Yes they are and always have been.
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Antiwork
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Big corporations have become heartless. There was always shady stuff going on, just look at how many retirement funds vanished but things have gotten worse. Everything is so globalized that it's easier for the people to dissociate themselves from their misdeeds. They don't see the facotires they shut down and all the workers who lost their job anymore. On top of that people just figured out all the loopholes (and created more via lobbying). So there are more oppertunities to show their heartlessness without feeling any repercussions (legal or social).
Small businesses are the same as always. Some have good employers some have bad.
“Never fall in love with a company, because it can never love you back.”
Yes, employers suck and workers should enter into the employment relationship with the understanding that the employer is lying often and wants your labor for as cheap as possible.
There are decent managers out there, but even so, if you put your own livelihood up against theirs and they have to choose between the two, they’ll always choose their own.
Negotiate every year and job hop as often as you can to get pay raises. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4894.Who_Moved_My_Cheese_
I'm retired now. My experiences during 50 years of employment across a couple of dozen employers in several different fields is that employers, as a group, are heartless.
There are exceptions:
One of my first jobs was with an employer who taught me what he thought I needed to know, encouraged me to find my own ways to get the job done and didn't reduce my pay or throw extra work at me when it turned out that I found ways to get the work done with less time and effort than he expected. This employer also hired a couple of young vandals to clean up the damage they caused, then kept them on as full time employees.
One of my last jobs was with an ambulance manufacturing company (Crestline Coach). The founders were making enough money to do things like fund the restoration of emergency vehicles with personal money and they shared the wealth with their employees. Every employee got the same financial reports as the owners. If an employee wanted to further their education, the owners helped with tuition and work schedules. At least twice that I know of, the owners helped employees start their own businesses. I don't know what the place is like now, because the founders retired and the new owners drove me (and others) out.
Tbh i do actually really want to find a place like the two good ones you mentioned to work at, it feels so hopeless with all of my experience of working either being just a number or the guy to unload all the work on without any benefits.
At this late stage of my life, I think the future in non-union employment might be in some kind of collaborative enterprise. There is a local company made up of a plumber, an electrician, a couple of equipment operators, a bookkeeper, and an accountant. They were all independent businesses that decided to formalize their existing business relationships under the umbrella of a shared company name. They still take independent bookings, but all under the new company name. The bookkeeper already offered answering services, so that fits nicely.
If I were younger or interested in coming out of retirement, I'd try to throw in with them for networking, computer security, and automation.
We as society must find ways to have bad companies pay for their lack of care. Because of more and more automation, Universal Basic Income needs to be paid by companies who profit most from it. If this fundamentals are set, employers will automatically move back into caring more about their employees. As long as their are no consequences, things will get worse.
My biased thoughts on this are Yes they are heartless and the way they treat employees is either lack of caring or downright cruelty, ive seen machines be treated better but thats simply because the machine has a pricetag where as they can ignore employees until they are burnt out, then terminate them for the smallest inconvenience.