With the launch of the U.K.s first HR support consultancy specifically dedicated to removing political activism from small to medium employers, there is a slow realisation in the employment world that the politicisation of the workplace may not have been such a good idea after all. U.K. Government studies and independent research by the Free Speech Union has highlighted the negative impact on employees and employers and on the U.K. economy through the deployment of poorly designed and implemented Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training.
Last month, Google’s leadership finally lost patience with activist employees as it fired over 50 individuals for breaching a tranche of internal policies.
To cut a long story short, 28 activists occupied Google’s executive floors and the offices of individual executives and refused to move. Their ‘sit in’ was to demand that Google scrap its business with the State of Israel. “Google, Google, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” was the call this time. It was all caught on camera and you can easily find examples of this. The response was immediate and decisive: arrest and sacking.
Now to those paying attention, this was entirely predictable. For some time now the worm has been turning in the workplace as employers and businesses realise that their previous policy of indulging in politics has backfired. Years of permitting and encouraging political activism in the workplace has resulted in an increasingly vocal, radical and demanding cadre of employees disrupting core business functions, intimidating other workers and creating adverse publicity for the business.
The irony of 20-somethings, most of whom attended top universities, on Silicon Valley six figure starting salaries accusing every man and his dog of being privileged is beginning to dawn on their employers as ‘not a good look’ with customers, many of whom are genuinely struggling to make ends meet and have little or no patience with this hyper-privileged conduct.
The open politicisation of the workplace has been creeping in over the last 20 years. The politics around the climate debate was the earliest sign of this as the carbon market emerged and companies fell over themselves to sign up to green policies. What made this different from previous corporate initiatives was that HR used the mechanisms designed to improve employee workplace performance to encourage employees to drive green initiatives. Employees who took active roles in local green issues were lauded internally, for the first time rewarding employees for activities not directly related to sales, production or other income-producing activity.
This opened the gate for every political activist movement to rapidly spread their ideologies through the workplace. So we have seen MeToo, Covid mandates, BLM, gender self-ID and so on, all pushed through HR departments under the guise of ‘social responsibility’. Around 2010 we started to see a new role being pushed, that of the ‘ally’. No longer enough to tacitly accept that your employer sponsored Pride events etc., employees were encouraged and then trained to become allies – activists directly endorsing and promoting the ideology of the day. It was entirely predictable to anyone with the most rudimentary critical thinking skills that this would end in conflict and persecution of employees who for whatever reason disagreed with the ideology, and get employers into a phenomenal mess where they end up breaching anti-discrimination laws.
Yet, board directors, especially in the USA, decided to openly pick a side in elections and announce that they would not only donate but effectively put their businesses at the disposal of their preferred party. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a catalyst, with the leak of the 2016 video of Google’s top brass reassuring upset employees after the Trump victory being used by Republicans to demonstrate bias in social media. The new partisan policies as well as the almost universal anti-Trump stance of the mainstream media put the tech and media industries at direct odds with many of their customers. This is simply not a sustainable position. As Disney and other activist boards are finding out, eventually investors want a return on their money and their patience with companies that take highly politicised positions which inflame their customers is running out.
Unusually for Silicon Valley, there was one CEO who stood up against this. An article in the Free Press looks back to when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong issued a statement through his blog in September 2020, shortly after the George Floyd protests. At a time when literally almost every employer of size across the West was releasing statements in support of BLM, Armstrong realised that this would set a precedent that would come back to hurt companies. His statement is worth reading in the original.
In essence the core of the statement is that at Coinbase they don’t:
- Debate causes or political candidates internally that are unrelated to work
- Expect the company to represent our personal beliefs externally
- Assume negative intent, or not have each other’s back
- Take on activism outside the core mission of our work
Brian realised that whilst well intentioned, adopting political positions on various social issues has “the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction and by creating internal division”.
Of course, back in 2020 the reaction was again predictable. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said:
Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution.
Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stated that by not “acknowledging” the “related societal issues” faced by Coinbase’s customers, the company and its leader were “leading people behind”. (Incidentally, the Free Press reached out to Costolo for a comment on its article but he couldn’t be reached.)
Tech entrepreneur Aaron White tweeted that the statement was “isolationist fantasy” and that Armstrong’s apolitical stance was “effectively guaranteeing” that the CEO would land on the wrong side of history on “absolutely every issue”.
To an actual historian, White and the other tech companies’ statements are indicative of the precocity of the tech leaders of the time. These individuals had become very powerful very quickly and were well educated in one way but dismally educated in others. Dorsey’s interview with Joe Rogan is an interesting example of this. It only appears to dawn on Dorsey after censoring content on Twitter that society needs freedom of speech to function. It’s a shame he had missed his history classes. Dorsey seemed at the time to think that this was groundbreaking stuff, that such a philosophical conclusion hadn’t been done and dusted 200 years ago.
As we learned, once again, from China’s Cultural Revolution, the politicisation of everything, the division of society into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’, into the assumed ‘powerful’ and the ‘vulnerable’, has devastating outcomes, be they the mass persecutions of innocents in their millions, manmade famine as a consequence of societal mania, or debilitating internal conflicts that have undermined Google and other companies in their core missions.
Armstrong has been proven right. The idea that everything can be reduced to political struggle is incredibly damaging on human relationships; in environments that absolutely rely on functional collaboration between humans to meet a mutual goal it is devastating.
