Excellent chat on The New Culture Forum
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How the HR Monster destroyed the workplaceJuly 10th, 2022 |
 25 comments to How the HR Monster destroyed the workplace |
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HR Monster?
Yes.
Destroying the workplace?
Hmm, not so sure. 90%+ of folks I work with ignore the Human Remains Directives and just get on with the day-job.
There now follows some anecdotal evidence …
At a time when a successful UK business with a turnover of c.£100 million a month is facing serious pressures (staff shortages, sharply rising costs of materials & energy, etc, etc), this week’s headline topic in the “Exec Briefing” was the Colleague of the Month award.
What had Colleague of the Month done to deserve said award? Found cheap electricity? Found a supplier reducing prices? Found a previously unknown source of fully qualified professional locum labour? No, none of those. What they had done was amend some email footers to offer a choice of gender pronouns.
Now, it has to be said, most of the colleagues I work with tend to be “liberal” in the New World Order sense of the word. Climate-Carbon believers, Vaccination-Good pundits, WEF? What’s that? (etc etc) – but not one of them raced off to update their pronouns.
Personally, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit over the email. But the quiet consensus among colleagues (none dare put in writing) is that the Human Remains Department is just bonkers.
The film is sadly correct.
As for people who “ignore” HR Directives and behave as free human beings – well they are fine, till they are NOT fine. Till they are persecuted, made to ritually “apologise” (for having the “wrong” thoughts” or whatever) and are then dismissed anyway.
There are no Civil Rights protections in the sense of actual Civil Rights (the right to have political and cultural opinions and to behave as people in the West have traditionally behaved) – the “Civil Rights” protections are actually for “protected characteristics” which are things like skin tone and what sex someone is. The various Civil Rights Acts largely created HR Departments – they did not really exist before them. Instead of mighty “HR” executives, there were “Pay Clerks” back then and their main concern was that employees were paid correctly (hence the name) and got the right number of days holiday (and so on). They were useful people doing a vital job – but they were not POWERFUL as “HR” Executives are powerful – the power of the HR came (at first) from the various equality acts – and (later) from the saturation of young executives in the Frankfurt School Marxism of he universities.
“But Corporations are only concerned with making money, they would not persecute people for their opinions and ordinary behaviour – especially at a time of a labour shortage”.
If anyone believes that, my reply would be – pull the other one, it has got bells on.
Corporations are bureaucracies, and the managers who control them rarely own them. And even when a manager actually is an owner – they themselves may (sometimes) be victims of the Woke “Mind Virus” (as Elon Musk calls it).
For example, anyone who has read Mark Zuckerberg’s comments (over years) knows that he does not need an HR Department – the man himself is bonkers. totally Woke. He may not have got a degree (a distinction he shares with Douglas Haig) – but he is “educated” in the sense that he has absorbed the fashionable ideas of the universities (without really understanding that their purpose is to exterminate “capitalists” like himself).
Most likely Mr Zuckerberg could be convinced to organise his own execution. A Duke of Orleans (“Citizen Equality”) type figure.
If this is the “future of capitalism” – then capitalism does not have a future.
I have a feeling that if there is any hope (and that is a big “if”) it will be in the United States – for that is where the real resistance to these doctrines is.
People who think these totalitarian ideas (Frankfurt School Marxism and French Post Modernism) are “American” are quite wrong – America takes ideas from elsewhere and tries them out. but America also contains counter forces that RESIST these doctrines. The resistance (the real resistance – the resistances to the totalitarianism that often falsely calls itself “the resistance”) may fail – but it will at last try to fight back.
Watching other Western countries I am struck by the lack of resistance to these ideas.
It is like comparing court cases in the United States with court cases in Britain and other Western countries.
In America there is always high tension – will the left be defeated, or will the left win the court judgement?
In Britain and so on, there is no tension – the left will win the court judgement (by default), any other result would be “reactionary” and would be denounced as mad by everyone (including the Conservative Party).
Judges in most Western countries emerge in some weird way – there is no real political conflict, they are not elected, and they are not appointed by the normal political process. They just appear.
