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Guest Post: Corporate America Really Really Cares About Its Employees (Really) - A Distributed Rant
A twofer from Charles Hugh Smith today, as always from Of Two Minds
Corporate America Really Really Cares About Its Employees (Really)
Scrape away the Human Resource Department rah-rah about "our mission" and how much your loyalty is "valued," and what's left? A paycheck and a sucking sound.
Let's state the heretical obvious: Corporate America, you suck.
We could count the ways--subverting democracy via your lobbying and
campaign contributions, your sabotage of competition via regulatory
capture, and so on--but what really matters is how you treat your
employees.
We know: you really really care about your employees. Really.
The propaganda would be laughable if it wasn't so bald-faced. Do
corporate managers really believe in the Big Lie theory, that the bigger
the lie, the easier it is to sell?
Here is reader C's experience of Corporate America's transition to wonderfulness and caring. An outlier or "what everybody inside knows"?
I occasionally read your postings linked to Jesse's Cafe Americain and I just want to confirm what you posted about corporate bankruptcy. (The Bankruptcy of Corporate America) I was disappointed with the Reagan administration which imo was the beginning of the takeover of our government by corporations and elites. Still, having a new family, I was fortunate to get an union job at the big telco and now work in the belly of the beast.
At first it was a great place to work, proud of our knowledge & expertise helping customers, but after 2-3 mergers, the overlords have increased our workload 100% (shutting down depts. in other parts of the country and giving us their work), reduced benefits, monitor everything and have rolled out methods & procedures that have totally dehumanized the workforce; we're just button pushers. Nearly everyone there is now miserable and it's a soul crushing, mind-numbing existence. Sorry that I have nothing good to say about it all, just hoping & praying for it get swept away and that my preparations to be free of the system work out ok.
Correspondent K.R. recently submitted this account, and some advice for young people:
In March 2000, I was working for a fairly large biotech company in pharmaceutical development, many of my co-workers were PhD's. When I got out of my car in the company parking lot one morning I saw many of my coworkers walking back the their cars. I asked "what's the matter?" What we discovered that morning is that if your swipe card that gave you access to the building did not work you were laid off. If your card worked and the door opened, you still had a job.
Best advice I could give a young smart person? Skip the corporate rat race altogether. Do not get car payments, mortgages and all the other debts that chain you to your debt enslavement. Enrich your life, work for yourself or for an important cause. Nobody should waste their life on corporate Amerika.
The modern global corporation devotes considerable attention to creating a simulacrum of common purpose via human resource department’s empty cheerleading. But participants know it is only a hollow, cynical ritual that everyone shuffles through in order to keep their jobs. The reality in Global Corporate America is that every employee is dispensable, and their position is inherently contingent. The purpose is the deliver profits to shareholders, and the corporation buys a facsimile of loyalty and presents a façade of purpose to keep the work environment from becoming overtly depressing to the human spirit. The reason they must play this game is the profits, of course; dispirited workers aren’t very productive.
Given that 13% of global Corporate America’s revenues are pure profit ($1.67 trillion last year, or about 12% of the nation's GDP) and another significant percentage is overhead to support the grossly overpaid corporate bigwigs, a vast command-and-control structure and a costly Panzer division of crack tax attorneys to keep income taxes paid near-zero, then it’s clear that smaller enterprises could easily beat the Corporate America Plantation Store in price and service because a third of the corporate expenses are overhead needed by a massive, costly hierarchy and 13% net profit margins demanded by Wall Street and the Financial Elite owners.
Since the top 5% of households collect 72% of corporate profits and bond income and the top 10% collect 93% of the nation’s financial income, the immense profits skimmed from local communities do not flow back to the communities. They flow instead into the elite enclaves of those who own the vast majority of the nation’s financial assets.
The vaunted “efficiency” of Corporate America's cartels is largely a myth. The Plantation Store’s “edge” is not efficiency but these four factors:
1. exploitation of global wage arbitrage
2. access to cheap Wall Street financing
3. eliminating taxes and competition via capture of regulatory and legislative governance
4. a reliance on cheap oil to fuel their global strip-mining operations.
Take those away and much of global Corporate America is revealed as high-cost, uncompetitive sitting ducks awaiting slaughter by lower-cost decentralized competitors.
Local residents lose twice when global cartels collect much of the local income and send it to centralized corporate headquarters, as a percentage of the profits are spent subverting democracy with lobbying and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to political factotums. Local residents lose not only control of their income streams but of their political rights as cartels sabotage democracy by capturing regulation and elected officials.
A key feature of local enterprise is that it retains and recycles local income in the community, rather than sending it to some distant and unaccountable corporate headquarters tasked with maximizing profits globally. Thus even if local earnings decline in recessionary times, local enterprises can still thrive simply by taking some of the cartels' vast income stream and returning it to the community.
As investors, we have been brainwashed into seeing ourselves as disembodied zombies who float around the world, seeking higher returns wherever we might find them. We are disconnected from where we live, and are constantly told that our self-interest is only served by investing in fast-growing global corporations making money from goods and services generated elsewhere. Those who eschew investments in evil are mocked and derided; the only god for investors is maximizing profits, and how those profits are reaped and where they are reaped makes absolutely no difference.
This is how we end up with what we have now: a glorified Colonial Plantation Economy.
Ken R. submitted this story from the U.K.'s Independent on the reality behind the "maximizing profits is all that matters" facade: the human cost: Behind corporate walls, the masters of the universe weep:
In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Review web site – and praise be to them for publishing it – Haque let rip on some of the absurdities of contemporary business and economic life. “Just ask yourself,” he wrote, “if you were to walk into any corporation, would you find faces brimming over with deep fulfillment and authentic delight – or stonily asking themselves, ‘If it wasn’t for the accursed paycheck, would I really imprison myself in this dungeon of the human soul?’”
