Yesterday I wrote a post about how the opinion shapers in this country, the corporate executives and their captive politicians, abetted by a lazy press, have had to shift their messages periodically to support their desire to hire whom they want, when they want, at whatever price they want.
Because the message frequently defies logic (our high schools are the worst, but our colleges are the best), it has to be reshaped and modified on a regular basis. In every case, it comes down to sloughing the problems off on someone else (improve the schools, more students should choose to go into technology) and finding ways to impugn the workers who just happen to cost more.
Reluctant as I am to make predictions, I will offer one up, my forecast of the next big idea to come rolling out of the PR machinery that is bought and paid for by Big Industry. We may see it first in an op-ed, or in a magazine article, or a book, who knows, but it will have a big push behind it. It will be presented as the key, the key to national competitiveness and corporate riches and innovation and all the other buzz words that represent the decline that we see around us.
My prediction: loyalty. Any day now I expect to see some grave social scientist drawing a chart that shows that there is a statistically significant correlation between median income and some bundle of attributes that purport to represent loyalty. People make less because they stay in their jobs for a shorter time, they'll say, or because they just don't have that gung-ho corporate spirit. Columnists will pick up on it, spread the idea across the land that Americans simply don't have that sense of comity that will allow them to succeed. A new Tom Friedman will emerge with his or her book, The World is Loyal, which will feature stories of the solidity of Bangladeshis banding together to create new success stories.
And the best part for the espousers will be that logic has already been proven to be suspended when talking about these matters. If a Charlie Rose has the temerity to ask, during a discussion of the "new disloyalty," one of our corporate chiefs why they lay off employees with 15 or 20 years of experience (and, presumably, loyalty), they'll just fall back on one of their extant skills arguments. What's great about this is that it will give the CEO a palette of reasons for their decisions: our employees are stupid, or untrained, or undisciplined, or disloyal, so we have to replace them with other people (those people who just happen to have visas of indenture or, better yet, live in a country with lower expectations). Any possible action will be covered by one of these, for sure.
Obviously, I don't know for certain that loyalty will be the next concept on which corporate America will pin its hopes. It could be something else. But it's pretty powerful, especially in a world in which cause and effect are often confused (in my experience, people stay loyal to their jobs well beyond the time their companies stop being loyal to them).
So I guess we'll see. But if, at this time next year, the New York Times non-fiction bestseller is titled, "Loyalty: How Employee Turncoats are Undermining American Business," just remember, you read it here first.
Because the message frequently defies logic (our high schools are the worst, but our colleges are the best), it has to be reshaped and modified on a regular basis. In every case, it comes down to sloughing the problems off on someone else (improve the schools, more students should choose to go into technology) and finding ways to impugn the workers who just happen to cost more.
Reluctant as I am to make predictions, I will offer one up, my forecast of the next big idea to come rolling out of the PR machinery that is bought and paid for by Big Industry. We may see it first in an op-ed, or in a magazine article, or a book, who knows, but it will have a big push behind it. It will be presented as the key, the key to national competitiveness and corporate riches and innovation and all the other buzz words that represent the decline that we see around us.
My prediction: loyalty. Any day now I expect to see some grave social scientist drawing a chart that shows that there is a statistically significant correlation between median income and some bundle of attributes that purport to represent loyalty. People make less because they stay in their jobs for a shorter time, they'll say, or because they just don't have that gung-ho corporate spirit. Columnists will pick up on it, spread the idea across the land that Americans simply don't have that sense of comity that will allow them to succeed. A new Tom Friedman will emerge with his or her book, The World is Loyal, which will feature stories of the solidity of Bangladeshis banding together to create new success stories.
And the best part for the espousers will be that logic has already been proven to be suspended when talking about these matters. If a Charlie Rose has the temerity to ask, during a discussion of the "new disloyalty," one of our corporate chiefs why they lay off employees with 15 or 20 years of experience (and, presumably, loyalty), they'll just fall back on one of their extant skills arguments. What's great about this is that it will give the CEO a palette of reasons for their decisions: our employees are stupid, or untrained, or undisciplined, or disloyal, so we have to replace them with other people (those people who just happen to have visas of indenture or, better yet, live in a country with lower expectations). Any possible action will be covered by one of these, for sure.
Obviously, I don't know for certain that loyalty will be the next concept on which corporate America will pin its hopes. It could be something else. But it's pretty powerful, especially in a world in which cause and effect are often confused (in my experience, people stay loyal to their jobs well beyond the time their companies stop being loyal to them).
So I guess we'll see. But if, at this time next year, the New York Times non-fiction bestseller is titled, "Loyalty: How Employee Turncoats are Undermining American Business," just remember, you read it here first.
4 comments:
Another manifestation I see of company "loyalty" is the expectation that we are supposed to sublimate our career goals and take on an increasing number of tasks that are truly beneath us. (Just imagine the number of women expected to fill in for the receptionist during her days off, lunch breaks, smoke breaks, bathroom breaks, doctor's appointments, etc.) All in the name of teamwork, of course.
Companies used to hire lower qualified and lower-paid workers for these tasks. The convenient truth now is that while those with more education and experience are consumed with more of these mindless tasks, they can't spend as much time on more valuable activities, thus lessening their chances for raises and promotions.
the degree to which i disagree with these statements is striking. i have nearly no loyalty to employers, except what they earn. my current employer has earned quite a bit of loyalty from me. many of their employees are quite loyal to the company. i have seen it lay people off after 15 years, but i don't disagree with their right to do so. is that what this is about? the illusion of lifetime employment? the antagonism between classes is surging, and i don't think notions of employee disloyalty will dominate the public discourse.
CC: And you wonder what this does to the vaunted measures of productivity and efficiency.
More importantly, it puts the lie to the idea that we as a group need ever-increasing amounts of education. There are still these tasks out there, ones that don't require degrees, but who's going to do them?
Almost 20 years ago, I worked at a pre-eminent corporate research institution, and, in our group, we rotated the duty of filing standards documents. This was a group of masters' degrees and PhDs spending significant time filing. It hasn't surprised me that this company has fallen on hard times, and that its world-class reputation for innovation has pretty much disappeared.
mcfnord: I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. My point was that I think companies will cite a lack of loyalty as an excuse to continue their current "war" against their own employees. I was not, at least in this post, making any claim for the extent to which loyalty "should" exist.
I have never contended that a company has no right to do whatever it wants to do (though I have seen cases where the action is profoundly counterproductive and taken for very suspect reasons). And I was not saying that there aren't some companies that have garnered loyalty. But that loyalty has to be earned, not assumed, and based on real actions that demonstrate a respect for people.
You may well be right in your last sentence, that it won't be loyalty that will be the issue of discourse, I was offering it as a possibility consistent with the messages that currently seem to be bouncing around public forums.
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