Ditto the lack of intellectual opposition to “Woke” doctrines. Still there is some resistance – such as the Free Speech Union and the Institute of Ideas itself. GB News and so on.
The New Culture Forum is a good example of resistance.
My former workplace wasn’t big enough to have an HR department but there was a certain amount of nonsense creeping in. Being close to retirement was a useful defense against it all in my case.
My defense (before I retired) was to be irreplaceable. I programed the artifacts database in dBase III. Nobody else understood it. I also understood the artifacts in a way nobody else did.
And I had a canary for this particular coal mine. There was somebody the director disliked even more than me. I figured until he was fired, I was safe. (The director wasn’t. Between the two of us we got rid of the director. The next one, of course, was no better.)
What would have happened if we had a human-relations department will be an unknown.
I think one of the things she (or do I assume to much?) said is the point out that a lot of these people don’t have anything better to do that badger other people. Most workplaces are divided by the 80/20 rule, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. HR departments are for the other 80% of the non productive. If you talk to any employee they will tell you how INCREDIBLY busy they are, despite the fact than many don’t do anything useful at all. It is to fill this gap we have people pretending to do useful things, including a lot of this nonsense. The 20% of productive people are too busy being productive to deal with it all.
Which isn’t to say there is no good comes out of it. I am, for example, glad that workplaces allow women to complain if some Neanderthal grabs her ass, or suggests her promotion prospects would improve if she “helped him out”. But it is like many good ideas — taken ad absurdum — and suggesting that the fact that you rolled your eyes at a moron who happened to have darker colored skin, somehow puts you in the same category as the senior manager who gives the creepy massage to the 19 year old receptionist girl, is insane. However, the problem with reducto ad absurdum is that some people will take the absurd as a good idea.
The way modern corporations are structured, often because of regulatory pressures and promotion of the gigantic corporation through various governmental BS, leads very directly to this stupid 80/20 split.
As a Clipper programmer some years before the rinderpest, I salute you – HR departments’ power was baffling even then.
Kemi Badenoch looks like a possible cure.
Is it possible that many of those employees that serve no useful purpose were rumbled when the furlough thing happened? Or was it possible to pretend to work from home and look as though you were still indespensible?
Belief discrimination – Civil Rights protection for people having and expressing their political and cultural beliefs, is an emerging area in British law. Sadly courts are playing favourites (under the Equality Act) – deciding that certain beliefs are “not worthy of respect”, but it is something.
“Paul some libertarian you are – suggesting that the courts “protect” people from their employers”.
If the left picks up the Sword of State are we going to stand against them with empty hands?
When push comes to shove, and pronoun proclamation is mandatory, I have decided that my pronouns are “and” and “are”.
The “not worthy of respect” thing; the Employment Tribunal that said that was over-ruled last year and Maya Forstater, the lady whose view that was so described in the case, last week won the substantive case that she was unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of those views.
I can understand anti-discrimination laws centered on the immutable characteristics – things that you cannot change about yourself.
But your political ideology – you choose that yourself. I have an associational right to refuse to deal with someone because of their chosen ideas. If I look at a woke job candidate, their very wokeness tells me something about how they will make job decisions, and I do not wish to hire them.
Certainly, that’s discriminatory, just as preferring chocolate over kumquat is discriminatory. But it’s not improperly discriminatory.
We can’t tell them they need to give up that right if we won’t ourselves, and I, for one, won’t.
Twenty years ago, I applied for a position with a large company; a position for which I had vast experience and appropriate degrees. I got to the first interview with the HR Department. I didn’t get the job. The rejection letter explained that while I was well qualified, I did not embody the company culture.
I then went for a position in a consultancy company and got it. The irony was that just a year later I was assigned to sort out the problems with the company that rejected me. I was given carte blanche, and subsequent to staff interviews (including HR) I concluded that the company had recruited people who were under-qualified for the job. Incompetent, basically. Why? Because HR was too concerned about culture and not getting the job done.
Fair is fair, no recriminations on my part for my rejection. Why would I when the consultancy position paid twice as much. HR did me a favour!
bobby b – the term they have traditionally used is “Civil Rights”, surely that is exactly what the expression of one’s beliefs are – Civil Rights. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and so on – is that not what Civil Rights mean.
