Dee Dee is on a roll when it comes to the disappearance of the mainstream workforce.
Take note. We know that banks and credit card companies initially outsourced their customer service jobs from the North to the South (often to Florida) or to the West, where salaries were lower, land to construct offices were cheaper and benefits discretionary and unions were not the norm. Most of these companies have since transferred these offices overseas to India and the Phillipines.
What was criticized as sweat shops where female immigrants sewed clothing for the US fashion industry on 7th Avenue in New York City for Americans to wear (look for the union label of yore), have left the country for good.
Those jobs not outsourced are slowly being filled by the “pod people”. These people aren’t bad people, they just are no longer the children, relatives, neighbors of the employees of yesterday nor the non-resident college graduates of nearby universities.
The American workforce as you knew it is being slowly replaced throughout the country right before your eyes. They are foreigners legally emigrating here through outside contractors to do the job you used to perform. They come with work visas granted because there is a “shortage” (wink, wink, nod, nod) of Americans with the skills needed (at a lower salary) for the jobs you were removed from or not told were newly available (see earlier Nielsen posting). They are teachers from the Phillipines being hired by some public school systems, and illegal immigrants (commercial janitorial services, housing construction work, and processing plants. The global economy is at full throttle in America.
If you are over 40 and not an elected official or a judge, then you are beginning to be replaced by your children and grand children, or their friends.
Sixty years old may be the new fifty and fifty the new forty. But employers want to hire 20 and 30 year olds who are healthy and don’t seek health care until they are ready to have children.
Employers know that the 20-30 work force is too young to remember that it was the American way to retire from a job or take an “early out” (retire early) from one employer who provided health benefits and a pension income to supplement your social security check in your retirement years. Thus, young adults have no expectations. They don’t intend on remaining in one job longer than 3 years so long-term benefits are meaningless. Many are also clueless as to what their rights are and they are cheaper to hire!
Is this fair? Shouldn’t our loyalty be to ourselves first and then others? Doesn’t charity begin at home? Instead of using our lump sum retirement benefits from an “early out” to buy fast food franchises which are overwhelming Florida and relying on high school and college-age workers, let’s pool our money with a friend and buy facilities that were vacated by companies gone overseas, bring back professional jobs that our colleges are graduating students to fill. Also, we should commit to start businesses and bring back the respect we used to have for experience and make it a minimum requirement.