Chapter 35
Can largecorp Survive?
It is time for the death of largecorp. It has digested me and spit me out. I am of no use to it anymore. In telling you my story I may be on a largecorp hit list! Or even better I become a darling largecorp critic and make a living on the rubber chicken circuit telling you about how largecorp inflicts misery on its employees. At best I may receive a quote in some management psychology textbook. For some degree of authenticity, they will occasionally throw in a quote from some shit disturber.
Largecorp is becoming obsessed with how to deal with the onslaught of Millennials. Millennials have a different view of life and how to live it. Most them reject many of the ideals of largecorp which holds work as life as opposed to work simply being part of life. For many Millennials work is just work and a means to make a living. Smart folks.
Many Boomers worked those extra hours and weekends for fear of losing their jobs. Some of them enjoyed it! To the Millennials the Senior Management Team at largecorp are perceived as fossils without any understanding of the younger generation. Millennials view attending a football Frisbee game far more important than working a couple of extra hours on “the project”. Is it because they are lazy or just plain smarter than Boomers?
Largecorp is about greed, exploitation, outsourcing, lack of gender diversity and shallow manipulation of employees. I really can’t picture largecorp changing its values to accommodate Millennials. It can design clever programmes to manipulate and manage Millennials such as putting video games in hipster friendly employee lounges. It can offer free snacks and treats. It can supply free tickets to cool concerts and sporting events. It can increase gender diversity and even appoint a Chief Happiness Officer who will devise a strategy to keep Millennials happy and engaged.
As the Boomers get burnt out, terminated or retire the status quo concerning Millennials simply won’t work. Something must get planned mighty quick before largecorp slides into oblivion. On the other hand it is arguable that many Millennials will have children and with mouths to feed their attitude may just prove to turn a tad more conservative and job security may make them easier targets to manipulate by largecorp.
I think for the time being the question is how cheaply the Millennials can be bought off and by what methods. Hence the need for the Chief Happiness Officer, a move already underway in the United States.
- Ending Senior Management Team greed
It is well known fact that largecorp’s SMT has their hands deep into the cookie jar rewarding themselves with obscenely rich salaries, enhanced pension arrangements and incentive payments. There have been some initial legislative steps towards disclosing executive payments to shareholders however the greed continues unabated. It is coming to the point that the only way to stop the greed and looting of the shareholder’s cookie jar is not simply disclosure of executive compensation but putting in legislative maximums.
I find it disgusting so much business furor and ire is raised over the damages that are going to be caused to the economy by raising the minimum wage but nothing much is said about the mega obscene executive compensation packages where most CEO’s and their SMTs members make increasingly high multiples of what their average workers make. I will wag my finger and say the time is near at hand that a limit will be placed on greed of the SMT by securities regulators.
It is worth noting that The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently reported on 100 of the top 100 paid CEO’s at TSX listed companies for 2016. Their average annual compensation was more than 209 times greater than the average worker’s salary. The average CEO salary increase in 2016 was 8% as opposed to 0.5% for the average worker.
According to the study the top 2016 earner was Valeant Pharmaceutical’s Joseph Papa who pulled in more than $83 million. Excellent work Pops!
In the pocket management faculties jumped quickly to defend their benefactors saying comparison to these talented persons to the ordinary worker is like comparing apples to oranges. This is because they “offer rare and sought-after talent”.
According to the report only three of the top 100 CEO’s were women. The lowest wage for the 100 richest CEO’s in 2016 was $2,489.62 an hour.
These are Canadian CEO’s. American CEO’s outstrip and make Canadian CEO’s look like chum bait! According to the AFL-CIO in 2016 the American CEO made an average amount 347 times greater than their average worker.
- Racism homophobia and sexism
I am amused to some degree by the fact that Up Up and Away relentlessly plied its employee base with the necessity for global inclusion and diversity amongst its workforce. Yet like almost all largecorps Up Up and Away’s board of directors and SMT were predominately Caucasian men in their early 60’s. On a board of 14 one black man, one Chinese man and one women. LBGT and indigenous people? Forget it! At the time of writing this chapter the Conference Board of Canada painted a picture of largecorp being less than inclusive at the board level.
What outrageous hypocrisy cramming global inclusion and diversity down our throats while the SMT was in flagrant disregard of it in their own ranks. As with salary and compensation there has been a legislative movement towards disclosure about gender diversity and inclusion but there seems no other way of cracking the racism, sexism and homophobia of largecorp other than legislating against it and avoiding an affirmative action hiring plan that in itself is a racist plan. It is time to dismantle a Steve Wynn glorified old boys club running a corporation. The downside of affirmative action that it will just about eliminate the Caucasian middle class.
