Mr. A's father and relatives worked for a Railroad during the first half of the 20th century. That "guaranteed" career went away after long-haul trucking put the railcars onto 18-wheelers. Mr. A. tells sad stories about family members who became unemployed after a lifetime of believing that the Railroads would Always Be There.
This is totally
not what LoneAspen, I & others are referring to. I'm not sure if you are deliberately trying to misunderstand us, or whether I failed to make myself clear. It's probably the latter. So I'll try once more:
- Nobody is arguing that everybody should have a "guaranteed career".
- Of course industries change over time. They shrink or grow, and some vanish altogether. You need to be flexible and adapt if necessary. That's cool.
- Nobody is asking for handouts. At least I am not.
- The point is, many corporations today are ever trying to squeeze more and more out of their employees, reducing headcount, forcing the rest of the staff to do more with less, and not offering better compensation to the lucky ones that are not laid off either.
All that while making ample profits. That is
not cool.
Now, I haven't been around for the old days, so maybe I'm just nostalgic for a time I never experienced (is that even possible?). Still, I feel that what I described above is a fairly new development. But if you think that it was always that way, I respect your opinion, and we should just agree to disagree.
I believe this is mainly a consequence of (a) relatively high unemployment and (b) globalization, both of which put labour as a whole under pressure and have led to a downwards spiral of worsening working conditions for many (though not all, of course. Yes, there are people who are doing great). Think lower real wages, unpaid overtime becoming pretty standard practice, company pensions and other perks being reduced or eliminated etc. etc.
I'm obviously biased by my own limited experiences, but there is no doubt to me that some working conditions 20 or 30 years ago were better than today. I'm on friendly terms with one or two older managers at my megacorp, and those folks just laugh at the current company pension plan. One of them has been around for decades, and he can basically expect to retire soon at 63, with his company pension and the German equivalent of SS
fully replacing his net salary. No one hired in this millennium will ever get anywhere close to that, unless they make it to senior management. That includes me, though I have a higher education than my older colleague and certainly don't work any less hard. And I'm already in a privileged position.
You, Amethyst, are dismissing these arguments by simply saying "life was always tough, get used to it". IMHO, that's too simplistic.
Sorry for the wall of text.