Yet, somehow, Civil Rights was turned into something about skin tone, or what sex someone is. With no protection for beliefs (political and cultural) at all.
Perry says that Credit Money is here to stay (no going back to gold or silver – or any commodity money) if that is true – then protection for BELIEFS is vital, otherwise some version of the “Environmental and Social Governance” system or “Social Credit” system will be used to utterly crush liberty.
What it the point of the 1st Amendment, freedom of religion, speech and so on, if it means “freedom to be out in the streets begging for food”.
It is precisely because beliefs are chosen that they are “Civil Rights”.
If we are to be ruled (via the credit money system) by a handful of corporations (banks and other such) then they can not just be allowed to destroy people (forbid them to have a bank account, access payment services, run a business, have a job…..) on the basis that they do not approve of the opinions of ordinary people.
If the future is to be credit money, i.e. control of the economy by a handful of people (government and corporate – joined at the hip, FASCISM – although the word “Fascism” will not be used), then there must be some limit on how badly this elite can treat ordinary people. They can not just be allowed to exclude people from economic life (essentially sentence them to death) because ordinary people have the “wrong” political and cultural opinions.
In an “Cantillon Effect” (Richard Cantillon – three centuries ago now) world, where Credit Money totally takes over (no commodity money – not even a link to a commodity as Switzerland had with gold till the 1990s) then, yes, the economy will be concentrated under the control of a few people (the people who get the credit money first) – but there must be some limit on how badly this economic and political elite can treat ordinary people.
“We are excluding you from economic life (essentially sentencing you to death – no bank account, no payment services, no way to run a business, no possibility of a job…) because we do not like the opinions of ordinary people” is not acceptable.
If they think they can behave like that – then Bill Gates and co will end up hanging from lamp posts (no matter how many armed guards their credit money gets them).
If there is a legally mandated “freedom of association”, why does there not seem to be an equally compelling “freedom FROM association?
Think: “Closed shops and trade unions” as the classic case, but I’m sure others will chime in with new and “interesting” examples.
“But your political ideology – you choose that yourself.”
I’m not sure that’s completely true. I can’t force myself to believe things that I know to be false. My political position is based on knowledge that I have built up during my lifetime. To some extent it chose me.
I read a story on a thread somewhere, it may have been here, from a guy who had applied for a fairly technical engineering position. He was highly qualified for the position and his CV testified to this but he didn’t get the job. On contacting the company hoping to find out what he could have done better he was told that his CV was too technical for the HR people to understand.
Bobby B
“But your political ideology – you choose that yourself.”
Sadly court has already ruled on political ideology being on a par with religion details here.
Part of what also drives this is higher education. We have thousands of graduates with non-STEM degrees entering the jobs market. Given the sort of subjects they learn and the political impact, it’s unsurprising that many of them end up in HR. This also tends to disproportionately attract women, who are also now more likely to attend university than men.
The situation causes its own momentum.
30 years ago the glory that is HR rejected a (single) application of mine twice (wishing me an ‘interesting career development opportunity’ in the near future etc. – same letter twice). Aside from this guff, they failed to stamp the second envelope, so I had to pay to receive the second iteration of good news. And the guilty party was an old, family-owned bank in the City.
@Paul Marks
Perry says that Credit Money is here to stay (no going back to gold or silver – or any commodity money) if that is true
To be completely fair the credit money system is not mandatory. The only thing you MUST pay in credit money is your taxes. You are perfectly at liberty to try to negotiate your employment contract our your grocery purchases in gold, crypto or goats. You’ll have to make a pretty compelling case though.
Fraser Orr.
Sadly you fail to grasp the partly unfree nature of the economy – and how dependent almost all business enterprises are on the pet banks (which are, essentially, part of the government – very Saint-Simon and all in the name of “science”) and the rest of the institutionally corrupt financial system. Sadly “making a compelling case” will do no good at all – this is not about making a compelling case, it is about power.
The economy is, due to the Credit Money and government “Stakeholder Capitalism” regulations, increasingly dominated in a few hands – essentially the “Cantillon Effect”, but on a scale that Richard Cantillon could never have dreamed of.