That's a good question. What do think an honest answer would be for most employees?
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Really, if that is the best you can do you best stay on the porch (or in your doghouse). Clearly incapable of running with the big dogs.
Psychologists have already noted that corporations are pathologically sociopathic.
http://www.amazon.com/Corporation-Mikela-J-Mikael/dp/B0007DBJM8/ref=cm_rdp_product
I'm all for what you say. But I think you need to also need to do something about the legalized scam run by the American Bar Association and so many of their parasitic litigation attorneys. I, like all too many others, have had my small corporation sued for complete and utter B.S. by totally unscrupulous attorneys bottom -feeding with scum-of-the-earth plaintiffs.
Irony is (in reference to another comment in this thread), I left private business because of the oppressive weight of all the laws Big Biz forced through to regulate my industry… regulation supposedly designed to prevent the very behavior the Big Biz culprits engaged in / crimes they committed… Shiny, new, time consuming / complex regulations that their fleets of attorneys, their deep pockets, and newly hired technocrats could gladly afford to deal with…. Yes… Regulations that turned working for myself into a living hell.
Mind you, with the new regulations or the old, I could have still committed fraud if I was inclined, and so could they. But they drove a ton of small players out of the business. I cashed out, and now I work for a big corporation.
But bottom line: I will never go into biz myself again unless such corporatism is curtailed. And I'll never go into biz myself again without the corporate liability protection with the American Bar Association standing around with gallon jars of Vaseline, figuring twelve ways from Sunday on how to quintuple team me (and without the corporate veil, my wife and kids).
Exactly........these are not laws of nature.....
Prophetic in theory. How to accomplish that is a really big question. I can immediately think of multitudes of ways this would be circumvented. Great idea though.
Well Said Cougar. Well said.
ORI
@ cougar_w
Since the corporates staked a claim to 'personhood', I have felt that there should be a way to give them a person's lifetime as well.
Unfortunately, I'm sure that there are enough shysters available who can construct an efficient legal-paper sluice from the dying corporation to a newborn living one. rendering the 'death' ineffective.
What may be needed is some kind of legal wooden stake for the corporate faux heart.
+1
easy to bitch, hard to come up with better ideas
Even harder to get to the inner sanctum with those ideas in a position of power and influence to make it work.
I've come up with a thousand solutions to problems while trucking on the spot and never mind the stupid Company, Dispatch and Shop. Once you have a truck stop repair the problem for good pernamently, correctly; the outfit has no choice but to pay the bill due.
Nothing infuriates me more than being at a job somewhere and being told, you are just a "Insert Job title" and don't tell us how to do things. I have walked off the job (Possibly for the last time...) rather than cold cock the smirk off the doubled chinned fat cat suit who has yet to work in his world of luxury and puffery.
Hell, the Rolls Royce Corperation is a wonderful place to work, building cars. But I would absolutely hate the prevailing attitude that if you can afford one of those, you are not concerned with the daily worry of the little people like the rent and phone bill.
...democracy...
Best of the worst maybe, but who said we live in a democracy?
Actually, the best form of government is benevolent dictatorship.
(Churchill also said ' the best argument there is against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter')
HL Mencken also had a few tart things to say about democracy.
In the meantime, the Constitution would be a good road-map to follow, maybe more people should enforce it.
Ignore this CHS article at your own peril. There is no way large US corporation survive; CHS spells out four main reasons why!
I might add a fifth reason that CHS did not mention, and that is: US corporations like Intel, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft etc are nothing more than rotten shells with all the bookvalue stripped out and looted by the insiders: they had been busy printing billions in counterfeit stock options and other stock equivalents.
At one time, those did not exist. Only IBM, Utilities, War Time Makers like Lockheed etc. All of which did good work every day.
Now they are trying to put Society into a sort of basterdized Tron World where energy is doled out to those who are compliant with the Master Control while all others starve.
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Jefferson
So, GW, what's your solution?
So sorry, thought it was a GW rant there for a minute. So Charles Hugh Smith, what is your solution? Eliminate corporate america to be replaced with ............ what?
how about a free market?
+1
Some of the comments above amaze me. Either reading comprehension is a problem, they have learned nothing at this site, or cognitive dissonance is deeply rooted.
Confirmation bias at work. "Unless nobody can draw out a better system in all detail and logical soundness, I define the current one to be paradise."
Most, having been raised inside a cage, have no understanding, no model, no ability to conceive a life outside the bars of their prison.
What shall we replace it with? If corporations are all you know, replace them with corporations of limited size, scope and duration. Issue corporate licenses good for 25 years maximum or perhaps even shorter, after 25 years the corporation is dissolved and its assetts are distributed to its original shareholders, who are now banned from owning more than 1% of any new corporation engaging in the same business as the old corporation.
Limit the nations or states that they can operate in, limit the amount of debt they may hold, limit the pay of the upper management.
If we must live with cancer, limit its size, until we can figure out how to live without cancer.
ya see, there are suggestions. i'm not agreeing with them, and I think they have severe limitations/implications for capital formation and simply moving corruption to other areas (who decides what duration, areas of operation, the 1% ownership, yada, yada, yada), but they are real suggestions.
How about we start by removing the "rights of the individual" that were granted to corporations by the Supreme Court? As for other changes I am all for making the changes and judging them afterwards. I suspect that you'd want to debate reforms endlessly.
