Ralph Mowery wrote
Rod Speed wrote
If you look at the history of the 'giants' around the start
of the century you can see how they sort of stole the
millions then which would convet to billions now.
Even the most flagrant monopolistic
practices arent really stealing.
If the following hapened to you would you
call it stealing or just good business practice.
I keep harping on this.
I worked for a large company. The Kochs bought it. Changed the
retirement. When I first started , the retirement rule was you could
retire anytime after 55 years old. The company would pay 80 % of
your insurance and you would get 100 % of your retirement.
Not exactly a great way to run a business.
Koch bought it. Recended the 55 age, you had to be 62 to
start getting your reirement money and no medical insurance.
Arguably a sensible approach if the competitors in
that industry had a similar deal with their employees.
Another company bought the company. They then
proceeded to change the retirement and cut out 2
weeks of vacation for those that had been there over
20 years and had been getting 6 weeks of vacation.
Clearly the original employment conditions were overly generous.
We'd need to know why that was so and whether it was done
at a time when those employees were hard to find and if that
later changed significantly so there was no longer any need
to offer such attractive working conditions to attract enough
good enough employees and to get them to stay.
In all, I had to work an extra 2 years from
my planning and even at that it cost me
$ 500 a month in retirement money.
Clearly not theft, you were free to work for someone else who
offered better wages and conditions if you could find one.
And a lot better than losing your job entirely because it
was a dying industry like with newspapers etc currently.
And better than the entire operation going bust because like
GM they had been stupid enough to agree to unaffordable
benefits in retirement for so many of their employees.
I say they stole 2 years of my life and $ 500 a month.
You'd be wrong when you say that.