>Interesting, somehow I don’t think how companies where run in the 1950-1960 translates to today

In some ways maybe.

In the 50s your wife stayed home to work while you worked a blue-collar job, probably having only a high school diploma (if that), and your blue-collar job supported a family of 2.1 kids, your wife, Rex the dog, a car, and a mortgage in the suburbs. Oh and it probably came with a pension. Everyone smoked indoors. Companies felt obliged to look after their (male) workers and sexual harassment of female employees was routine and casual racism was baked-in to the culture.

Over the years CEO pay has risen something like 1000% and worker pay less than 20%.

Now companies spy on their workers and engage in union-busting while paying their workers a pittance such that even a person working two minimum wage full-time jobs is barely able to sustain a family in the USA and Canada. We don't smoke indoors any more. Sexual harassment of female employees is still routine and casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt today.

I guess society can pride itself of the smoking thing but we've either made no progress or regressed in a lot of ways.

>someone fired end of story

Take off your rose-coloured glasses.

> Sexual harassment of female employees is still routine and casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt today.

Please define what you mean by routine here.

Can you expand on what you mean by “casual racism is institutionalized but perhaps less overt”?

Aside from this being a somewhat strange example to bring up, it's not true.

See, for example, http://online.ceb.com/CalCases/CA2/174CA2d184.htm, a Supreme Court case concerning wrongful termination from 1959.

Not clear on what you are trying to say, the point I am making is today companies bow to public opinion, and the actions of companies spread fast

In the 50s Google would have been unionized and firing would have been harder, not easier, than it is today, all else being equal.

In the 1950's without modern media, social networks, etc., it was a lot easier to sweep some scandal or other major bit of unpleasantness under the rug.

They're not really going to investigate. Then as now, people say what they have to, and then wait for it to go down the memory hole.

"Firing/resigning" which is it, two different events there.

> “Firing/resigning” which is it, two different events there.

Which of those is the case is hotly debated. The legal concept of “constructive termination” recognizes that detailed inquiry into the history leading up to the end of employment may be necessary to distinguish those two things, and in this case its even debated whether it was firing or resignation in the superficial sense, as well as being debated as to whether it was constructive termination even if superficially resignation.