Myths of the Golden Era -- Exploded!

[Angus Forbes]

Myth: in the good old days, employers cared about their employees rather than money, and the workers were loyal to their employers. In fact, they worked together, like a family, unlike now when it's all about money.

Fact: there has never been more conflict between employers and employees in Britain than during the '20s. The British economy slumped and tensions ran high.

I quote the National Archives' home page for a summary:

The golden era of employment in the United States ran from about the end of WWII until about 1980, when many major corporations were indeed like families, employers were loyal to employees, and employees were loyal to the employer. Prime examples included AT&T, IBM, and General Electric, especially for salaried people. IBM, for example, did not lay off any employees even through the great depression, and assured each employee of stable, long-term employment with high wages and generous benefits (this was savagely ended circa 1994 by Lou Gerstner, who came to IBM from the cigarette industry). Before Gerstner, Jack Welch worked the same magic on GE, brutally ending the era of civilized employment within GE, and by precedent ending it even for many people outside GE. Bell Labs, which was part of AT&T, was good beyond belief to its employees for most of its existence (up until the breakup of AT&T in 1984), and in return became arguably the best research lab in human history.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And that Golden Age was the direct result of the Golden Age of Organized Labor, which began in the mid-thirties and continued on into the sixties. It took a lot of rock-throwing, scab-stomping, sit-downing, and line-holding, but by the end of the war, the average working-class factory hand could generally expect to get a square deal from management. But as soon as those kindly folks in the executive suite figured out they could get some Bangladeshi to do the same job for pennies, you could kiss that goodbye.

My mother was a Bell System gal, and to this day swears that New England Telephone was the best employer she ever had. Many still mourn the passing of Ma Bell.

 

[Flicka]

Between the 50s and 1992 we had unemployment figures of way below 1%. Those were the good old days here.

Job security is still good here though since it's still virtually impossible to sack people. Unless they fail to show up repeatedly or you downsize - in which case people are let go strictly on a 'last in first out' principle - you can't get rid of people.

 

[Angus Forbes]

And that Golden Age was the direct result of the Golden Age of Organized Labor, which began in the mid-thirties and continued on into the sixties. It took a lot of rock-throwing, scab-stomping, sit-downing, and line-holding, but by the end of the war, the average working-class factory hand could generally expect to get a square deal from management. But as soon as those kindly folks in the executive suite figured out they could get some Bangladeshi to do the same job for pennies, you could kiss that goodbye.

My mother was a Bell System gal, and to this day swears that New England Telephone was the best employer she ever had. Many still mourn the passing of Ma Bell.

I think that both you and your mom are right.

In addition, I have sometimes wondered if we did so well after the war partly because people returning from the war and going into management had seen the really dark side of human behavior, and at least tried to do a little better. This generation is now gone, pretty much, and we have what we have today in their place. I don't know, just a thought.

Speaking of Sweden, Flicka, I worked a number of years in management for a major Swedish corporation, which was a really civilized, benevolent employer, as well as a first-class business enterprise.

 

[David Conwill]

Thanks, Fedora Loungers, for sucking away two hours of my work day. :eusa_doh:

It's really an excellent thread, I just wish I'd discovered it at some other time!

 

[MissMittens]

I work in a reasonably secure job, but no one is happy here..........even though the salaries are commensurate with industry, we're being bent over on a daily basis and being asked to do more with less. The latest is that they're talking about adding a night shift, and that means we can expect to be shuffled around. We had pay cuts 2 yrs ago, which was re-instated last year, and this year we can expect a 1% pay increase, but health care costs have spiraled.

 

[p51]

I work in a reasonably secure job, but no one is happy here..........even though the salaries are commensurate with industry, we're being bent over on a daily basis and being asked to do more with less.

I hear you there. We've been on manadatory overtime for almost two years straight now where I work for a large nation-wide company. Nobody here has been able to count on weekends off in so long we've all forgotten what it felt like. I'm not kidding when I say all requests for time off are turned down and you have to have a manager overturn that. Really, I had a request for jury duty turned down and I needed a boss to overturn that! It takes over 6 months to be worth anything on my job, too, so when the company finally realized they needed way more people than we had (mostly due to a new computer system that did the opposite of it's promised role of making the job quicker), thos epople just now are starting to be of any use. And we can't find enough people to meet the minumum standard. New people quit in droves once they realize that they're pretty much to be expected here all of the time and we can't keep enough people around, even in the current economy. I wonder if the people at the corporate HQ are aware that once the economy turns better, they're going to hemmorage people and won't be able to get anyone to fill those positions. Sure, all the power is with the company now, but many companies are so short sighted they think they'll be able to call the shots forever. They're in for a rude awakening once workers have more options than do right now...

