An aggrieved billionaire this week lamented that workers had grown lazy and "arrogant" during the coronavirus pandemic and that many of them needed to be made unemployed for the situation to improve.The Australian Financial Review reports that Tim Gurner, the founder and CEO of the Gurner Group, exp...
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Well, to be fair one doesn’t need to be a philosopher to see this truth in his everyday life: why is that the only class capable of organising strikes which can paralyze society is the WORKING class and not the managerial one? Maybe because it’s the working class providing the services and activities needed to maintain our societies functional?
Try organising a strike of the management and banking system, my guess is that we would keep on living as nothing really happened (given that banks would maintain our access to our founding, on the contrary I still think workers would be able to survive much longer than the corporate counterparts should they be able to attain a minimum level of cooperation).
Of course the resourcing to violence by the ruling class through police forces and mandate working could be an issue but those working for law enforcement should be ready to attack their friends and families and I don’t think everyone of them would be able to do so
I guarantee you that any factory in the world would absolutely shut the fuck down without leadership. If the banking system shut down, you absolutely would not continue life as normal, because you’d have the cash you currently have and that’s it. No digital payments, no card payments of any sort, no bank account. Most merchants would not be able to function at all. All of those transactions are handled by banks (credit processing was my gig before this one, and everything shuts down if those workers aren’t working). It would be a nightmare scenario.
“Well we’ll just make the laborers the leaders” yeah we already do that. Plant leader is an operations job, and almost always someone with a history working in plants (it doesn’t have to be a plant, I just currently work in manufacturing)
Managers don’t strike because managers are not allowed to work with unions - a rule devised by unions
https://www.google.com/amp/s/guide.unitworkers.com/union-eligibility/amp/
On the other hand I can bring you countless examples of factories and plants shut down due to mismanagement caused by the company upper echelons. The presence of a management is not the reason why companies provides their goods and services to their customers, it’s the workforce behind them the reason why they are able to maintain their businesses.
Point proven, there are many instances of companies whose management left due to financial hardships which were picked up by their unionised workforce who were able to continue and grow the company business (https://www.mitbestimmung.it/workers-buyouts-a-growing-trend-in-italy-50-companies-saved-by-workers-in-last-5-years/). I’m not aware of any example of the contrary tho, can you bring any to the table?
The banking system: as far as private banking goes I’m with you, a stop the their activities would be a blow to the world economy. But, even in this turbo-capitalist system, we still do have central banks which answer to the states and which would be required to intervene in a catastrophic event such as a general strike to limit its ramifications. We would loose access to our savings, that’s true, but with enough cooperation between workers and states, I’m sure we would be able to bring the bankers to their knees.
Lastly, here in Europe we do have union for managers and CEOs, none of whom has ever called for a strike. One might think it has to do with the fact that they are the ones taking the decisions and therefore don’t need to have their voices heard but the reality is far more mundane: nobody would give a shit should they quit their job and workers would be more than qualified to obtain their positions should they never come back to work.
This is called “succession planning” and is a consequence of the hiring practices I described above.
I have direct experience in a multinational organization, and during COVID we lost a lot of middle and senior leaders, not just including but especially in Europe, due to the Great Resignation. It would be literally impossible for me to explain in a single comment how disastrous that was for the company.
You not knowing something is true does not mean it is false.
This is not a “succession planning” the owners of the companies left and the workers were faced with a choice: loose their jobs or take the place of those who betrayed them. They went for the latter option and re-arranged the companies structures by themselves, proving that workers can do the management job without problems. Read the article that I attached to my comment please. I still haven’t heard one single example of the contrary from you.
It was such a disaster that you are not able to explain it in a comment nor to find an external reference which may do that in your place. Must be hard being this comfortable in your world view without any supporting evidence. Furthermore I reckon this company is still up and running. Tell me, would an equal percentage of the working force had left instead of the middle and senior management do you think you would still have a job today?
Then having the skills to step in is literally “succession planning.”
This is just promoting from within but in dire circumstances.
My company was sued by investment stakeholders for misleading them as a result of the lost productivity, but to post which company it is would doxx me more than I am comfortable with. Fortunate 500 companies do not make these things public more than they are legally required to.
As for me having a job today, my position was ended as part of a necessary restructure after the above scandal. I got a sweet severence though.
The company was divested from the greater whole and was eventually bought again, about 3 weeks ago.
A huge part of my job during COVID was retaining these employees.
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I do absolutely agree with you, the mistake we are making is the value we place on management jobs: as of today society thinks of managers as above the production workers but, in reality, it should be the other way around.
A good management can increase the profitability of a workforce but will never be able to do the same job the workforce does.
On the contrary workers can and have proven to be able to do the management work if tasked with this request and can even do better. This scares the managers who are doing whatever they can to hide this truth from their employees.
We just need to understand the power we do have in our hands to finally win this uphill battle against interest groups, and COVID has greatly helped us in this sense. Even in your case you could arrange a strike with your colleagues to force your manager to understand how shit he is at his job and force him to resign by going to his direct superior should he not be able to change his ways. Should he be the owner of the company: leave. It’s better to be between jobs that to be chained to a desk which makes you unhappy everyday of your life IMHO.