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In reply to the discussion: I was told my Job position was terminated today [View all]ymetca
(1,182 posts)after I overhauled and completely fixed/automated a small financial company's data transfer system mess. Then I trained my replacements, who are a couple of nice young fellows from India, sharing a hotel room and green cards.
Everyone talks about bringing manufacturing jobs back, but our tertiary sector workers are being absolutely thrown under the bus these days. Especially us older ones. We all know that companies are simply projecting health care costs and getting away with age discrimination, and exploiting the H1B Visa program to avoid having to hire American college grads.
It's the Republican immigration "plan" to renege on investing in our own country's children, because it is cheaper for business to use educated kids from other countries. We only want to let in "the right people", as our so-called president says. Hint, hint. Say no more.
My Grandmother worked as an executive secretary for 40 years at the same company, retired at 65 and lived on Social Security and Medicare until she was 93. My father worked for the same company for 23 years, then got let go at age 62. He had to take "early retirement" (i.e. less Social Security money) just to survive. He worked right up until the day he died, aged 76.
I haven't worked for any company more than 10 years before some "strategic shift" caused me to lose my job. Most companies now place an employee's ROI (Return on Investment) at about 5 to 7 years. After that, they consider you a "diminishing return", which needs to be "turned over". They get away with this by shifting job descriptions around, relocating facilities, or whatever it takes to "shed" their looming "human resource liabilities".
At one company I worked for, they "proved" there was no age discrimination in their mass layoffs by firing many more younger, low-paid workers than they did all their highly paid IT workers. But in my department, all of us longer-term, older IT employees were picked right out and let go. Neat trick, that.
So for all of us tail-end Baby Boomers, who have been working all these years, paying into the system, it's basically, "sorry, but there's just not enough for you." Oh, and f*ck your kids too.
American Business --where Democracy stops at the door.