Loyalty?

I remember when I learned how loyal my company is to me. I thought that they really appreciated me skipping breaks and lunches, working 6 hours of overtime almost every day for a year (800 hours of overtime in a year), and generally trying to do everything I could to help make management's life easier.

Then they laid me off, and tried to eliminate my position. They were nice enough to let me work part time though. Fortunately I was able to use the union contract to "convince" them that they should put me back to work.

I don't consider myself naive anymore, but I found out that two of my friends were laid off this week. They were both laid off by local companies that have less senior employees they could have laid off instead. The reason they didn't? These friends made more money than the less senior people.

What really bothers me about it is that one of the companies in particular talks about being loyal to local businesses, and keeping my dollars local. I'd like to see some loyalty from them. At UPS we at least have a union contract where the least senior person would get the axe. I know some of you have to deal with unions, and hate them, and others of you have to deal with management and hate them.  It would be nice if both sides would just do the right thing for a change.

End of rant.