Sounds like you're describing a combination of nepotism and the short-term nature of the oil business which doesn't sound pretty. Of course it's all legal in the private sector even if inefficient and stupid. Not supposed to happen at least in the U.S. and Canada in the public sector. I've also heard people complaining about something similar in blue collar government jobs there, which like I said is weird because I don't spend much time there and don't hear much along that line anywhere here in the U.S. where I do spend much of my time.
I started out as an Engineer at a major US nuclear utility. Since the '80's nepotism was actively rooted out of corporate American HR. If anything it was a curse. Exceptions being small and medium sized businesses where the CEO still owned the majority of the Company. But for large publicly traded Companies nepotism just hasn't been a thing for a few decades in the States.
Several people I know quit jobs making $70k a year in 1998 because they knew without a degree their topped out. I looked up their current salary on California transparency page. One with a English teaching degree makes +$225k a year, the lowest out of ten Correction guards makes $170k with only a GED. My brother can retire now at 55 with 90percent of $215k.
Since when tree a trimmer is a white-collar occupation? No, you are not a Maoist. A modest and naive Trotskyist.
I'm not opposed to tree-trimmers making 100k. Working on a tree crew is hard and dangerous work, actually. I'm more worried about these dudes pulling down 300k+ a year, especially the pensions.
Exactly - and Illinois has thousands of them apparently. I put up the post on US DoD General Officer pay and retirement on page 4 of the thread because quite frankly I was curious about the numbers of them the military had on active duty and how much they made. US General Officers O10 grade will have advanced degrees and years of specialized training. Nearly all of the USAF and Navy general grades have technical undergraduate degrees and frequently technical graduate degrees. They will directly and indirectly supervise the careers of many thousands, and will manage budgets in the billions. The weapons systems they employ and develop are on the bleeding edge of technology. It was eye opening. You do not have a military career for the money - that's for sure. While some of them do get quite lucrative jobs in the civilian defense company sector after they retire, most do not.
To be fair, when on active duty most general officers are living in housing that's at or above what an equivalent C-level executive would live in, and at least at the higher ranks are flying around on G-Vs, have a personal cook and driver, and all the other accoutrements of an executive of that level. The real discrepancy happens at retirement when it all drops to something around 75% of their base pay (depending on their years of service, starts at 50% at 20 and goes up by 2.5% per year over 20). To be honest I'd rather they paid them more retirement so fewer were tempted to join the defense industrial complex and lobby/bully those of us still on active duty. That revolving door has the potential to be pretty pernicious.
We can argue if a tree trimmer or a prison barber should make six figures until the cows come home. It's clearly NOT working for Illinois citizens. To quote from a commentary piece that appeared in January in the Chicago Tribune: "Illinois’ ever-growing pension spending is already crowding out core government services. The state spends about one-third less today, adjusted for inflation, than it did in the year 2000 on core services including child protection, state police and college money for poor students. Cuts hurting our state’s most vulnerable residents came as pension spending increased by 501%." "The cause of Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation pension crisis is twofold: early retirements and generous lifetime pension payouts covered almost entirely by taxpayers. Those retirement benefits are practically unheard of in the private sector." https://www.chicagotribune.com/opin...0200122-5eh6h6uz6reujiunizgndzg5pa-story.html
"Those retirement benefits are practically unheard of in the private sector." They forgot to add ... these days.