"I define the current one to be paradise."
Never said that or anything remotley clsoe to it. In fact I stated I would love to see a better system. repeat for Malek....and in quotes so you can quote me "I'd love to see a better system",...almost as much as I'd love to see you improve your reading comprehension.
micro-corporations are the way forward.
Corporations based on a permaculture basis of closed eco-systems. Operate in a 500 mile radius, cradle to grave. All exchange outside will only be for extremely high value add.
Micro-corporations.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/nuclear-american-cross-other-thoughts/
Yeah, well then you might spend some time to dig deeper into the systemic issues of our system. Maybe then some day you will finally grasp that all rules we need are already well known, and theoretically even in place - but enforcement has been disabled by layers and layers of complexity piled on top, deliberately for that purpose.
You only have to identify the original rules and then enforce them.
Lamenting over posts and rhetorically "asking what a proposed better solution is" will not help anybody see the light.
(Responding to Malek's post) Thank you. I much appreciate your comment.
I would also like to add that the author of the original article pretty clearly states that a good solution lies at the local level.
Even in mathematics, not all problems have a solution, especially not a single solution.
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These are the same clowns that constantly attack GW's posts. Vile tards.
How about return to the original doctrines that the country was founded upon. The system isn't the problem; the corrupt people is. The original structure of the U.S. was very simple and profoundly effective. The framers even knew enough to know where corruption could come into play.
So the question is, what framework can you come up with that would better forestall the corruption? Despite the potential for this one to collapse (for reasons foreseen by its authors), none better has ever existed.
The grandstanding/whining is tiresome. You have choices. Don't like the system & corruption? Change it, profit from it (don't kid us that you're not trying to), or leave it.
And the new Indians to sponsor the deal are?
Go back to history class, goob. Indians do not recognize themselves as members of the United States. They preceded its institution and remain tangential to it.
And what?
I talked about sponsoring.
Who is going to sponsor the new US? Critical piece of information.
Why the Bildebergs, of course!
/sarc, can't help it. This is like playing chess with a 7 year old/
Actually you are quite unimpressive.
I think you meant to post that to Anthony Weiner.
Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Sound advice, unfortunately you seem hell bent to prove the later.
It's not so obvious what's changed, if you look at the essences here.
As the USA was founded, it was ruled by rich white male landowners. This was by design, worked great if you were one of them. Nowadays, the USA is ruled by rich people. You can be rich without being white, male, or a landowner.
Not really much difference, is it? If you pay attention to the overall system. Looks to me like a 230-year success story.
The USA is ruled by....
Now we've hit a primary artery. If you think you're ruled in the USA, you've got bigger problems!
Well, I suppose it is a sloppy word. I'm not particularly concerned with government, myself. But the indoctrination system pushes a foundational premise that the individual must submit to external authority.
I think that's generally accepted as a common-sense meaning of the term "rule."
"If you think you're ruled in the USA, you've got bigger problems!"
How did your last visit with the TSA turn out?
Same as the first 200 times. Thanks for askin'. The only times it gets interesting is when I return from Moscow or Brussels.
How'd you make out the last time you chatted with the folks at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv?
Actually, alot of folks got out into the Frontier so that they can make revenue thier way and live freely without the iron rule and taxation of Government. There is a standing Joke that if you go into Hillbilly country, they get to keep you forever. One General at Kings Mountain found that out the hard way back then. His grave is still up there.
As far as the Native Indians are concerned, they are simply building a Hotel, gas station and a Casino. Wait a while then a shopping strip with a grocery. A little more revenue brings in a town and eventually a Reservation Seat similar to our County Seats.
And we, the sheeple are the ones who gave them the money to pull themselves out of the dirt on the Reservation. To be in Indian Lands is the same as being in a Foreign Country these days. One day soon or later, they are going to unite and demand thier ancesteral homelands back from the United States.
Replace them with jack. They are as useful as cancer.
They are as useful as cancer.
Kinda like your comments?
Fuck off. For all the good it will do you.
Keepin' the streak alive, coug.
You are too much man. Why the fuck are you calling it corporate america? Corporate profits go to a global investor class.
You know you are a POS right?
Send the fucking visa workers home. They are SCAB fucking laborers who never say "no" to the corporate bullshit peddling, employee exploiting managers.
Let them build their own nation, and earn their own workers rights that my grandfather bled for.
Let these fuckwad corporate management assholes deal with real American workers who won't take their shit.
Oh Alfred, you miss the point. You in the same also search for services that cost less providing the perceived same value.
go home. fuck you. say no.
You first.
i am home, fuck you, been there - did that.
your turn.
.
Agree that everybody should go home including the banksters and the CIA/DoD assassins first (Corporate Americas thugs overseas) NAFTA, CAFTA, all FTAs gone; let every politician face his true constituents without economic manipulation, starting with the "BIS" "private central bank"(funny) gangsters.
How do you define home? The land your forefathers stole off a native population a mere 200 years ago or one settled after the ice caps withdrew some 10,000+ years ago?
I couldn't care less about any nation state. When your currency becomes worthless I'll move on, taking my PhD with me, as will countless other foreign engineers and scientists. Good luck building a new nation. I hear your public school system is great. Especially Detroit.
Ouch. Where from, Doc?
If they are H1-B visa labor, this certainly isn't their home. Home is the country of their citizenship. If your PhDs are so precious and useful, why don't you use it to build up the nation of your citizenship? Good luck with that. America built itself up for 200 years without you third world scabs.
lol. The UK is not quite third world, but headed that way. I wouldn't call it home either just somewhere I spent a large portion of my life. I have dual nationality elsewhere.
