Okay to anyone out there who thinks a simple "change of office" is going to fix our problems, you are sadly mistaken. Everywhere you turn you hear news stories or see articles about the job market and how bad it is. This has been a long time coming and continues to get worse.

Even our parents generation didn't have job security, some may have been lucky and found a job with great pay and benefits and a sense of fulfillment for a job well done. I know for a fact companies like HP used to bend over backwards for their employees. This example just serves to show how dedicated our coperations used to be to the average employee. I heard it through a friend who worked for HP for years and actually said you couldn't get fired even if you wanted to! He told me a story about one of the workers being caught with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her desk...they paid out $40k to send her to rehab! Do you think they would do that today? No way, they would have your ass kicked out the door and a temp in the next day. No wonder work ethics continue to go down....who wants to work their butts off for a company that will give them nothing in return?

There is a story currently on ABC.Com talking about how 60k+ workers have been laid off just in the month of Feburary. The rate of unemployment continues to rise.


Even for the lucky few who are able to find jobs, it seems the only ones available now are "consulting" or "temp" positions where you work under contract for an agreed upon term in exchange for the "possibility of hire" at the end of that period. We all know what typically happens at the end of that "agreed upon term" they either string you along for a couple of months or fire you and hire another temp/consultant. Even the Post Office is hiring this way now, a friend of mine (ex-military) was just brought on to the post office as a temp employee, trained and delivering mail now, he told me that he has to work a year as a temp before they will consider hiring him on full time with benefits. Why would they hire him when they can just as easily bring on another temp in a year to do the same job without benefits? If our Federal government is using this method of hiring exactly what example are they trying to set?

Coupled with this is the problem of the growing rate of people who need medical care on a regular basis. How are these people supposed to pay the increasing costs for medical coverage when they can barely support themselves on the temp pay they are getting?

Anyway I best stop myself before I make my headache worse.....is there any way we can stop carrying ourselves straight to hell in a handbasket?

MsZ