First, we aren't civil servants, and second, market forces demand that workers have more than one employer, if not more than one career, during their working lives.

Granted, my dad never received stock options or bonuses during his career, but was able to earn a good living-enough to take his family on vacation every summer, send his kids to private school and own his own home.

Engineers, too, used to spend a lifetime in engineering, whether it was working for the same employer or knowing that there would always be an employer that required their skills. They felt the education they received combined with their own efforts to update their skills would provide them with a lifetime profession.

Unfortunately, many engineers now find themselves tossed out of a career in their 40s, in what are supposed to be their prime earning years. The industry downturn has further hastened the departure of many skilled engineers from the workplace.

The U.S. Labor Department estimates engineering unemployment totaled 26,000 during the fourth quarter of 2002, but some sources estimate the real number at three times that number. Engineers have been forced out of jobs all over the United States, as Wall Street mandated that corporations toe the (bottom) line and that chief executives show a profit.

If that weren't bad enough, many corporations have established overseas engineering centers in countries where the cost of living and pay scales are significantly lower than in the United States. In addition, some companies with job openings here prefer to import cheaper, temporary labor.

Industry doesn't treat engineers as the precious commodity it professes them to be. That's ironic, because various trade groups have recently begun talking about a looming labor shortfall in science and engineering. These organizations say the current technical work force is aging as the pipeline of U.S. students is shrinking, and fear that combination will cause the United States to fall behind in technology.

Is there a shortage? Don't tell that to the thousands of disenfranchised engineers and computer scientists who have been without work for months. They'd say there's a shortage of jobs. Economists, too, dispute the idea of a labor shortage, noting that in a free market, market forces balance the supply of and demand for labor.

Instead of shouting shortage, industry must attend to what's really going on and improve working conditions for engineers, treat them with respect and stop considering them a disposable commodity.

http://www.eet.com