Layoffs of longtime employees

What in the world is up with corporations these days? Doesn't time with the company mean anything? They're laying off people that have been working for 20-35 years for the same darn company... people who never would have even thought of working anywhere else. Dammit (pardon my 'French')... My dad had been working for his employer for 24 years, and he believed in his company. No matter how bad things got, he always assumed they'd get better, the company would recover, and he'd still be working there. Well guess what? He was recently laid off, and now is out looking for a job. There is no company loyalty where he used to work. Anyone left holding a job would gladly leave if they had some other employer to go to. None of them give a darn about helping the company succeed anymore, because the company doesn't care about them. They're just a 'resource' to be cut as soon as the company doesn't make its projected figures for that quarter. Ugh. Welcome to corporate America, where if your numbers aren't good from month to month, everyone goes into panic mode. Whatever happened to investing for the future, instead of the right-now?

-Kat

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point the "long term" became next year, or even next quarter. No one seems to reason out what will be more cost effective five or ten years down the road, rather what is most cost effective for next month's expenditures. I can't put my finger on what caused it, but corporations and businesses have taken the same apporach to finance that the average person has. Most people nowadays, regardless of income, live paycheck to paycheck, spending everything, saving nothing, not planning for the longterm. I have known a few people who made over one hundred thousand dollars a year, and if they had lost their jobs, they would make it a month, maybe three if they sold their high dollar items, that's it. Companies seem to be the same way. The mentality is, "We have to stay under X amount of expenditure this month, regardless of what it might cost us five years down the road to take this shortcut today. That is five years from now, and will be someone else's problem."

Yes that is corporate world now. My opinion is exactly what Richard is leading to, when will a company wake up an realize that a loyal employee is an asset.

And the thing that even makes these situations worse is that top management doesnt ever seem to take a cut. I dont know what the company is that Kat is refering to. But I would be willing to bet that local management still has a job with full pay, and if it is a company with headquarters elsewhere, the CEO and other top people are still compensated beyond belief (regardless of profitability).

The only job security is self employment. While not perfectly secure at least you can usually see any problems coming at you (none of those "Remember last week when we said things were going to get better and there was no reason to worry about your job... well your fired" speeches). The days of going to school, getting recruited by a large company and working until retirement are done.

This works both ways as well. People will now jump ship on a company without a concern about the company's position.