The 'End Of Loyalty' And The Decline Of Good Jobs In America

The mill where my dad worked when I was a kid is closed. The mill my father in law worked at is closed. The mill everybody else in town worked at is closed. A couple smaller businesses have opened to take up some of the slack, but it's certainly not like it was.

The fact is, workers have no voice because there's always somebody more desperate than you who will do the job for less.

I do agree with the assessment that much of the trouble is that factories and businesses are being run for the short term benefit of shareholders, rather than the long term benefit of the company. This results in bad business decisions that frequently sink plants.

Excellent article from an author who has studied this issue, to where we've been to where we are going. An important thing he said is that industry and government should come together to figure out how to get people prepared for the future--people who are now entrenched in an occupation that's going away. Example: when you look at the trend for coal mining, it's been declining for at least two decades. Senators and Reps in Kentucky and WVA knew it, and so did the big corporations. Yet you seldom see anyone who can influence retraining people in those communities set up a program to do so.