Sure, sure. Could US citizens spend more time on their propaganda?
Exactly... As if his forefathers didn't come crawling off some flea-ridden European steamer to the new world at some point.
I know mine did.
Only difference now vs. then is the system has strangled most all of the opportunity, and the locals seem to think they're somehow entitled to something or another by birthright.
The only reason the U.S. became great was because 1) it allowed successful behavior to build and propagate; and 2) the system was dramatically more consent-based on providing value to one another. Rent seeking behavior was only in its infancy back then. Now it's enshrined as a U.S. birthright. F those Old Worlders... I mean 3rd worlders...
The whole notion of "stealing land" from some original inhabitants is such hooey. The corresponding idea is that white europeans first invented this stealing land thing, as if the aboriginals would have fared better under Cesar, Genghis Khan, Saladin, or anyone else? All of history is the migration of various groups and the struggles between them. Some win. Some lose. Most just survive in between. The original inhabitants were not particularly nice to each other. The first ones who got guns often got even with their neighbors. The Aztecs and Mayans were fond of human sacrifice. The Caribs practiced cannibalism.
La Raza and groups like that who want to return the SW US to Mexico as if it were stolen are so stupid. They also tend to be socialist-collectivists. I suggest they return Mexico to the Aztecs and aboriginals that preceded them.
I would prefer a libertarian society with inviolate property rights. That is the best path to peace and living successfully with other humans of any race.
Someone refered to people climbing off ships here in the new world was simply escaping the persecution and iron fist of the old world which they left. Here in the new world they can make a life as they saw fit breathing clean air.
America has done it at least once, they can do it again. But first we need a one hell of a cleaning job to get done.
The wet dream of thiefs since a long, long time.
Thiefs are aware that what they gain through theft can be taken by theft. So they would want that theiving others is moral while others thieving from them is immoral.
Alas, by US standards, the US theft was immoral and people wishing to thieve their robben land have the moral up ground.
I'll state it again and again. A corporation is a small Communist entity. It is run by a supreme dictator with absolute power over the employees. The ruling structure is a top down pyramid. The board of directors is a shill for the CEO. The stockholders are never allowed to vote for anything of consequence. When in history has a group of shareholders removed a sitting CEO? It's too rare to mention.
It's nothing like a Communist entity.
Definition:
Communism is a sociopolitical movement that aims for a classless and stateless society structured upon common ownership of the means of production.
I'd say most corporations are the opposite of that; they don't aim to be classless or share the means of production.
I have personally seen several CEO/Founder's get ousted by boards and activist shareowners. Yeah, get boooted out of the company that they founded. It happens at small corporations. Granted, rarely at mega billion $ cap co's though.
I agree with Stuck on Zero. What you referenced is the definition of what a communist is"supposed" to be. Real communist states (USSR, Cuba), history shows, are exactly like Stuck portrays, and his comparison to corporations is, IMO, accurate.
Total FAIL: In a communist country you can't resign or put your skill-set out to bid to the highest bidder. Communist regimes jealously guard they're productive labor, and threaten defectors with death.
But other than that, he's spot on.
You are either a fucking idiot or an astroturfer. Time to get a new avatar shitwad.
i was trying to figure out what he meant by "offer real solutions", i thought the narrative was pretty clear.. a limited government in the constitutional model we initially had, while dissasembling the corporate state by enforcing laws which don't allow for complete capture of the government meant to regulate them, while at the same time enforcing the principle that the government works for the liberty and mutual defence of the people.. this cannot come about through the current system..
after you accept that, it's pretty easy to brainstorm basic guidelines, then once the guidelines are up, extrapolate on the opportunities for exploitation that any one segment provides.. it seems like a group of five or so members of this forum could sit in a chatroom for an hour and figure out a basic game plan..
the problem i see is that unless we're talking about specific problems it's sort of pointless to just shout 'what do we dooooo??!?!?1?/?/'. every solution is contextual
It's actually more like a ghetto gang. Absolutely dysfunctional, intent only on preying on others for everything they can get, bent on avoiding or directly disobeying any laws they don't like, upper management will kill anyone who snitches them out.
In anthropology, the largest group of people are the tribes or clans, thats about the largest group of people that can know each other and work together as a group, these tribes form nations, but only the leaders of the tribes know each other, everyone else is a stranger. Corporations are like insane tribes, they will do anything including destroying others or themselves for money. Money is a strange dream to begin with, but to have it bent to such a level of peverisity allows one a means to view the insanity of the corporate mind set.
Corporations have done more to destroy america, than any external foe, including the Nazis or Al Kayaida ( or whatever the spelling is this week).
We're past due for a constitutional amendment outlawing corporations, or severely limiting their size, scope and duration.
"Corporations have done more to destroy america, than any external foe, including the Nazis or Al Kayaida ( or whatever the spelling is this week)."
Al-Qaeda knows it too.
""Since the 11th, many of America's policies have come under the influence of the Mujahideen, and that is by the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation worsened, its prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with the interests of the major corporations and also with those of the neoconservatives, despite the differing intentions."".......2007 Al-Qaeda transcript
Of course nobody actually listens to our generations "The Brotherhood"
I'm sensing a few neo-cons in this thread.
+++. Corporation qua ghetto gang. Violent, beastly, perverse. Best definition I've ever run across.
A corporation is a small Communist entity.
Corporations are nothing like communist entities. You want a communist entity - how about the public school system? It's larger than any single U.S. corporation in terms of annual budget, centrally controlled, does not serve its "customers," and is totally unnecessary.