Recently Up Up and Away New York commissioned a picture of a determined little black girl with a knapsack heading on her way to school. This was hung in the Up Up and Away America wing of the Museum of Modern Civilization in New York in honour of International Women’s Day. Up Up and Away’s Public Relations Department trumpeted the event as a tribute to black women in the workplace. Shortly after the unveiling of the picture the New York Department of Labour laid charges against Up Up and Away New York for discriminatory pay practices towards black women employees! Up Up and Away settled the case quicker than dropping a hot potato!
Industrial largecorps are used to unionization on the shop floor but not in the office towers of largecorp. This possibility ought to terrify the SMT but I have rarely heard any concern about this. Again, this shows the incredible poor management skills of SMTs or perhaps a great degree of fear in hiding under the radar by not even mentioning it. Their thought is that college educated employees simply hold themselves above unionization.
Largecorp thrives on unpaid overtime labour under the mask of “good teamwork” but introduce a collective agreement between a union representing office workers and largecorp and unpaid labour would be converted into expensive overtime. The right to outsource and downsize could be curtailed and many high-handed mannerisms of largecorp towards its employees would be under the scrutiny of a union. To think about it a union in largecorp office towers could bring largecorp down on its knees.
- Downsizing and outsourcing
Downsizing and outsourcing are in many respects the inventions of largecorps. In the United States these two practices helped propel former President Trump into power so rest assured it is on the voter’s mind. What Trump’s successors can do to curtail these practices will run contrary to largecorp’s interest. Do political parties in the United States want to bite the hand that feeds them?
Downsizing is a cruel and barbaric practice. There are kinder and gentler ways of dealing with a sizeable workforce than with mass sudden terminations. If there wasn’t so much greed sucking up so much money by the SMT one might ask are downsizings even needed. Can we incent employees to retire? At what point does an insatiable need for increase in profits fall to the need to protect workers and their families from financial ruin through outsourcing and downsizing?
Again, I think some legislative intervention is required. I can’t quite come up with the type of legislation needed but I am tempted to suggest that aggressive downsizers and outsourcers be penalized by a higher tax on corporate profits? I might also suggest that where a certain percentage of the employees are terminated there be awarded additional termination benefits over and above what common law provides particularly in the anti-worker culture of the United States where termination packages are paltry. Moving in more radical directions I suggest let the governments decide on termination benefits as opposed to the court system.
Outsourcing is a bit more complicated. By restricting it are we favouring our own North American selfish greed at the expense of sharing the wealth with developing economies North America outsources to? Largecorp only wants to save a buck when it outsources, and moral questions be damned from its way of thinking. Charity starts at home.
The downsizings, outsourcings and overworking of largecorp employees have exacted an enormous human toll on largecorp employees, their families, communities and their countries.
Stress related disability claims have skyrocketed. Those employees not on disability are often headed in that direction. The result of this is a silent revolution of distrust, hatred and suspicions about all aspects of largecorp. Largecorp has lost its lustre. Through its arrogance, hypocrisy, corruption and greed it just may have set its traplines of self destruction.
- Is the revolution coming?
In the best case the One Percent movement or whatever successor movement it gives birth to gains coherence and destroys largecorp. The revolution will be silent and will not be bloody. It will be a Ghandiesque revolution. Yes, go ahead and laugh and snicker this will not happen. But if you have seen the destruction wreaked on families and communities by largecorp do not underestimate the simmering hatred for largecorp by the North American populace seeing the plant closures and general job losses streaming into Mexico where a corrupt union movement maintains wages at subsistence levels.
Let us reflect what happened in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where a political largecorp, the Communist Party, was toppled virtually overnight. Too bad it was replaced by criminals stealing the “people’s property”. Nonetheless the unthinkable happened. If it can happen there it can happen here.
The question is essentially if largecorp and its SMT is ready for a redistribution of wealth? Can it be pried from the hands of largecorp and its SMT? Charlton Heston’s famous quote that any gun control legislation would require prying his firearm from his cold dead hands most likely will be adopted by the SMT with a firearm being replaced by a loot bag.
Largecorp is working around the clock to eliminate as many jobs as possible through the development of artificial intelligence. One of my Up Up and Away colleagues was working on this for 8 years and continues to do so with teams in New York. Why use some employee tapping on the keyboard when it can be cheaply done through artificial intelligence. There will be massive terminations, unemployment and unrest and the peaceful revolution I mentioned above may be very well replaced by a violent revolution by poor, hungry and angry replaced largecorp workers. We have seen the rise of a militant right during the Trump administration and he played to their frustration with so many jobs being outsourced away from the United States. Artificial intelligence will be the new outsourcing. Better be careful largecorp or if you are not overthrown and protected by the military there will be few people with any money to buy your products.
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