As economies develop grow and change skills become redundant people get left behind. From the hundreds of men who once worked as coopers for Guinness to the heavy engineering rust belt in the USA. Songwriters often mine the rich vein of discontent and why wouldn’t they; emotive images and emotional prose there for the taking. Now I’m a big Springsteen fan and he’s a master at that sort of song writing but everyone from Pete St. John to Christy Moore to Don Henley have written on the same themes but I often feel that the ire of the song writer is misdirected. Sometimes the reason for being left behind is straightforward but usually it’s not. Everything changes; all jobs, all societies, all technologies. Those that fail to see that and react accordingly will always be left behind. In the case of businesses those responsible for managing that change are the directors and managers of the business. It is their responsibility to ensure that the organisation retains, trains or acquires the skills that will be necessary now and in the future. If they fail to do this then they fail their organisation and they fail their employees. If employees don’t actively change with the times then they fail their employer and their colleagues and if unions and other representative organisations don’t allow that change to happen (or impede it with unreasonable remands) then they also fail their members. It’s easy to blame “The Bosses” for turning employees into “yesterday’s men” but there’s more than one player in the game, even if they don’t all have equal power or responsibility.