Go figure.
A couple of years ago some of my friends were laid off from a big semi company. When they all got to talking, it turned out that out of 100+ people being laid off, 98% of them were middle-aged white males between 45 and 55, from quite a diverse division, BTW. The caviat, to keep their generous severance and benefits extensions, they had to promise not to criticize there previous employer, or sue for discrimination.
Diversity is perversity. The corporate mantra of diversity is an excuse to bring in people from other countries who won't rock the boat. Diversity was carried through the front door on the backs of African American slaves, who had a legitimate claim, only to find themselves, once again, hoodwinked by whitey when their jobs went to other, more well behaved slaves.
Take your fucking visas and go home.
I don't think there are any black slaves around, so they didn't carry anything through the door.
Same exact experience. Three decades of rabid mysandry, courtesy of the university system and media, has encouraged society to spit upon white males and treat them lower than dogs. This shows no signs of abating.
Now they have enough of a workforce right there to fire up a new company, incorperate it and buy/lease a bunch of rigs and poof, bury big company by low cutting thier own freight at rates these 40 something starving motivated newly employed people can make happen.
Exactly.
Don't exclude government either.
A university where I worked had most employees under "professional" status, meaning you had to put in however many hours necessary to get the job done.
A common sentence on a role statement was "other duties as assigned".
There was an expecation that you would respond 24/7 to cell phone calls and emails.
No overtime pay and easily 10-20 hours extra per week including weekends.
Ever increasing premiums for health insurance (15% per year), higher deductibles, yet zero raises or 1%-2% every four years if you were lucky and dependent upon a once a year review by a supervisor who would ding you if you weren't working an extra task/role and hours without compensation.
Broken, the country is broken.
An exact, carbon copy of the deal we're getting right now in a private manufacturer.
Broken is correct.
Agreed.
When my cell rang one afternoon on my way home from work... I hung up on the boss. Next morning I was chewed out right proper and then threatened with job loss.
Fine, go find another lap dog to whip. My time off is my time off.
They had to eat 3 days production while scrambling to replace me. tsk. tsk tsk.
No mention of age discrimination? That is one of the more brutal aspects of "redundancy", which in itself is a brutal label.
I see duo mentioned this above.
The Roberts Court took care of that.
Logan's Run
Soylent Green
Science Fiction becoming reality.
Definitely age discrimination.
"Ape the young" is the modus operandi - they blow disposable income on iPhones, eating out, going into debt, and electing figureheads.
Generational Civil War being fomented so they will vote against entitlements that the older generations worked 30-40 years paying into.
The way corporations deal with age discrimination is hardly subtle. It begins with the review process. Once an employee hits mid-40s start by gradually hacking into their performance reviews. Cherry pick negative comments from 360s and load the review. An employee who may have received 5 star ratings for years now finds themselves at a 4. Next year a 3. Then next year a 2 and put on performance plan. Meanwhile increase targeted worker's workload and constantly criticize every mistake. The idea is to create a dual pronged attack. Make 40-ish employee miserable on a daily basis. Tear down their self-respect and mentally traumatize them so that they quit due to sheer frustration and despair. That is the preferred method. But if that fails the backup plan is to use the review process to slowly move them out the door. Takes anywhere from 2-4 years. It's sadistic a wink wink, nudge nudge game that HR and management are both in on. Oh and one final parting comment. Never, EVER, trust HR! They are scum. Just like management, and maybe more so.
Precisely, exactly, correct.
Is it just that coporations suck, or is it that the idea...the legal fiction of corporations, which sucks. Surely there is moral hazzard hiding in limited liability, for those with no skin in the game. Perhaps it is just the limited liability that sucks. Or just our current treatment of the certain pieces of the legal fiction. Perhaps humans just suck.
Great rant, but what is the solution. We need to be more constructive here.
While I completely agree with the article, let's not forget the vast numbers of government workers, at all levels, who are subject to the same phony HR department and the same zombification through bureaucracy. Ironically, what differs is the workload, where each position has half an FTE worth of work instead of the corporate world's 2 FTE's. Nobody, it seems, wants to design jobs for human beings.
The government is the ultimate corporation. It "lives" forever, it is a monopoly, it answers to no one, not even its board of directors, the upper management is well connected and rolling in perqs and outrageous salaries, it fines the people for the pleasure of allowing them to exist under their largess and it destroys all enemies or detractors, since they are essentially the same.
The irony is that so many clamor for the government to be run like a business, when it already is run like a dysfunctional international corpororation.
The business of government is to enrich the other corporations on its well connected "friends & allies" list and destroy the other corporations on its "enemies, or target of opportunity' hit list.
+666
Bravo.
Orwellian dittos.
+9000. Well said, and quite right.
Five years ago my company was acquired by a big global behemoth. Since then the raises have become a joke, the benefits slowly whittled, and the morale steadily sinking. It seems like at least once per month I'm subjected to a 'training session', which is little more than a propaganda session meant to indoctrinate, and oh, how it works. We end up with a sea of monkeys who have no original thoughts, they just parrot what they think people want to hear. The corporate bullshitspeak abounds!
Our company actually has a global CEO in charge of this shit. A global CEO of corporate bullshit cheerleading.
All they ever talk about is the benefits of having been taken over by a global corporation. I'm still trying to figure out what the benefits are exactly. Some asshole on the other side of the world decides whether we get raises this year or not.
Nice rant
Still, the "Big Lie Theory" has been proven correct through history
It worked, it works, it will work...
