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There was a time in America a generation or two ago when you could give your all to a company. Here in Michigan there were a number of small towns where a sing

• hobs 5y ago
  Extremely true and it happened all over, my dad worked for a place for 40 years and the last 10 the MBAs moved in, they were profitable, had profit sharing, and a great company. Today its a footnote in a merger, place is closing down.
  • nerpderp82 5y ago
    NAFTA really destroyed the middle class and middle america.
    • chrisseaton 5y ago
      The middle class are the ones who are doing fine or great. It's the working class who got screwed over.
      • nerpderp82 5y ago
        Working class was middle class.
        • chrisseaton 5y ago
          If you're middle class, with stocks, a professional job, your own house, you probably have been doing absolutely fine over the last couple of years. It's everyone else who's in trouble.
          • contrast 5y ago
            It might be worth noting that in the US, "middle class" is used in the same way as "working class" is used in the UK i.e. blue collar, non-professionals.
            • deleted 5y ago
              [deleted]
            • mastax 5y ago
              Not where I live. Blue and white collar people can both be middle class.
    • willcipriano 5y ago
      NAFTA was a symptom of globalism more generally. What we ended up with is selective globalism. Want to import cheaper drugs from Canada, that's illegal! Yeah sure they might have been produced in the US in the first place but it might be dangerous! Want to get a degree in a country where the price of education is lower? We won't honor it. Want to hire the services of a Kenyan clinic doctor who has experience in everything from treating runny noses to gunshot wounds? Illegal he's unqualified according the the national doctors union (AMA). Yeah you can get cheap crap from places that hire children to work in their factories, but the stuff that is really expensive we are 1700's Japan all of the sudden.
    • mark_l_watson 5y ago
      I argue that there is a larger effect: Bill Clinton making the decision that the Democratic Party turn its back on blue collar workers and the middle of the country because just having Wall Street support would be sufficient to win elections. He was not wrong, but it has had a bad effect because the republicans also started to ignore the working class in favor of the financial class. Nationalism, something to be avoided, occurs when the underclass is not represented in a political system.
      • spacemanmatt 5y ago
        Bill Clinton did not give Republicans the idea to ignore blue collar workers. He got it from them.
  • melony 5y ago
    What happened to "company towns bad"?
    • creaturemachine 5y ago
      This is different from a company town which is created and governed by the employer, rather than, let's say, adopted by a predominant employer.
    • mcguire 5y ago
      Some companies did offer benefits to their town, for roughly the same reason the FAANGs offer free lunches and dinners. Kind of a double edge gift. I have no idea where the "companies used to take care of their employees" commenters are coming from. There's plenty of counterexamples. "The toxicity of concentrated TEL was recognized early on, as lead had been recognized since the 19th century as a dangerous substance that could cause lead poisoning. In 1924, a public controversy arose over the "loony gas", after five[94] workers died, and many others were severely injured, in Standard Oil refineries in New Jersey.[95] There had also been a private controversy for two years prior to this controversy; several public health experts, including Alice Hamilton and Yandell Henderson, engaged Midgley and Kettering with letters warning of the dangers to public health.[17] After the death of the workers, dozens of newspapers reported on the issue.[96] The New York Times editorialized in 1924 that the deaths should not interfere with the production of more powerful fuel.[17]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Initial_controversy_and_phase-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Initial_controv...) See also radium, polyvinyl chloride, assorted mine disasters, etc.
  • refurb 5y ago
    MBAs tend to move in when companies are in trouble. It’s a signal not a cause. The companies I know who are still benevolent make money hand over fist. Management, employee, shareholders are all happy as peas in a pod. It’s when the money stops flowing that hard decisions are made.
