I am employed with a large corporation. Emotionally, this instills in me a sense of pride. Back then, my community was an unorganised set of people who were engaged in unorganised work, sans any defined code of conduct. A few men decided to change this order, decided to organise the unorganised. This was duly achieved by founding a company that would be run by defined codes. What followed was a clear organizational structure with a board (read legislative body) at the top comprising the top brass (read lawmakers) who would deliberate on how to run the company more efficiently. The mandate of this board was to further the interests of all stakeholders including the worker (read citizen) at the end of the queue.
In the initial phase, things were good. The organised way of working brought with it many benefits. Our company now competed with many other established companies, even surpassing a few, and returns for all stakeholders were good. A wave of democracy swept the scene, and we celebrated the fact that from now on the board will be filled with elected members that would allow every stakeholder to have a say in how the company is run. Now since the company had workers from different divisions (read faith/ caste/ race), these heterogeneous groups formed their own unions (read political parties) that were represented by members from within that group. Everything looked great.
But with all these advances came corruption. Although the board hailed the mandate of serving the interests of all, it placed the interests of top brass above that of others. In order to achieve this objective, the board aligned with union representatives, in turn corrupting the latter too. A new arrangement was promoted where all workers were called upon to join forces to make the company the best amongst all corporations. In the morning assembly, workers were motivated to sing praises of the company and swear allegiance. Workers, many of who were politically ignorant, started developing a feeling that the interests of the company are paramount even if they collided with their own honest interests.
To attain the formidable objective of making the company the best, workers were asked to sacrifice all comfort. The board made policies with the rhetoric of ‘company first’ but what lay underneath was the unquenchable thirst of board members to hold on to their top positions. ‘You can do it’ for your ‘company men’ was the slogan that was raised. While to the workers, the company meant everyone including them and their children; to the board, it meant just the top and the upper middle brass. To further own comforts, workers were brainwashed by the board on how other companies are plotting to bring down theirs and why it is so important to make sacrifices. Workers rallied in the support of these glossy policies.
You may ask, was no worker competent enough to understand and raise alarm against the tricks played by the board? Indeed, there were a few, but the board managed to oust them by labelling them ‘anti-company’ elements.
Today, workers are reeling under many difficulties, but the board and union representatives are thriving. The workers are staring at ‘good days ahead’ as guaranteed by the board. They have fallen prey to the rhetoric that unless they bear unprecedented costs, the aim of becoming the number one company cannot be achieved. The state of affairs is more or less the same in all companies, and the boards of many have colluded to project themselves as each other’s rivals so as to preserve the grip over workers’ allegiance and loyalty.
I am employed with a large corporation. Emotionally, this instills in me a sense of pride.
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