Old news but still prescient. Anyone who joins corporate America today is not only crushing their soul, but most likely wasting their time.
and in addition are likely weaving the ropes to hang themselves with, and being underpaid and overworked to accomplish it.
My last 1.5 years at AT&T was a cakewalk. I put in about 10 hours of work per week and spent the rest of the time watching TV or surfing the internet. Others were putting in 50-60 hours per week. For some reason, I quit to take a lower paying job and have to put in 40 hours a week now.
Everyone knows what the problems are. The time for whining like bitches is gone. General strikes or guillotines, or shut the fuck up.
+1
This is where somebody posts a wall of text that distills down to "ooga booga, union's goin' getchya" isn't it?
Works both way buddy - when I got a better paying job I left without saying goodbye to anyone. Everyone was running in circles around me after that for months from the old place. Freedom baby - if they screw you you get to screw them if they
My spouse quietly quit her work last year in favor of a much better work enviornment on her terms.
Many of the co-workers we run into are enslaved and cannot leave the same employer. They tell us that they wish they too can afford to leave such a draconian employer.
We say it's not about affording, it's about making life a little less stressful and worth getting out of bed in the morning to do something good.
I will admit as the head of the house, I was scared shitless when wife did. But I backed her 100% and made it work out rather well.
Now I rage while our fooking Nation burns while Congress dithers on budgets that have not been paid, passed and balanced as required by law for the last few years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y
http://hijackinghumanity.com/site/
fabulous article speaking truth.....corporations are the bodies which the plutocrat-banksters have posessed to forge their fascist state....fuck you david, jamie, lloyd and every other piece of corporate sewage floating in the national punch bowl......
workers arise and defy your slave owners....form your own businesses, contradict your money grubbing bosses, tell them to go fuck themselves....hr departments are nothing but propaganda cess pools of lies and crap....
LoL.
IBM had their 100 Year party last night at The Museum of Science here in Boston. The spouse, being with IBM, well, forever, was expecting quite the evening, as were co-workers. What did they get? Soda and water, and an employee talent show.
Happy 100 Years IBM, way to celebrate.
A talent contest. So, they were so cheap they made the employees entertain each other, badly. I imagine the food was supposed to be pot-luck and you missed the memo. Oh, did they also offer free clubs to the head on the way out? Or did they charge for that like they charged for the coat check on the way in?
Keep giving to corporate America, and they will keep taking.
Happily, there won't be a 150 year IBM party, there probably won't even be a 110 year party. No let me correct that; the 110 year party will be a bunch of impoverished IBM pensioners dancing on the IBM corporate grave.
You wasted an evening and actually went to the party? LOL. I haven't been to a company Xmas party, excuse me, mid-winter get-together in years. I go serve food at a soup kitchen, instead. Even if you stay home and play Nintendo, you still come out ahead.
One employers had us herded into a mandatory party/meeting.
If I had known that the management are going to sit at the head of the table preening and masterbating to the aldulation pouring from the good workers who know when to smile and cheer on cue.
If I knew then what I knew now, I should never have gone. To this day I have not attended one mandatory meeting ever. It's hard for them to find me while I am fishing or somewhere remote on that day.
As far as I'm concerned, a great piece. One of my major bugbears is the CEOs who pocket small fortunes, taking it away from the shareholders and employees. CEOs are EMPLOYEES of the company, nothing more.
Whether or not one likes/liked J P Morgan, Rockefller et al, these were people who had built the companies from the ground up.
DavidC
So no current CEOs might have built their company from the ground up? You gotta listen to what you're saying...
Mob mentality has overtaken ZH, galvanized by victim status.
OK, so some CEOs WILL have built their companies from the ground up and I should have choen my words a little more carefully. But not many of those in the FTSE 100, Dow or S&P, I would wager.
And as for mob mentality and being 'galvanized' by victim status. Errm, no.
DavidC
Tomorrow I might go as far as suicide...but I will not let it bother me tonight!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLMkk9aVpY0
One aspect of being self employed is that its really difficult to then land a job inside a company. In the early 1990's, I had a buddy work for me when his business slowed down. He told me that interviewers had told him that he was "unemployable" as he had been self-employed too long. I have been self-employed for almost 3 decades and I am still fear driven... I am only as good as my last assignment; I'm never late and always try to be early and go the extra mile. I am thinking of going back to offering services as "expert witless" which pays well but can totally disrupt your life. Those stupid books about "Your shit-colored parachute" and networking are probably okay. My advice would to read "Your Money or Your Life" as a philosophy book - there are not get rich quick mantras, but I can tell you, being financially independent at whatever level makes things easier. Work hard, live well below your means, invest, and avoid consumption.
My son is going into "MBA Program" (on my nickel) in Europe and I tell him I believe it is a mistake. He could work with me for a few years and earn $100k plus after a few. I tell him save the money, live in my "Guest House" (detached 1Br/1Bth) free and learn my profession/business and then go sell luxury housing or CRE. He thinks they are gonna fill his head with secrets.
+1 for the "Your Money or Your Life" rec. Another one that is a very quick read is "Debt Is Slavery and 9 Other Things I Wish My Dad Had Taught Me About Money."
It is cool that you are offering your son a chance to stay at home and work. Too many baby boomers cut their kids loose too soon and started them at a disadvantage. This isn't the fifties anymore where you can drop out of high school and support a family working at a gas station.
Or a foundry, tavern or other directly useful work that keeps the local economy going without need for worrying about Chinese shipping piling up on our West Coast. none of that.
I don't mind people staying with parents a while. A-while defined as productive and contributing to the overall happiness and satisfaction in the entire household until it is time for them to move on.
