The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Carl Heintze

Peace dividend yields Cold War casualty

Not all the casualties of the Cold War are in Europe. One recent one is a friend who, after more than 30 years of uninterrupted service to his company, was laid off last month. He has almost no prospect of being rehired.

The friend is in his 50s, too young to retire and probably too old to find another comparable job.

I don't know what he did when he was working, but from hints from his family and from an occasional visit from someone performing a security check, I gathered he was engaged in something super-secret in the aerospace industry, something to which the Peace Dividend does not extend.

Whatever it was, it is now obsolete as an occupation, and my friend has, in effect, been tossed on the scrap heap of history. I don't know how this affects his pension or his health insurance.

I think--though I'm not sure--he has an adequate IRA or two when he reaches retirement age, but his health insurance ends in another month. It's likely he'll be paying for whatever protection he gets out of his own pocket.

His children are mostly adult and mostly through college. But if he wants to continue working, he is probably going to have to take a lower-paying position or move elsewhere.

But none of these are as devastating as the fact that he's no longer wanted. He's outlived his usefulness. Whatever his loyalty, whatever his devotion to duty--and I'm sure there was lots of both--he has become not only surplus, but obsolete.

He's been put out to pasture, as it were, when there's still a gallop or two left in him.

I don't think his predicament is unusual. In fact, I know it isn't because it happened to me at a slightly more elderly age.

Unlike my friend's, my disappearance from the ranks of the employed was not because of the end of the Cold War. It was because my employer no longer had any use for what I could do.

As it turned out, my story ended happily. Retirement was pleasant; we traveled a lot, and I found many things to do that had nothing to do with work. I was glad I had been shown the door.

But it was a shock, nevertheless, and because of it I can sympathize with how my friend feels. I can appreciate that although as a nation we are predominant in the world and although things in many ways have never been better for Americans, in other ways life is the pits.

As the baby boomers and their younger relations, Generation X, Generation Y or whatever, enter the workforce, they want their elders out of the way. And corporations, constantly merging and forever looking at The Bottom Line, have no compunction about reducing the workforce by whatever means necessary.

The corporation doesn't really care much about people. It does care about profits.

Human relations in this corporate age have come to mean a lot less than economic success. We seem more interested in the daily level of the Dow Jones averages than we do in who makes them go up or down.

I've heard that computer companies are getting rid of programmers who were trained in Unix and C and C++. They'd rather have youngsters, up-and-coming and champing at the proverbial bit, who understand Java. Those approaching or just over 40 are over the hill and ready for the scrap heap. Java came after they emerged from training.

While it is clear that no company owes any of its employees a living--although for a while that seemed to be the case in Japan--it does seem that American corporations could be more concerned with the fate of those who have served them long and well. It does seem there could be more heart and less profit motive in making our country great.

It little profits a people when what they make is more important than who makes it.

It's not a reward for loyalty and service to be dropped from the payroll at a time in life where you need more, not less, security.

Fortunately, a few employers are bucking this trend toward heartlessness. A few corporate figures have come to realize that they can use some of the skills of their surplus workers in slack times, that by keeping them on the payroll, they actually are benefiting not only the workers but the company as well.

But it's still a few.

May it soon be the many and may my friend be something other than a Cold War casualty.

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