• kbenson 5y ago
  How is that any different than some fiefdom ruled over by some noble? The whole point of democracy and elective government is that you can't rely on a system like that to be consistently good, whether it's the Duke's son squandering all the wealth and not listening to the people or a shift in management at the company. Just because sometimes there were benevolent companies that decided to contribute to their communities doesn't mean relying on that is a stable or desired outcome. Require employees be paid and treated fairly. Require companies pay their taxes. Tax employees on those fair wages. Use those taxes to pay for community needs. That's the goal. That's our responsibility as citizens of a democracy. Relinquishing these responsibilities to others because it seems easier is how we got where we are. Benevolent companies are just a precursor to abusive ones, so take away their ability to be abusive. If you relinquish your power to another, you should expect to be unhappy when their goals conflict with your own. Don't relinquish your power.
  • lordnacho 5y ago
    > Require employees be paid and treated fairly. The problem is this isn't well defined. Somewhere maybe in the 1980s greed became good and the responsibilities of corporations shifted from being a fictional person that could benefit society to a thing that was in it for shareholders only. This is a cultural shift borne by MBAs and thinktanks, not something that can be pinned down to a specific incident. As usual sunlight is the best disinfectant. It needs to be clear who owns what and who did what, and journalists need to go and look at cases where things are not in the interest of the community. There need to be records of whose interests are represented, who owns what, and who knows who.
    • danaris 5y ago
      > The problem is this isn't well defined. This is not entirely untrue, but it's not particularly supported by the rest of your post. Even if it's hard to completely define what "paid and treated fairly" mean, it's crystal clear that a very large percentage of employers today don't meet even the lowest possible bar—that being a living wage and not actively abusing the employees.
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  It's been happening for much longer than NAFTA has been around. My hometown was known for building tires earlier in the 20th century and all that left in the early 80s and it never recovered. That said, before that happened the place was kind of a "company town" and the big manufacturers with all the money essentially ran the place. Only good news if you were in their favor. Lots of stories about being harassed by police if you were on their bad side. They were the kind of people that would have still been using child labor if it weren't outlawed.
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >They were the kind of people that would have still been using child labor if it weren't outlawed. Allow me to remind you the manner in which child labor was outlawed: Industrialization progressed to a point where it was no longer economically viable except in a few tiny niches. It was then outlawed, to much back patting. Sure, some people would probably use it if it was viable, but don't pretend like it was some great accomplishment to outlaw it. It was basically a case of writing law after the market had made a decision.
    • micromacrofoot 5y ago
      Yeah this isn't about the history of child labor, it's about the big industry in town being run by a bunch of sleezebags.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    The neat thing about company towns was company stores, which were the only kind of stores in town. They were happy to sell you anything you wanted, on credit. The problem being that at the end of the month you owed more to the company store than what you got in your paycheck. You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
  • treis 5y ago
    >It's been happening for much longer than NAFTA has been around. My hometown was known for building tires earlier in the 20th century and all that left in the early 80s and it never recovered. Also, the products they made were kind of crappy and expensive. It's very easy for a company like the one the GP described to stagnate and rot. Especially when unions get thrown into the mix.
• joe_the_user 5y ago
  If a loyal employee had a health crisis that insurance didn't cover the company owner would write a check. Not that this didn't happen. But I should add that it wasn't any benevolent plan on the part of the owners that made things that way. It was a combination of the presence of New Deal, Unions, the threat of so-called-communism, etc and the lack of hyperdeveloped capital and commodity markets, that pushed things in that direction from the 1930s to the 1970s. And then what you describe pushed things the other way. The point is that same owner probably supported all the innovations, because they were about the owner having more flexibility. And by the token, you can't get back to this point, probably not ever but certainly not without outside intervention.
  • nanidin 5y ago
    These things still do happen - my SO was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. Her boss and the owner of the company arranged a $10k bonus, 6 additional weeks of PTO, and a 6 month paid leave of absence once she was done with treatment. I do agree it isn't good to rely on the beneficence of overlords in general though, since they aren't obligated to continue to be beneficent.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > There was a time in America a generation or two ago when you could give your all to a company. The problem with these advice columns is that they aren't saying "don't give your all to a company". They end up saying "your company is the enemy". The original article that this blog refers to was titled "Exit interviews are a trap", which many pointed out was a gross exaggeration. It assumes that every company performing an exit interview is doing something malicious, which is a ridiculous claim. Yes, it's possible that some companies somewhere are using exit interviews as some sort of trap to get dirt or leverage over employees, and it's also true that you shouldn't rush in and use it as an opportunity to complain about everyone you hated at the company. However, it's unreasonable to assume that it's a trap and that the company is interested in nothing more than revenge. That's the problem with these advice blogs. They cater to an idea that managers and HR are "the other", and once someone crosses the line to management or HR, they become evil and incapable of doing anything other than abusing you for no good reason. We should warn young people about abusive employers, but it's not helpful to teach them that employers are universally malicious.