If these people continue to believe they can treat people like dirt (and it is clear that they currently do believe that) then, sooner or later, they will be killed. I am certainly NOT suggesting that they be killed, I merely predict.
It is not worth living in a world where every aspect of one’s life, including ones most basic beliefs, is dictated by a few tosspots in Davos and other gatherings.
I may have suicidal tendencies – but other people prefer homicide.
Aristotle suggested that the best way for an Oligarchy to retain their positions, and not be killed, was for them to act as if they were NOT an Oligarchy.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg (and all the rest) would be well advised to take the advice of Aristotle – and treat their subjects with some respect.
Ending the persecution of people for their religious, political and cultural beliefs would be a good start – no more “cancelling” of people, no more losing their jobs (or their bank account, or payment services – and so on) for having the “wrong” beliefs.
Frederick the Great was a dreadful ruler (the admiration that many have had for him, over the last couple of centuries, is baffling), but at least he did not dictate the beliefs of his subjects.
“Believe what you like, say what like” is a good rule for a ruler in relation to the ruled.
But the Agenda 30 types (from Davos to the local HR Department) will not follow that rule – they insist on controlling both words and thoughts, on trying to control the basic beliefs of human beings, and creating some demented “new society” where everyone lives (in every detail of their lives) the way that they (the Woke) insist.
They are drunk with power – and it will kill them.
I found the process by which lockdowns were imposed in the United Kingdom baffling – indeed for a long time I could not bring myself to believe it, but it seems to be true.
An adviser to the Prime Minister, Mr Dominic Cummings (who has no medical qualifications – the scientific officers Chris Whitty and Patrick Valance were only later converted to lockdowns) pushed the idea of lockdowns in government.
But Mr Cummings did not invent the idea of lockdowns himself – he got it from foreign sources (supposedly the example of the People’s Republic of China – although most of the official “news” that comes out of China is fiction, for example I doubt there ever was a nation-wide lockdown in China, certainly the film of people dropping dead in the streets was fake, and not even a well made fake) – but who did Mr Cummings specifically talk to? Mr Cummings was not talking to the Chinese – this is NOT where his orders were coming from.
The man Mr Cummings took his instructions from was Mr William “Bill” Gates – we know this because Mr Cummings has not even covered up the fact, he sees nothing wrong with it. Even though Mr Gates is elected by no one, is not a British subject, and has no medical qualifications (indeed no qualifications of any kind).
Why does anyone listen Mr Gates (who I have never heard say anything sensible – on any subject) – they listen to Mr Gates because he has lots of MONEY, and because he is connected to other people like himself in various Oligarchic groups. In short they take his opinions in the way that they take his cheques (if people still used cheques).
This is not a sensible political system. Mr Cummings, i.e. Mr Gates, can not be allowed to pick the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – things can not carry on like this.
A large, densely populated country, with an elderly population did not have a lockdown (even if China did have a nation-wide lockdown – which I do not believe) – Japan.
There was endless talk about Covid on NHK television (no wonder there is a political party in Japan whose sole policy is getting rid of NHK) – and all sorts of proclamations (which never seemed to involve closing down business organisations – because the Japanese are not stupid) and lots of wearing of useless cloth masks for the cameras (which are then taken off) – but no real lockdown.
Japan has one of the lowest (lowest – not highest) Covid death rates in the world.
Elderly population, densely populated (packed together) the Japanese should have died in vast numbers – but they did not.
It is an odd virus – it seems to hit certain sorts of people more than others, perhaps the Wuhan Institute designed it well.
As for HR Departments……
In Japan they pay lip service to the “Woke” (Frankfurt School Marxist) obsessions of the West – but they do not really follow them.
In China they do not even pay lip service to Frankfurt School Marxism – they openly despise it, indeed “white leftist” is one of the most savage insults one Chinese can use on another.
If one Chinese suggests that another Chinese believes in the sort of thing that HR Departments in the West believes (or that Mr Joseph Biden comes out with – for it is the same thing) on “Trans Rights” for eight year old children, and so on, the response is likely to be a punch in the face.