That’s what Bill shares about corporate loyalty and man is it so true. I think people need to revisit to the early nineties recession, and the corporate response to it, for where this began. IBM’s layoffs come particularly to mind.

This book excerpt looks mighty interesting.

Better yet, this Business 2.0 article from last year connects the dots.

If this sounds like deja vu all over again, it is–sort of. The 1990-91 recession introduced the notion of equal-opportunity job loss; back then, college-educated workers were among the first to be laid off. Debate raged in Washington about how to retrain white-collar workers and ready them for the new job insecurity. Companies began getting very explicit in their warnings to employees: Jobs were not for life. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter was one of a chorus of academics and consultants arguing that since companies could no longer provide job security, they should do more to give workers “employability security” through training and skills counseling. All this prompted a 1994 FORTUNE cover story called “The New Deal” that said legions of white-collar workers were encountering the “widespread replacement of the job compact of the previous era, the one that traded loyalty for job security. That deal is virtually dead.”

It’s deader then a doornail.