For example, employers have long been able to legally discharge employees at modest cost. But in the early postwar years, profitable large corporations were dissuaded from wholesale job reduction. Contractual inhibitions, to be sure, were then decidedly more prevalent than today, but of far greater importance, our culture in the aftermath of depression frowned on such action.
Only when bankruptcy threatened was it perceived to be acceptable. But as the depression receded into history, attitudes toward job security and tenure changed. The change was first evidenced by the eventual acceptance by the American public of President Reagan’s discharge of federally employed air traffic controllers in 1981 when they engaged in an illegal strike.