Remember, one day you will be cleaning out a room for one of your parents who don't have a place to go being too sick, infirm or whatever.
QQQball, you wouldn't be hiring by chance, would you? I'm a little bit older than your son, though.
One picture is worth a thousand words.
http://lonerangersilver.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/pyramid-of-capital-syst...
Any model, whether it be capitalism or socialism, is doomed to form that pyramid when it becomes about collectivism. Answer: never allow government to grow within a free market economy. Else, it will evolove toward a centrally planned economy under collectivist despotism.
We have a winner! Nice call SG.
The worth of the system is in its capacity to limit power consolidation (which is bled into the masses to promote collectivism). No system in history has been able to forestall the corruption indefinitely, and the U.S. is long past teetering.
Thank you, Mr. Smith, for this opening. As of today, I have a perfect example. From today's 8K for ANF:
And so corporations not only reduces head count, demanding more and more from surviving employees, but they also loot the relative value of their publicly traded shares simultaneously, making sure to give the same treatment to their shareholders.
While there is no better economic model than that of free market capitalism, America's version of it has clearly gone off the rails.
Amen. Now let's see if we can't find a way to sack the upper management and get this cart back on the rails.
I'll give you another, also from today. Having a problem with pesky laws getting in the way of profitability? Well, don't worry. Just do this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/17/us-chipotle-idUSTRE75G42S20110617
After all, laws are for employees...not employers. And who cares about employees? What is most important is continuously pressing every angle possible to take an equity ever higher so that when it is met with insiders selling like madmen, instant millionaires are made...instead of criminals.
Ah, the crony American capitalistic system.
Golden geese will always be slaughtered in hopes of that one-sided lode..
Don't be so ethno-centric - this is how it is all over the world, the one promoted by America all over the world – the grand notion of the "free" market. This is the basic fault of capitalism allowed free reign. It will end badly IMO.
Extract Head from Ass. This is Corporatism, writ plain and simple
Corporatism is not and never will be the "free market".
Q: What do you call all the world's Directors of Human Resources sitting on the bottom of the sea?
A: A good start.
Once we became "resources" it was over. The next stop after "resource" is "commodity" and suddenly they're trading our candy asses on the open market along with pork bellies and soy futures.
You do not want to share a bench with pork bellies. Trust me on this one.
Unless (of course) you are a pork belly.
Even smaller local companies act like their idols in big business now.
Employees are used and burned out, then cast aside in their fifties like old shoes. No answer here, just wishing there was one.
As soon as you are making a decent living and have your job mastered, they will replace you with a new (lower paid) stooge.
Starting a business of your own might work, if you have the wherewithal and skills to pull it off.
I don't. Now where'd I leave that sharp knife...?
The people I see getting cast off at 50+ yo have the experience and skills, but they do not have the drive; they fail at a very high rate. "Independence" is not something you discover at 55 when you get fired. I eat their lunch and shit in their lunch bags. I no longer have workers, except my daughter draws exhbits and right now she is in Australia, and my secretary is an IC and 1/2 way across the country. No work, no problem - very limited overhead - I no long have an office or salaried employees.... I work ALOT of hours when I am busy though.
I really believe that the errors that people make are mainly related to the way they treat money. 30 years at FT job should be enough to provide for retirement. "The Millionaire Nextdoor" was kinda cheezy in parts, but I agreed with much of the advice given by the common folks in the book. Still, shoving people out the door at 55yo is like dinging them with a fungo.
Best comment so far!
What's missing from almost all the comments in this whiney assed thread is any sense of who employees really are working for: THE CONSUMER. Too bad Marxism threw so much shit into the eyes of everyone 100 years ago, believing that somehow it's between you and "the man".
Yeah, I'm not defending corporatism or Big Biz, etc. I am, however, defending entrepreneurship and free markets, and the whole purpose of business: to provide value to the end consumer.
I ran a successful business that at one time employed 25 people. I kept loyal workers on (including people on who were dying of cancer and losing productivity) because I knew them and liked them. But I mercilessly cut people who failed to understand that, in the big picture, they were not employed by me. They were employed by the firm’s clients.
Now, any one of my employees could go off on their own and start competition or, if they felt the opportunity was better elsewhere, go to a different firm. When our employees were providing solid value to clients, the business grew. Those employees who exhibited the best understanding of providing value to clients received promotions and raises, and I paid handsomely to keep them. However, folks with that mentality were a minority. All too many required constant oversight and supervision to assure they were doing their jobs, and typically were more interested in punching out at 5:00 and getting on to the next thing vs. using the firm as a means to excel in their careers. Most of those felt entitled to be paid regardless of work quality. I would always hire someone who aspired to some day run their own business since initiative is so rare, where being an expert at celebrities lives, or American Idle, etc., is a dime a dozen and deserves to be paid as such.
Dealing with all that bullshit is why the owner of a business deserves to be paid 5, 10, 20x, etc. the average riff –raff. And those of you who curse my way of thinking, you can credit that mentality for why most of what you buy constantly gets better and better technologically. If you think you can do it better, save and sacrifice lifestyle with your current wage, and start your own business with your own capital at risk and get back to me. When it's your own money, you don't have time to dick around.
(Please spare me the BS that the only reason we have quality is because of regulation. If that’s your line of thinking, please climb into a burlap sack with your offspring and roll into the nearest river.)
good stuff Scotch. agree with you.
p.s. i'm in the burlap sack business, thanks for boosting sales.
Small businesses have a great advantage in that it's very easy to directly monitor each and every worker. The real problems start to develop in businesses which get so large that *restricting* employee autonomy becomes one of the primary aims of management.
