45 Years and All You Got Was a Pin? The Death of Corporate Loyalty
There’s a story doing the rounds this week that’s really stuck with me. A woman clocks up 45 years at the Commonwealth Bank — one of the most profitable financial institutions in the country — and when the milestone arrives, her son shares what she received: a marked pin and some flowers. That’s it. From a bank that regularly posts billions in annual profit.
Her son called it pathetic. Honestly? Hard to argue.
Now, before anyone jumps in with the “she gets a salary, what more does she want?” argument — yes, I’ve seen that take floating around in the comments, and no, I don’t think it holds up. There’s a difference between compensation for work performed and recognition for loyalty. These are two entirely separate things, and conflating them is exactly the kind of thinking that tells you everything about how corporations view their workers.
What really got me reading through the discussion online was how quickly it turned into a broader conversation about the death of corporate loyalty — and whether that loyalty was ever really a two-way street to begin with. Someone made a sharp observation that resonated: loyalty to a company died roughly two to three decades ago. And they’re right. It tracked almost perfectly with the dismantling of defined benefit superannuation schemes. Once companies quietly shifted the retirement risk onto employees and away from themselves, the unspoken social contract of “stay with us and we’ll look after you” effectively evaporated. The gold watch became a relic. The farewell dinner got downgraded to a morning tea. And apparently now, 45 years earns you a pin that looks like it was sitting in a drawer since the Howard era.
There’s an almost darkly comedic thread in the comments about what appropriate recognition might look like — someone suggested a big box of Favourites chocolates, followed by someone pointing out they’d probably wait until they’re half price at Coles first. Which, honestly, tracks with what we know about how these corporations think about frontline staff costs.
What strikes me most, though, is the scale of the disconnect. We’re not talking about a struggling small business here. CBA consistently posts profits in the billions. Their executive remuneration packages would make your eyes water. And yet somewhere in head office, the decision was made that a 45-year milestone — which, let’s be clear, represents essentially an entire working life — warranted a commemorative pin and a bunch of flowers from the service station down the road, by the looks of it.
To be fair, a few people in the discussion pointed out that CBA does have a tiered recognition program — apparently something like $2,000 equivalent at 20 years, $3,000 at 30, $4,000 at 40. So she presumably received something more meaningful at those earlier milestones. And some commenters suggested 45 years might just fall into a gap in their program — not a formal milestone, more of an awkward in-between. That context matters. It doesn’t fully excuse it, but it reframes the story somewhat.
Still, even granting all of that — there are apparently not many people reaching 45 years with a single employer anymore. This is an extraordinary milestone by any measure. The idea that the person responsible for this recognition is essentially working off a spreadsheet, printing names on a batch-produced pin without a second thought, is genuinely depressing. You are not a person at that point. You are a row in a database.
Working in IT, I’ve spent enough time at various companies to understand how these things happen. Recognition programs get delegated. They get bureaucratised. They become a checkbox. Nobody with actual authority and budget thinks carefully about what it means for a human being to have given four and a half decades to an institution. That’s nearly three times the length of time I’ve been in the workforce.
My own industry is hardly immune to this, by the way. Tech companies love to perform culture — the ping pong tables, the town halls, the “we’re all a family here” language — right up until the moment the redundancies hit and you find out exactly how much of a family you really were. At least CBA gave her flowers, I suppose.
There’s a broader point here worth sitting with. We’ve built an economy where corporations extract extraordinary value from workers over decades, while systematically dismantling the structures — defined benefits, job security, meaningful recognition — that once gave workers some sense that the relationship was reciprocal. And then we’re surprised when people feel disposable.
The Australia Post Cartier watch scandal got a mention in the comments too, as a reason why companies are now gun-shy about giving staff anything of value. Which is a perfect illustration of the problem — the backlash to executives receiving luxury gifts has somehow resulted in ordinary workers receiving less, rather than executives receiving less. That’s quite a trick.
Look, I don’t think a pin and flowers is the end of the world in isolation. But it’s a symbol of something much bigger — the slow erosion of the idea that workers are worth investing in beyond their immediate productive output. If you’re a billion-dollar company and you can’t find it in yourself to make a 45-year employee feel genuinely valued, that says something about your priorities that no amount of marketing around “our people are our greatest asset” can paper over.
The good news, if there is any, is that stories like this one spread fast. People share them, they talk about them, and slowly the calculus for companies starts to shift — even if only because the reputational risk of being publicly called out starts to outweigh the cost of doing better. It’s not the most inspiring mechanism for change, but sometimes the court of public opinion is the only one that’s actually in session.
Here’s hoping someone at CBA head office is having an uncomfortable meeting about this right now.