Sounds like a crummy union. Anyway, what's wrong with keeping mediocre, unmotivated employees employed? What's so great about ambition? This is tongue in cheek

Sounds like a crummy union. Anyway, what's wrong with keeping mediocre, unmotivated employees employed? What's so great about ambition? This is tongue in cheek, but I feel like plenty of people, with good justification, would think of their jobs in exactly the terms you describe, with words like "serve" as in a prison sentence.