Reply #9: I don't think corps. were ever loyal to workers.

[TexasSissy]

I've seen documentaries speaking of the early years of our industrialized society, where corporations worked children for 12 hours a day, for pennies a day, in horrid working conditions. Where corporations refused to put safety guards on dangerous equipment, since it was easier and cheaper to simply replace the worker when his hand got cut off and he couldn't work any longer. When it took violent strikes where workers got killed before Ford would pay his workers a living wage (he is oft quoted now as saying something lofty like, "If I don't pay my workers a living wage, I won't have a public to sell my cars to." In reality, he was forced to pay his workers a living wage; it was reported in a documentary I saw that his wife was instrumental in that by threatening to leave him if he didn't increase wages and stop the killings of the workers).

No, corporate America does not have a history of loyalty to workers, Some companies, it is true, have had "group hugs" of one sort or another. But I think that was because they saw it as beneficial to the company in the long run. It was also beneficial to keep workers on for a lifetime. That was before the expensive health care premiums and 401(k) and such. Now, it is cheaper to replace older workers with younger ones. And quite often, it is the workers who don't want to stay somewhere for a lifetime (I don't). We have a more mobile society now.