 

[MissMittens]

I hear you there. We've been on manadatory overtime for almost two years straight now where I work for a large nation-wide company. Nobody here has been able to count on weekends off in so long we've all forgotten what it felt like. I'm not kidding when I say all requests for time off are turned down and you have to have a manager overturn that. Really, I had a request for jury duty turned down and I needed a boss to overturn that! It takes over 6 months to be worth anything on my job, too, so when the company finally realized they needed way more people than we had (mostly due to a new computer system that did the opposite of it's promised role of making the job quicker), thos epople just now are starting to be of any use. And we can't find enough people to meet the minumum standard. New people quit in droves once they realize that they're pretty much to be expected here all of the time and we can't keep enough people around, even in the current economy. I wonder if the people at the corporate HQ are aware that once the economy turns better, they're going to hemmorage people and won't be able to get anyone to fill those positions. Sure, all the power is with the company now, but many companies are so short sighted they think they'll be able to call the shots forever. They're in for a rude awakening once workers have more options than do right now...

The problem is that if people do start leaving companies in droves when things pick up, they're likely to outsource even more to climes in the East. I wish that western economies had Western-made products in their stores.....

 

[1961MJS]

The problem is that if people do start leaving companies in droves when things pick up, they're likely to outsource even more to climes in the East. I wish that western economies had Western-made products in their stores.....

Hi

At SOME POINT, the cost of shipping cotton from Mississippi to India to be made into a stupid t-shirt and shipped back has got to be less than just making it over here. Time (and energy) is / are money, but it's just a waste of energy to ship cotton clothing around the world.

rant mode off

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Hi

At SOME POINT, the cost of shipping cotton from Mississippi to India to be made into a stupid t-shirt and shipped back has got to be less than just making it over here. Time (and energy) is / are money, but it's just a waste of energy to ship cotton clothing around the world.

rant mode off

I think I mentioned it in another thread but I remember reading about a high-tech company who had plans to literally ship jobs offshore, as in just outside of the three-mile limit in international waters. They were planning to buy an old cruise ship and turn it into a floating office for their Russian and Indian engineers who would be listed as "merchant seamen." The idea was to save clients the expense of traveling all the way to India to oversee projects. However, I don't know if they ever implemented the scheme.

 

[Kmadden]

Except for the 1 percent, we are all workers — regardless of our job descriptions.
But there is a big difference in the way workers are treated in the U.S. and the way they are treated in Sweden.
I think LizzieMaine's assessment of labor relations in the U.S. is dead-on correct.
Meanwhile, Flicka is commenting on the scenario in Sweden, where workers enjoy a vastly-superior position in the labor-management equation and in Swedish society.
In Sweden, workers are considered human beings who work.
But American workers are considered expendable economic commodities without human wants or needs.
Only the corporations' wants and needs count.
The one thing standing between a corporate worker in the U.S. and low pay with no benefits is his union. And a worker who does not belong to a union can thank the existence of unions for his pay and benefits, because unions set such standards for workplaces in their respective areas.
Without unions, corporations would treat American workers no better than their counterparts in Asia or the Pacific Rim.
Corporations pretty much control America because they have bought the local, state and federal levels of our government.
And the only thing that stands in the way of total corporate control of our elections — especially since the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision allowing unlimited contributions in political campaigns — is organized labor.
Labor provides money and get-out-the-vote activities during elections. Even so, labor is vastly outspent by the corporations.
Thus, we have seen an ever-increasing corporate and legislative assault on organized labor. Corporations reason that if they can weaken the unions, the will reduce the money, strength and ability of their only opponent to total control of American society.
I write this as a recently-retired reporter and writer for 24 years at a labor union newspaper in St. Louis, Mo.

 

[Fletch]

With respect to your experience and your right to your opinion, we here at FL do have a blanket rule about postings that approach politics. They've led to unresolvable disagreements in the past.

It's the moderators' call, but after about paragraph 7 your words above seem to turn firmly political.

 

[Angus Forbes]

(withdrawn by AF hisself)

 

[jamespowers]

With respect to your experience and your right to your opinion, we here at FL do have a blanket rule about postings that approach politics. They've led to unresolvable disagreements in the past.

It's the moderators' call, but after about paragraph 7 your words above seem to turn firmly political.

Extremely firm.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Except for the 1 percent, we are all workers — regardless of our job descriptions...

I could say a few things but I won't because 1) debate has never been my forte and 2) even if it was it's not good for my blood pressure. Peace out.

 

[John in Covina]

Myth Turned Fact: Nothing even tangentially relevant to our times began before the 1950s.
Anything before is primitive, is background, is irrelevant in the extreme.

Color photo of NBC-TV mobile unit at 1939 World's Fair.
Full-size file taken offline, because why should we care?

From WIKI The famous GS quote:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

 

[jamespowers]

From WIKI The famous GS quote:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

Gee, even Santayana would be cofused with all those variations.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

From WIKI The famous GS quote:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

[video=youtube;29BoqCMRBFk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29BoqCMRBFk[/video]

 

[Fletch]

Those who do not remember the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

 

[jamespowers]

Those who do not remember the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

Some of Santayana's other quotes are good too:
"Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality."

"Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be."

And, from The Life of Reason, the real quote in more context:
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience."