In the workplace, we encounter persistent yet subtle (sometimes not so subtle) power struggles that shape our experiences, growth, and well-being. These struggles revolve around personal control, autonomy, and our sense of worth and are a consequence of the dichotomy between our human needs and the needs of the organisation. The organisation is made of people, of course, and so it is the power needs of certain people that are reflected in the primary aims of the organisation. Come to work, and do as you are instructed, it says. Don't rock the boat, and we'll compensate you just enough to pay your bills and have some nice things like a car and a holiday or two each year. And on occasion, we'll increase your workload without consulting with you and you'll just need to get on with it because, well, it's just company policy. Besides, you agreed to it when you signed the contract. Give us jip, and we'll wear you down with cold hard non-human disciplinary action resulting ultimately in you leaving, worn out and half-broken.
There are varying extents to which organisations will go to ensure it, but make no mistake, they require your compliance and ensure that certain personality types are on hand to enforce the rules. You know the ones–little time for engagement with the lower orders, blunt, insistent, uncompromising, intolerant, short tempered and passive aggressive (or perhaps actively aggressive). It's death by one thousand psychological cuts. Type-A personality is quite common amongst those who enforce the rules, and they are there either by design or accident. This demand for your compliance is persistent and destructive to human wellness despite contemporary workplace wellbeing movements. For many, worker wellbeing is simply a box-ticking exercise, like gender pay balance and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. These things stand for something good, but they are merely used as a smoke screen for the true intentions of the corporation. How could it be any different given the profit motive?
Even in these difficult workplace environments, it's becoming clear that many of us are starting to realise the collective power we possess. Identifying common issues—such as insufficient pay, inflexible work arrangements, or lack of acknowledgment—we discover our collective humanity and mutual interests. Our shared challenges foster unity instead of individual discontent and isolation. By working together and engaging in open dialogue, we may devise strategies to demand equitable treatment and raise our collective voice, underscoring a fundamental reality that no organisation can function without its people. We just need to be brave. Although, if we were to earwig on boardroom conversations, we might witness their enthusiasm at the promise of artificial intelligence. Wonderful and all that artificial intelligence models are, they merely mimic the subtle and complex intelligence that humans possess.
In 1819, the renowned economist David Ricardo stated that the level of employment in an economy was inconsequential as long as rent and profits, which fuel new investments, remained undiminished. To which critic Simonde de Sismondi replied, “wealth is everything, men are absolutely nothing? What? In truth then, there is nothing more to wish for than the king, remaining alone on the island, by constantly turning a crank, might produce, through automata, all the output of England.”
From the Foreword by Robert L. Heilbroner, The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin [read it free here]
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