Not to disagree with your opinion, but there are some things that make the long time employee more valuable, at least from the get go when hiring a new person.
- New person takes time to train and has to prove himself. Working twice as hard in the beginning, while laudable, doesn't state much since every new employee works twice as hard in the beginning.
- Long time employee has assumedly proven that he's going to show up for work.
- Long time employee has assumedly proven that he's trustworthy.
- Long time employee has the experienced the occasional operation problems and how to accomplish something if there's a difficulty doing it the regular way.
- If the long time employee has contact with customers, then he's going to have developed a relationship with some or perhaps many of those customers.
Sure the long time employee could be lazy, untrustworthy and barely worth his wages, but if that was true, then it's the management's problem for keeping him as an employee. One could also argue that the long time employee knows how to work the system, but anyway you slice it, there's always going to be some advantages that the long time employee has over newer employees.