Lino6 - Your employer sounds like a champ

It is refreshing to see people sticking with a job for a long time. Often these days people will change jobs for an extra dollar or 2 without considering what its like to work at the place. Better the devil you know I reckon!
Speaking as a Gen X/Y Information Worker (i.e. I'm crap with my hands)..often there aren't the opportunities to stay with employers long term in the information/finance spaces. They change on 2-3 year cycles with centralisation, then de-centralisation which makes staying long term not really an option. I mean I could stay, but be stuck on the same wage and conditions for long periods of time, and not necessarily developing my career or gaining new skills - just some experience in specific areas. In IT, if you are the ducks guts in a specific technical area - more often than not - that technical area is superseded - and you're left holding the baby...You need to do your own training and qualifications to stay current - then dodge the redundancies every couple of years, whilst they bring muppets in from the US or UK to take the plum management roles - with no real intent to develop local employees in succession planning..
Often the Gen Y/X's get the rough end of the stick - and whilst there has already been discussions on this site, and others on what a bunch of lazy sods we are

- I don't think the ratio of bludgers is any higher or lower than any other generation..but we've had that discussion....back on thread...
I'm 3years, 2years, 2years, 7years (although 5 separate, very different roles in those 7 years for different business segments of a multinational).
I'm not sure "Job for Life" really exists any more, with manufacturing issues here in Oz, outsourcing, 473 visa's etc..