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.

I could log this great garret piece under my weblogging category, but that may be missing the point.

i see no politikblogger achieving public justice for any major issue; what i keep coming across is simply a string of petty private revenges. at the present time, politikbloggers devour each other over the actions of politicians who don’t even know they exist, by reinterpreting carefully selected articles and opinion pieces generated by one of a double-handful of monopolistic media machines, as seen through the rose-colored glasses of their particular political caste. truly, “empty protest” … as is this entire paragraph.

I shut down PhillyFuture because I realized it was “empty protest”. Commenting on the articles of others, and adding nothing to Philly related causes. I couldn’t figure out how to make the transition from punditry, to real activism. Check out HallWatch for a Philly site that is making a difference.

NYTimes – Barbara Ehrenreich

Only a person of unblemished virtue can get a job at Wal-Mart ? a low-level job, that is, sorting stock, unloading trucks or operating a cash register. A drug test eliminates the chemical miscreants; a detailed “personality test” probes the job applicant’s horror of theft and willingness to turn in an erring co-worker.

…What has been revealed in corporate America over the past six months is a two-tier system of morality: Low-paid employees are required to be hard-working, law-abiding, rule-respecting straight arrows. More than that, they are often expected to exhibit a selfless generosity toward the company, readily “donating” chunks of their time free of charge. Meanwhile, as we have learned from the cases of Enron, Adelphia, ImClone, WorldCom and others, many top executives have apparently felt free to do whatever they want ? conceal debts, lie about profits, engage in insider trading ? to the dismay and sometimes ruin of their shareholders.

But investors are not the only victims of the corporate crime wave. Workers also suffer from management greed and dishonesty. In Wal-Mart’s case, the moral gravity of its infractions is compounded by the poverty of its “associates,” many of whom are paid less than $10 an hour.