An old friend

Today I met an old friend from high school, its been 14 years since I left highschool with a handful of GCSEs and dreams of a better future.

His name is Alex, he will never read this blog and I make no reference to his surname so he won't mind me mentioning him. He has been in and out of work since high school when we left in 1996.

I bought him a coffee and had a chat in that effectively he had never had a job that was not a contract job, all of his jobs were short 6-9 month contracts whereby he was usually given the push at the end of it. He is a nice guy, but he looks kind of ill but I've not been in contact with him all that much.

I think back to my accounting jobs, the same thing happened to me, nobody there was actually an employee everybody was a temp worker, in that this did two things it gave nobody any rights or protection from being fired. It also saved on redundancy money.

These trends are disturbing to me, in that I feel that the legacy of the 00s as it is nearly the end of a decade is good for the corporates and those at the top but will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the staff and the employees. Job security was bad before, now I think it has to be redefined. In that I sometimes think far into the future as an old man (if I live that long) where myself and my friends are in a pub talking about the good old days about job security rather than everybody working temp contracts.

I believe that the youth of the future if there is a youth of the future (as economic pressures mean nobody can afford to have children) will not believe us at all.