Dakota,
Your not crazy. Your young, have a lot to learn about business is all. A little history many may disagree with for various reasons. A decade ago it was what the company could do for you. Now, its what you can do for the company. Sad but true. Until you gain experience and skill, you have no negotiating power. Plenty of skilled workers desperate for work.
Maybe you have family members that had career-long union jobs. Getting that big pension and bennies in retirement. For the most part, those days are gone. And so are the companies that behaved that way. Why companies went off shore to survive. Can't compete. too costly. Wish it were different, but thats the way it is. A classic example is the US postal service. The majority of its gigantic billion dollar losses are retirement pensions. If it were not for the taxpayer, USPS would be long extinct. And thats the majority reason why GM went through a recent chapt 11 restructure (with our tax money).
In the good old days of Detroit, life was very similar to what what your describing. Everyone worked for GM, Ford, etc. Lived next to the plant, went to the same schools. Raised to work at the auto plant like their parents did. Everyone was in the UAW union. Paid their mandatory union dues. With that union due you got not being able to get fired for being a slacker, inflated salaries and benefits, retirement pension. But you had to do what your told, vote who your told to vote for by the union boss. The long term costs were devastating from a company perspective. Today many have no job, many living in poverty or welfare.
For now were are suffering the consequences of decades of entitlement in the workplace. While we may never see the conditions of the Japanese culture and Toyota, we will have to use something similar to compete.