I've worked in environments where I constantly made decisions to better serve the customer, and they've been generally happier and more productive places to work. I've also been in places where I was routinely called on the carpet for having "breached protocol" to make a customer happy or fix a problem.
Pretty much as soon as you try to drive any human thought out of an operation, you can be guaranteed it's going to fail.
Amen, Blunder. The reality is that in a free market, small and mid-sized businesses are far better equipped to serve clientele.
However, throw into the mix Uber regulatory and tax complexity, stupid shit labor laws, and a monetary policy that rewards offshoring in order to turn all those freshly minted dollars into inexpensive crap made by cheap, foreign labor, and a military industrial complex in bed with the oil industrial complex to keep energy cheaply subsidized with Mid East allies like Saudi Arabia that make Mubarak seem like Mr. Rodgers... well, then you may as well kiss the feet of the Wal Marts since they are the model best equipped to compete in such a intervention-heavy world. A world created by the miscreants for sale in Congress, and the King Miscreant on Pennsylvania Ave.
I first started to see the depths of what small business have sunk to when I noticed the usual worker was missing. I asked the store owner what happened to so and so. He said he let go so and so to reduce to zero the expenses, health care and other costs of maintaining so and so and now grooms his son to take over one day.
In the meantime he carefully eyes the 2012 election to decide if he is going to continue or simply close, liquidate and go fishing while retired forever.
"would you find faces brimming over with deep fulfillment and authentic delight –"
On what planet did this EVER happen? Anyone who goes to work for a profit-maximizing organization knows the bargain.
"Arbeit macht frei" Work will set you free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFbOFn4pSKE&feature=feedu
The only language Central Banks understand is:
Nuclear Weapons
pointed straight at their pointy fucking heads.
Thats it, weapons programmes right at the municipal level. Otherwise, its tear gas and water cannons.
I'd post my opinion, but it should be all to obvious by now.
Rightwing guy once again miss the point. If you claim to be a conservative, than get your head together and realize that fiscal and monetary conservation does not owe allegiance to a corporate entity. Instead, corporations are purely inefficient and demoralizing. They do not deserve the right as "personhood". It is true that most people that work for a corporation hate it and just do it for the check, miserably. Corps. are mostly tyranical. They do not "have to" make a profit such that all else within the structure suffers. Corps. do not "have to" stifle competition and create mega-mergers as they do. Short-term interests are always exploited over long term sustainability. Corporations kill progress and instead lock current ideas as singular, killing innovation and creativity unless of course, said creativity is magically created by said corporation. Otherwise kill it. Stop trying to pretend and patronize.
Yet another warning from Star Trek (TNG): The Borg!
Small company = platoon. Caring is on personal level. Medium sized company = division. Caring becomes more abstracted. Big company = army. Caring is largely abstracted.
Within the largest of companies, there still are division and platoons. Something to keep in mind. We are talking about some seriously intense social dynamics at play. How large groups behave relative to how power and money are distributed fopr example. Big topics. Tough to generalize. Hence the dangers in making generalizations.
Boil it all down, and I think you find nothing more than alpha male, egotistical, self-serving bullshit that through the systems that come to exist (early on by innovation, later on by manipulation) find ways to concentrate and reach levels of oppressive strength that become contrary to human advancement. The stupidity of the human ego takes us to that point again and again, system breaks, lots of people die and it all starts over again. Fun, fun.
I spent 14 years working up the corporate food chain (multinational construction company), with success... went from junior bean counter to VP of Beans. Two weeks after stumbling upon the way other corporate officers were lining thier pockets (and keeping quiet about it - the tracking software on the company laptop wasn't quiet, though) I was shown the door. I made them millions and was blacklisted in return. Now I work for half my pay, 200 miles from home and family, saving millions for the government, and have to hear from asswipes here and outside about how government workers are worthless. Not in my agency. If only you people knew the truth.
I would start my own business except (1) I need the health insurance, (2) I'd have trouble surviving the first 12-24 months with low/no income and the killer (3) what I know best is often farmed out to minority business owners.
Yes, I am a white male and honest. I am the scourge of civilization.
I am far from the only person suffering in this way. We are legion yet we are powerless. Best advice for others: Fuck everyone's business model, except your own. Everything and everyone is out to screw you. The whole system is set up to turn you over and shake the change from your pockets, or worse.
Enough rant. I have (diminishing) tax money to stretch.
if you are helping government be more efficient then you are worse than worthless. You are actually helping the enemy.
Your like the guy helping Hitler round up jews in a more efficient manner...or the guy helping Mao shut down grain production more quickly.
Please stop!
"Everything and everyone is out to screw you."
Yep. Says it all really. In these cycles, you lay low unless your very well connected. Laying low can mean simply working 30 hours a week. Just enough to eat but nothing to really steal either.
The reason government workers get that bad rap is that you sir are an exception and not the norm. Once you know how to run business by numbers and EARN your keep its hard going back to sloth.
Ron Paul will kill these corrupt mega-corporations should the American people ever elect him president of the USA that is why they will us every trick to stop him.
2012 presidential nomination campaign will not be the same as the 2008.
He got 75% of the CNN online poll following the New Hampshire June 13th debate but the CNN used another poll of 54 respondents to show him with 0%
The only policy that Ron Paul has that isn't total idiocracy is Auditing the Fed
Live within your means and stay out of debt; then, can you play with the corporate beast...
Become a Knowledge Nomad and not Nervously Employed:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1975717.Knowledge_Nomads_and_the_Nerv...