PS
Just looked-up the details of that harmonised LSA - which for 30 years for men was goods in kind up to the value of £35. Might not seem much now, but you'd need about £700 now to match the purchasing power of £35 then.

I love things like this, thanks for sharing David. I simply cannot imagine being in the same employment for 40 years!

It would be interesting to see a scholarly dissection of the changes in work and society that have denormalized this and an analysis of whether these are broadly positive or broadly negative overall.

"Long service" in the sense of doing the same job for one's entire life was, of course, the default in pre-industrial/feudal days. Serfs were bonded to the land they worked. Even nobility was tied to their obligations to their liege. The Monty Python joke about the noble son who "just... wants... to SING!" is a reasonable reflection of the fact that people had little choice either in their career or in its continuity. People who jumped from job to job were seen as strange and remarkable (Leonardo da Vinci, the Chevalier d'Eon etc).

The rise of the industrial era saw a mass shift of the working population from rural farming to urban industry over a very short time and it is no coincidence that the rise of the buds of the unionist movement followed as employer introduced draconian measures (what we would today call physical and financial abuse) to prevent workers from leaving for better wages elsewhere.

Unionism consolidated the negotiating power of the workers and whilst the relationship with management and ownership has always been contentious it did, at least, force a veneer of mutualism (also inspired by the "compassionate industrialism" of the Quaker families, such as Cadbury and Rowntree) which provided stability for workers and consistency for employers and it was from this uneasy truce that I think medals and ceremonies such as the one illustrated by David arose.

The impact of two World Wars on British working culture can't be overlooked because, on the one hand, it introduced a level of national unity of purpose that has never been equalled, but also because it created situations in which working age men began to become accustomed to moving jobs - from industry to the army, from infantry to tanks, from the frontline to the HQ and back to the post-war landscape. But even so, the dissolution of the employer/employee relationship only reached its modern manifestation in the 1980s when the globalization trend began and the unionist movement began its decline in the UK. This is the point at which the historical detente between workers (unions) and and bosses was dissolved and businesses and their employees came to be seen as fungible assets whose purpose was to make money for their owners. The process escalated into the 21st century into the culture of constant mergers and acquisitions we see today, along with the gradual agglutination of industries into a handful of dominant players within which the contributions of individual employees is lost in the day-to-day noise of making money.

That said, do we actually want a return to the patriarchal (not to say patronizing) culture of a silver medal for long service and a gold watch at retirement?

I'm pretty sure that the answer is "no", but perhaps that's the wrong question. It's no longer about how long service is recognized, so much as it is about whether long service is, in fact, beneficial to both workers and employers.

Like others, I can't imagine working in one place for 25+ years. Frankly, more than two years and I'm getting bored. And there's no disputing that a regular injection of different perspectives in a business is a good thing. But personal perspective aside, would our businesses benefit from having a higher proportion of staff sufficiently satisfied, engaged and competent in their roles that they might stay on-payroll for 20+ years? And on the bigger picture, would societies and communities benefit from the stability that more-or-less guaranteed continuous employment would offer?

No idea. I'm an HR professional, not an academic. But I hope you'll agree that they are interesting questions.

In reply to Robey:

It's fascinating to think about length of service as a social construct, as well as a personal choice. We aren't tied to a feudal system these days, and neither are we normally loyal to one organisation for our working lives.

An enormous proportion of my daily work would vanish if work was truly transactional and people didn't bring their choices, personalities, difficulties and ambitions to work every day. It's that bit that keeps it interesting - and demonstrates the value of strong people management to engage, encourage and sometimes direct those around us to get the best results. And in my work, the best results are not often from people who stay in one job for their whole lives, but who bring experience and perspectives that challenge ways of working.

In reply to Nina Waters:

Just to add, that, whilst 25 or more years with same employer is now unusual for all manner of reasons, I do think it's risking throwing the baby out with the bathwater to regard every bit of the concept as totally obsolete. For example, this is the actual c. 70-years-old 'welcome to the workforce' address to new employees of the same company that issued the long service badges. It might be ancient, but to me it's very plain indeed that the writer regards their workplace and its operations with enormous pride and above all as in itself a community that's an integral part of the wider local community. And that members of this workplace community, however humble their role, are all entitled to respect and personal dignity and freedom of association and to decent material reward from employment. To be sure, it's somewhat paternalistic, but it's ethical and egalitarian too - and the absolute antithesis of eg Fordism or Scientific Management - or even a lot of the current amoral / dog-eat-dog management cultures.

(I recall myself, when the company finally folded about 20 years ago, a big proportion of its employees had worked there since leaving school - as had my then-middleaged assistant. Despite being superlatively experienced and competent, she had considerable difficulty finding another job because most of the young bloods that interviewed her crassly assumed  that having spent 30 years with a single employer, she'd be 'too set in her ways'  - whereas the reality was, if she really had been so, she'd never have coped with years of tumultuous change or ever have lasted anything like that long!!)    

 

In reply to David:

I managed Sep 1993- Mar 2020 for one employer (ish there was Phoenix & TUPE in the middle) which is pretty unusual for the recruitment agency marketplace.

So much change in IT recruitment over those years it never felt like more of the same though