s a rejection of the authoritarian reflex in boardrooms, governments, and beyond. It’s about choosing to citizen, even — and especially — when it’s hard.

This story is not the teary CEO on Zoom. Not the cold memo. Not the decision handed down from above. This story is different. Kate “Sassy” Sassoon helped an organization in financial crisis involve everyone in the decision-making process. Together, they:

• Cut costs with consent

• Shared the burden of leadership

• Kept more people employed — and all people respected

“They felt like complete, full humans. Seen. Heard. Valued.” — Kate

Sign up to share and discover more stories like this: https://stories.howtocitizen.com

Video Produced by: Tess Novotnoy

Week of Citizening Collaborators: Baratunde Thurston, Jon Alexander, Shira Abramowitz, Elizabeth Stewart

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm recording this Tuesday, April fifteenth, twenty twenty five, Tax
Day day, where we pay the government to provide services,
to protect and defend, to provide for the common defense
and the general welfare, and a lot of us are

(00:20):
questioning that lately, and in the continuing spirit of our
week of citizen ing with these short stories. Today's story
has a lot to do with money in hard times,
which I'm not bringing up for any particular reason, just

(00:41):
apropos of nothing. But let's say that there's hard times
and a company or organization has to let people go.
What's the best way to do that? Uh. John Alexander,
who I'm partnered with on this, shared this thought with
me as he prepared to launch today's story that it's

(01:02):
in the toughest of times that the thesis that all
of us are smarter than any of us and can
achieve better things together than we can alone, that's when
the point is really proven. And so the story we're
sharing today is about layoffs that are done in a

(01:22):
group way, where the whole organization helps a company figure
out how to cut its costs, and if layoffs are required,
who gets let go. It sounds radical, It sounds and
we're so used to like the burden of the leader
that has to go. We've seen these videos of CEOs
crying after they've laid off half their staff on Zoom.

(01:47):
They don't have to bear it alone. There is another
way to do it, and they can share that burden
and that opportunity to lead with the people. You can
citizen even in a spa es actually in the darkest
times with the toughest decisions. So please listen to this.

(02:07):
As I've said in the other of these mini drops,
the visuals for these are available on Instagram, my instagram,
Baratunde or how to Citizen or the Citizens Guy, and
I'm also cataloging these on substack. We don't have a
how to Citizen substack, which is my personal one newsletter

(02:28):
dot baritunda dot com. So the show notes for this
will have a link to the visual for this story,
and I'll make sure that the show notes for the
previous ones are also doing the same. But on the
chant that you don't want to click on a Mark
Zuckerberg property, we'll find another archival location for it, may
end up being substack, And yeah, let us know what

(02:49):
you think about all this and head over to stories
dot howdositizen dot com in order to sign up for
the emails where we're releasing these every day. We have
a little form and we're asking you, do you know
stories like this? Are you a part of stories like this?
Do you want to hear more stories like this? And

(03:10):
we will take appropriate action together? How about that? All right?
In the meantime, check out these consent based layoffs. Radical beautiful.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Layoffs are a really complicated and charged topic. It can
be incredibly dehumanizing depending on how you go about it
for everybody involved, and it can also not be My
name is Kate Sase Sassoon, and I'm a consultant who
generally helps any organization that's trying to co own or
co operate some kind of shared asset do it together better.

(03:46):
We looked at each other and said, oh, we're going
to have to cut the budget, which means we're going
to have to fire our friends. I wanted to provide
a different pathway forward, so I presented to them the
idea that we could and probably should do this in
a participatory fashion. We need to consult with every single
member in the organization. What we need from everybody is

(04:07):
what is your red, yellow, and green in terms of
money and capacity, and we're going to see if we
can make those numbers plus our financial productions match. And
so we sat down, we looked at the math. Some
people went down in pay but then got a commission,
and some people went on a month by month contract.
We actually only had to completely let go of four people.
They felt like more complete, full humans. They felt respected,

(04:31):
they felt seen, they felt heard. Everybody had a strong
voice in how the company collectively faced a financial shortfall.
I think that the concept of hey, you could involve
your team in your layoffs is absolutely replicable across every
single kind of organization. It doesn't have to strip you

(04:51):
of your bond with these people and with the work.