The Boomer Century 1946-2046 by Richard Croker

Author:Richard Croker [CROKER, RICHARD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446561426
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

No Gold Watch for You!

“There have been important transformations in the workforce that the boomers haven’t necessarily driven, but they’ve had to contend with and deal with and adjust to,” says Dr. Joshua Zeitz. “For instance, in the late 1940s, when the boomers’ parents came of age, most large American corporations offered their workers generous packages of employment incentives, including private health insurance, vacations with pay, pension plans with guaranteed benefits, and rights involving seniority. Their parents’ generation are the first Americans to enjoy generous new health care plans that largely came out of the so-called Treaty of Detroit that the United Auto Workers forged with General Motors in the late 1940s.

“These health care plans became the industry standard not only in the automotive industry, but in most large American corporations. Large companies said that they would assume the responsibility for health insurance if they could keep the government out of it. And this was in large part a ploy to keep Harry Truman’s administration from delivering on its promise to provide national health care. The boomers to some degree enjoyed that arrangement at least as far as health care was concerned throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, but it’s increasingly not so. And these kinds of benefits have been slowly eroded in the 1980s and 1990s. just as the boomers were really reaching the peak of their influence on the economy. And the reason that these benefits were eroded has largely to do with globalization and the demands that it’s placed on American corporations.

“That having been said, baby boomers have had to adjust to a world in which employment is much less stable and carries far fewer benefits than what their parents experienced in the 1940s and fifties, and that’s placed tremendous strains on their own resources. And in all fairness to the boomers, they’ve had to deal with problems that their parents simply couldn’t have anticipated.”

According to Dr. Dychtwald, perhaps the most significant of those new-economy problems is the incredibly stressful insecurity in the job market: “It used to be that the only time companies would fire people was if they were struggling to survive. Now companies fire people when they’re doing great, just because they want to improve their profit margin by 2 percent. So they’ll lay off five thousand people. There’s no loyalty at all.” Exit, pensions and corporate-paid health insurance; enter, 40l(k)s and HMOs. For better or for worse, you’re on your own, boomers.

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