I do agree with some of what you said. Look, the government has no place picking winners and losers. It has no business cutting bond holders off at the pass. It has no business intruding and giving unions management or ownership positions. I disagree with that across the board.
If ever there was a company that should go down, I believe GM to be one, due to government actions, due to union actions.
I will say that dismissing out of hand, all the non-union people that would be effected by this, is severely problematic in this business environment. You mentioned older dead wood, and that older dead wood would find it next to impossible to find new employment.
There are plenty of younger people in the work force looking for employment. Most businesses are going to opt for them. I’m not saying self-interest is bad here either, but there are misconceptions about long term employees too.
The characterization of older people not being productive, is a flawed premise. SOME are. Others have a long term expertise that is valuable to the business.
I have seen businesses chop employees that cost them a number of times what the employee was making, only to hire in someone at more money and far less key knowledge to replace them. Those new hires making more money could not rebuild (or would take a decade or more to rebuild) what was destroyed during the process.
I have seen many people treated this way, and I am still anti-union and argue with some family members regularly on the topic.
“The characterization of older people not being productive, is a flawed premise. SOME are. Others have a long term expertise that is valuable to the business.”
If you weren’t the most politest person I’ve ever come across on this site (seriously, your earlier posts set a standard here), I’d say some off-color things. So I’ll just try to one-up you...
...I believe that I may have mus-intentionally misled a fellow FReeper with an earlier posting. What I had been trying to convey, although not successfully (because of my carelessness, of course), was that there is a subset of older people, some with lots of experience, that are either marginally productive, or not productive at all. I have worked with both. I’ve also worked with a number of very productive older people - and some, definitely are irreplaceable, and I consider myself in that class (although not quite as old as some of them).
The point that I was trying to make was there are often some non-productive people that are very highly paid, due to their past positions. These people, not a lot of people, but some, should be let go, or have their salary reduced to a level commensurate with their present capabilities. It is often very difficult for a company to do without “outside help”.
As far as whether it’s inhumane, that’s a tough call, but I still have to come down on the side that companies must stay lean and competitive. If an older person working for a big company (for a long time) and making big bucks is broke, then that person, almost always, did not plan ahead, but chose to “live for the day”. Those people should not be carried, essentially as welfare cases, by companies trying to compete in a world market. There will be some exceptions, but in the corporate world, they are rare, as most deal with health-related problems, of which coverage almost always exists.
People make choices - they can buy cars and houses on extended credit, to keep up with the Jones’s, or they can choose to live on less than what they make. In some cases, it might mean living in an apartment and driving a (non-union) mid-size, rather than a big house and a Lexus SUV - but it is a choice that they make, and companies should not feel obliged to “help out” people that have made bad choices. I base that on knowledge of a person that I worked with that fit that description and was broke shortly after being laid off. We hired the guy...who was essentially useless, because my boss felt bad for him (and knew him from an earlier day). It was a long time ago, but probably played a small part in my company disappearing.