Once again Leslie Thatcher picks out the
best writings in the French press on subjects we just can't talk about here in the UK. Patrick Apel-Muller writes in L'Humanité about the cause of employee suicides at France Telecom.
It was to take 21 employee suicides from February 2008 before the management of France Télécom would agree to assess the full scale of the dramas that play out within its walls. Now management mentions "prevention of psycho-social risks."I've long argued that command and control organisation is actually killing people. Research by the UK Work Foundation reached this conclusion several years ago when it found that the biggest contributor to the 2.7m people on incapacity benefits was workplace stress brought about by the oppressive nature of the traditional nature of the firm, which basically doesn't scale without the wholesale destruction of the workforce's self-worth and self-esteem leading to what is now referred to as 'work rage'.
I was working in Bangalore with Tesco a few years ago. I remember having conversations with successful upwardly mobile young Indian technologists about new houses, cars, holidays. I pointed out that what comes with all this prosperity is the slew of western ailments associated with the export of capitalism’s model of organisation – diabetes, stress, obesity, jealously, distrust, rapacious greed and so on. They just laughed at me.
This was published last week;
India outsourcing workers stressed to the limit. From obesity to sleep disorders – a healthcare crisis in the making?....be careful what you wish for.....Patrick's article goes on to say;
It's the work itself that is sick because aspirations to self-realisation are denied and dignity often manhandled.
Among the messes and the waste capitalism brings about, human sufferings are not the least and they always accompany the destruction of the labor resource. How many broken hopes, wrecked feelings of self-worth are provoked by the precariousness of employment to which a majority of young employees are now compelled! The first steps into adult life become an obstacle course that goes on and on ...
Read the whole thing.
I'll be speaking at
Africa Gathering about the dangers of the wholesale adoption of western organisational models. More on this soon.
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