[Caerus]

In my experience, the "loyalty" of older generations is largely a myth.

I used to work for a company that had an enormous bimodal age distribution - maybe 45% over 50, 45% under 30, and the last 10% between 30-50. The age gap gave an interesting perspective into generational differences because it was so well defined.

Very few of the "old timers" we spoke candidly with were loyal in any meaningful sense, and many truly wanted to leave. However, they were stuck simply because of the pension plan - they couldn't afford to. Very few "millennials" have any lock-in like that.

[jdotjdot]

No lock in because we don't get pensions at all. Not exactly a benefit.

[scarmig]

Well, much of those generous pensions have turned out to be given in Monopoly Money. Recall that, at the time, they were usually negotiated in exchange for significantly lower wages. Capital then realized "hey, we can finagle our way out of paying out those pensions," and here we are.

At least now we get those foregone wages in current USD instead of fake pension money.

[a3n]

Airlines do this regularly, in combination with reorganization. It's a business model.

[VLM]

Your pension scenario closely resembles the public school system financial situation.

[VLM]

There are some serious age issues. From the point of view of millennials (I'm a little older):

Great Grandpa fought in WWII and then worked for the same megacorp his whole life until he retired in the 70s, but that doesn't matter because he died before the millennial was born. Loyal to the core. They had his back, he had theirs.

Gramps statistically did not go to woodstock but knows a friend of a friend who did and he started with the plan of working for the same company until he retired but toward the end they were downsizing or moving to Mexico (later China). He may have had a forced early retirement in the 80s because of that or have just made it till the 90s. Gramps was still loyal-ish but could tell the times they are a changing. Maybe stuck as a walmart greeter now, when you visit, to pay his medical bills. Gramps says stuff like "I had it lucky but they sure screwed over a lot of my friends"

Dad has never had a stable long term job because every time an exec needs to boost the stock price to cash in his options they fire a semi-random 5% of the company. Also endless economic upswings and downswings, bubbles and fads. He knows what loyalty is from hearing great grandpa and gramps talking about it when he was young, but he surely never experienced any of it. Why be loyal to a system designed to screw you? Get yours, as long as you can, because it'll be a lot worse soon enough.

Millennial has a girlfriend with an education degree who waits tables, a lifelong grad student type friend who dreams of tenure but there's 100 more qualified applicants, maybe he has a good job sometimes, maybe not. Some of his friends have real jobs, some don't. He may as well have a tee shirt "I was promised a $75K/yr job but all I got was these lousy $100K of student loan debt." Loyalty? What does that word even mean anymore? Isn't that what bosses say right before they screw you over? Loyalty is a dirty word, thats what they used as a tool to screw Dad over. Never again.