Posted on 01/23/2024 12:46:35 PM PST by Cronos
In the two years I've been writing about Americans' changing relationship to work, there's one theme that's come up over and over again: loyalty.
Whether my stories are about quiet quitting, or job-hopping, or leveraging a job offer from a competitor to force your boss to give you a raise, readers seem to divide into two groups. On one side are the bosses and tenured employees, the boomers and Gen Xers. Kids these days, they gripe. Do they have no loyalty? On the other side are the younger rank-and-file employees, the millennials and Gen Zers, who feel equally aggrieved.
Why should I be loyal to my company when my company isn't loyal to me?
...There was a time when the psychological contract between employers and employees seemed unbreakable. In the three decades following World War II, as Rick Wartzman documents in his book "The End of Loyalty," a booming economy made American companies rich. Companies, in turn, shared that wealth with employees, both through hefty raises and through an extraordinary expansion of benefits
But the biggest perk of all was a sense of security. Blue-collar workers faced seasonal layoffs, but it was customary for companies to recall those workers when business picked up. Companies like Kodak went even further, delaying the implementation of new technology until it could figure out how to retrain and transfer any workers who would be displaced.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I was under the impression that this started shifting in the 1970s and it’s only gotten more clear over time since then.
I’ve been loyal to some companies. But then you get screwed over. In reality, it’s just a job. It’s something to do for money.
Know the feeling.
Yeah, loyalty tends to drop off a bit when you eliminate pensions, make employees pay for their ridiculously expensive health insurance, reduce bonuses and raises to the point of effective non-existence, all while CEO's and upper management keep getting enormous bonuses and raises.
A friend of ours saw this. The company has been cinching in their expenses but doing fairly well in the economy, even through Covid because it designed and sold instruments needed to diagnose and find cures. Both my husband and his friend had worked for the company since the late eighties. My husband retired at the end of November but his friend planned to retire in about three years. Instead, right after MLK day, he was informed he was among six laid-off managers and unceremoniously escorted to the door. Needless to say, the morale and loyalty notions of the survivors has taken quite a hit.
“Why should I be loyal to my company when my company isn’t loyal to me?”
Agreed
Sad, but true.
Loyalty at work is a two way street. Companies have proven over and over that employees are expendable and are simply resources.
I don’t blame employees for telling them to pound sand and get another job.
My wife works for a group in her company that bent over backwards for her when she was sick for two years. They truly cared about her and she is steadfastly loyal to those PEOPLE. She will never leave them. The company sucks and treat them like fodder.
After growing up in the 70’s and 80’s in Pittsburgh watching J&L, Bethlehem, US Steel and others go under or downsize corporate loyalty is non-existent in my book.
Having worked in at will states and fired for completely arbitrary reasons I would never, could never and should never be loyal to a company.
Likewise, I do not have a “work” family. I have a family. I am not part of your “team” you pay me and I do my job. There are no extras I will do unless I am paid to do them. I do not give up nights and weekends because you are understaffed. I do not care about the good of the company because if you have problems you make me go away. It’s that simple.
I am like a steak and lobster dinner. I tell you what you’re going to get and I bring it to the table. Do not expect a steak and lobster dinner and be able to pay Salisbury steak and tilapia prices. Likewise don’t think you’re going to be nice to me and talk up your workplace because “This is really a great place to work, we’re like a family and you can count on us as a team.”
I’m not a stupid 20 something anymore. All of those things mean the bosses suck, the culture is toxic and we’re hoping you’re going to be one of the people that do our jobs for us.
Loyalty works two ways.
The suits took the first step and put profits in their pockets as more important than the company’s well-being.
Took a while for that fruit to ripen, but it’s coming around now and it’s not a pretty sight.
I have long believed that the ideal business model involves much higher cash compensation for employees, no perks, and no pension. In other words, you provide your services based on what they are worth — and the company pays you accordingly. I never understood how the human race ever got to the point where getting paid while you’re not working makes any sense at all.
20 years ago, a friend came into my office. He had just been interviewed by another company and had proudly stated that he had been with this company for 20 years. He was told they were looking for someone more aggressive. (Meaning loyalty wasn’t a PLUS, it was a MINUS ... and that was 20 years ago).
The idea you were tied to one job has had less cache in the USA than anywhere else.
Agreed. One of the biggest problems we have, is the incredible number of former government employees who get paid to do nothing for the rest of their lives once they retire (often in their early to mid-50's), and those of us in the private sector, who can barely imagine having their never-ending pensions and benefits, pay for it.
Absolutely right.
People used to give up almost everything for the corporation’s goals and then they could be tossed aside like a crumpled used kleenex. Layoffs or a choice that your sacrifice for Pontiac or Oldsmobile was useless but the people at Buick were going on with life. “Don’t take it personally.”
Companies that offer good benefits and reasonable paid time off can retain employees.
Mistreat employees and you have high turnover which can kill a business.
We work with a company that falls in the second category. Almost every year I have to fly in to train yet another group of technicians. We got word late last year they are closing.
Or, annual raises, except for the government workers.
I agree. I think part of the change in corporate culture took place when the Personnel Department was replaced by “Human Resources”.
Instead of hiring people or persons companies now acquire “resources” as if people are just commodities.
Why should a commodity have any loyalty to a firm that doesn’t engender loyalty by treating people as people?
Screw them.
Look at the corporate headquarters with its modern leadership that has no brand loyalty, no product loyalty, no customer loyalty, no reputation and marketing loyalty, no loyalty to what the corporation may have spent 100 years building and establishing.
Over and over we see modern leadership moving in as vampires for short-term gain or just making stupid decisions because of ideas that don’t even belong in corporate board rooms, rather than people coming in to sustain the success and momentum of the great business model they are taking over.
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