That was then, Q, but this is now. Do the oil companies still employ most of their workers, or have they followed the corporate ethics changes of the 1990s and contracted out most of the work.

You're right that once upon a time, oil companies were very good in their treatment of employees, and reasonably good employees could count on having a lifelong career and good benefits and a good pension. But corporate ethics began to chance in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, corporations no longer seemed to have any loyalty toward employees - and I found out the hard way that my employer, the U.S. Government, no longer had loyalty to me as an employee. Nowadays, corporations and the government have loyalty only to their management personnel.

-Joe-