  • Ambolia 5y ago
    I think the message is more "you shouldn't form loyalty ties with your company, because your company won't form them with you". Loyalty ties are still important, but not something you will find in most employer-employee relationships. Better to have a more "extractive" vision of companies and build loyalty ties somewhere else.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      Very true indeed, build loyalty ties with team members, you might find them again at other places. The company, not really. Beyond startup size, every employee is just a number on some spreadsheet.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    << They end up saying "your company is the enemy". I read the article and I disagree. It does not say it either explicitly or implicitly. The article only urges the reader to think of the benefits to themselves first.. like a company would. I don't think it is an unreasonable approach.
• AussieWog93 5y ago
  There are a lot of responses here discussing corporations vs. the government vs. the workers when it comes to social responsibility, but ignoring the fact that _everyone_ has become less socially responsible over the last 40 years. People in general just aren't community or socially minded in the way they used to be[1], and the bosses of companies or leaders of government are all people too. [1] To be specific, people are still charitable, but we don't have the same culture/institutions where everyone gives and takes in the same way we used to. Things like working bees, community sport, or even just general behaviours like helping out friends/family/neighbours are all getting rarer by the day.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    True, to an extent, although I suspect in large part due to increased mobility---family members used to live in the same general area.
    • AussieWog93 5y ago
      I think it's more cultural than geographical. Just anecdata, but most of the positive, restore-your-faith, "community" experiences in my personal life have come from non-Anglo migrants, as well as people from rural areas and also certain states (QLD, and to a lesser extent SA). Long story short, I think it's simply a cultural shift more than an adaptation to any lifestyle changes.
  • nonameiguess 5y ago
    Yep. I have no idea what it is, but it's clear there is a broader issue here than any reductive analysis will acknowledge. Same thing with NAFTA. It wasn't a single trade deal. The exact same changes happened with my dad's employer, but he was a plumber for Los Angeles County. They weren't and can't be offshored and they aren't owned by corporate raiders or soulless shareholders, yet exactly what happened to rust belt manufacturing companies happened to government-employed blue collar laborers in California.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
• mcguire 5y ago
  "...you could give your all to a company." I believe the phrasing should be "had to give your all to a company." This is the time period when you would retire from the same company you started at, right? And if you had more than a few jobs on your resume (or the infamous missing time), you would have a hard time being hired because you were unreliable. You have a very rose-tinted view of the historical business world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strikes#Twentieth_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strikes#Twentieth_cent...
  • hnaccount141 5y ago
    > You have a very rose-tinted view of the historical business world. Indeed. We're only a few generations removed from a time when we had companies enlisting private armed security forces and militias to violently break strikes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...
    • SamuelAdams 5y ago
      Also in the early 1900’s it was still legal in some states to use child labor. That was only 3-4 generations ago.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• and0 5y ago
  A couple generations ago wasn't too far past the gilded age, and on the tail end of the Standard Oil empire, the Pinkertons, etc. Before that slavery and serfdom. The idea that power was only used exploitatively after financialization of industry seems incredibly naive to me, or just an extreme warping of history and reality to fit a rose-tinted, romantic worldview. Letting that level of power and resources consolidate to a few people at the top and crossing your fingers that they'll be "benevolent" is foolish. Historically speaking the % of times these rulers would graciously cover a health crisis out of pocket, or meaningfully donate to democratically chosen local causes was slim to none. Better to distribute the fruits more equally in the first place, but I'm guessing these kind and benevolent leaders would not have happily allowed their workforces to unionize. That expectation of trust only seems to go one way.