Its a strange problem I guess. Systems are put in place to keep good employees around but are abused by bad ones. Then those systems are thrown out and everyone suffers.

I can say of a previous employer, all of the senior management took pay cuts before impacting the rest of us in a downturn. When my department did have to reduce by a person (I was the obvious choice to downsize), the entire (small) department, including my boss, took a furlough day instead. (Obviously, I started looking for new offers at this point, but I was never unemployed due to this.) Love that company. Great people.

I think a lot of people here may have experience with two types of terrible corporate environments: Faceless entity behemoths and cutthroat startups. There's a whole realm of small to medium traditional businesses out there where the owner knows everyone personally, and actually cares about the people who works for them.