Now it is one thing for a company like Google to realise its errors; its survival isn’t at stake, it can roll with the punches. But we have seen big blue chips like Anheuser Busch pay the price at the tills for its decision to use its top selling beer Bud Lite, as a vehicle for pushing gender self-ID politics. The problem for smaller companies can be devastating.
It’s leading to a workplace environment where in several small businesses I have spoken to they no longer hire anyone under 35 because they have been burned by the expectation of some young employees that work is an opportunity for activism and their personal political beliefs take precedence over those of others. One business I spoke to recently told me that they were about to have to fight an employment tribunal because they refused to give an employee a month off to organise her local Pride parade last year. This is desperately unfair to young people who do want to just get on with their lives, but it is an increasing problem in the workplace.
An Employment Tribunal is an existential issue for small businesses. Yes, insurers may pick up the tab, but the stress, damage to the day job due to the time involved and the personal allegations that a business owner is somehow morally lacking are deeply disrupting and hurtful to those who find themselves in this situation.
The politicisation of the British workplace has been almost as rapid as that of the American. Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) policies are driven through corporate procurement – want to sell toothpaste to a chemist chain? Well you’d better have an ESG policy and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity policies that underpin it. Whilst it appears that most corporate HR departments are fully invested in this and certainly the CIPD – the institution that trains and qualifies HR professionals – is almost completely on board with the politicisation of the workplace, there are signs of a thaw. Last month I spoke with a very senior independent HR specialist who told me that five years ago her clients were HR Directors, but now her clients are CEOs and the request is usually along the lines of: “We’re losing the staff, we are losing engagement, we are losing Employment Tribunals, I need you to find out what the hell is going wrong with our HR department and to fix it.” And of course, what is going wrong is that HR has relegated its role of supporting the business in its core activities behind that of being a vehicle for social justice. It is immensely significant that this is dawning on investors and business leaders.
However, as we have already discussed, the consequences for small businesses are potentially existential, driving division, undermining workplace relationships and trust between colleagues. This is why Fair Job U.K. has been launched, an initiative that gives smaller businesses and employers the ability to tap into HR support that returns the employer to a stable workplace by removing political activism from the workplace and realigning the employer’s obligations to Employment Law and the Equality Act. The premise of Fair Job U.K. is almost entirely that stated by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in 2020: the politicisation of every aspect of life must stop and the politicisation of the workplace is a zero sum game which will produce a result directly opposite to the ideas of diversity and inclusion by creating an orthodoxy and excluding those who disagree with it. Fair Job U.K. helps employers navigate this and protects small businesses and employers from politically motivated attacks on the company and staff.
In light of Google’s actions, the Free Press article goes on to describe the sigh of relief across Silicon Valley that this action draws the line in the sand. Sundar Pichai, Google CEO wrote in a note to staff:
This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted.
Brian Armstrong has gone from pariah to prophet, he has been vindicated.
The U.K.’s businesses must follow suit and remove political activism from the workplace.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the U.K.’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack. He is a founder of Fair Job, an accreditation and support service for small businesses to help them navigate the minefields of EDI and HR.
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I started in tech long before it was ‘cool’. There is indeed good and bad. It depends on the actors and the actors running our ‘systems’ are for the most part, quite evil, totalitarian and in my opinion in many ways, rather idiotic as most totalitarians are. These actors will use technology to tie you down, censor you, track you, make sure you comply and if not, you will lose your bank account and job. The actors, not the underlying technology is to blame. Akin to the use of guns, or cars, if you drive drunk and stoned.
We see the abuse of technology and ‘data’ in the Rona scamdemic and Climate bollocks amongst many other examples. I would say it is more the cult of $cience and $cientism, using technology as a means of control to lever power and profits and kill off our freedom.
Trust big tec at your peril, even if, and it’s a very big if, it appears benign and helpful.
The death of spontaneity is already upon us – try just going to your local train station/airport to go somewhere – No can do without bigbrother knowing all about you.
Submit to change What is your Vax staus – that will be the new normal of course for the Greater Good. (Blair you utter bastard, I pray you rot in Hell).
I often wonder what George Orwell would have made of Clown World.
The RPTB never stop. Control of the MSM is the key.
RPTB? I’ve seen this a few times recently, but unclear about the initialism’s meaning.
I assume ” … powers that be”, but the R?
“Real”
“Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation – the senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. [Man] doesn’t learn to question his world anymore; the screen offers him answers-ready-made.”
“The world of tomorrow will witness a tremendous battle between technology and psychology. It will be a fight of technology versus nature, of systematic conditioning versus creative spontaneity.”
Joos Meerloo
To be clear I think we cannot blame technology much the same as we cannot blame science. It is always people, whether it’s malevolence or stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjI3BXKBgY
Ascent Of Man, episode 11 – Knowledge Or Certainty
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”
Is that Bronowski from the 1970’s? It’s very good.
Regardless of the technology, the same wisdom applies to all ages of homo sapiens.
It is he and I fully agree. I find the last sentence the most important and moving, especially against the backdrop of all the tyranny of Covid where human contact was outlawed. In contrast to Jacob Bronowski’s plea above, here is an excerpt from Klaus Schwab’s book about resetting Humanity.
Page 156 – Accelerating the digital transformation
In one form or another, social and physical distancing measures are likely to persist after the pandemic itself subsides, justifying the decision in many companies from different industries to accelerate automation. After a while, the enduring concerns about technological unemployment will recede as societies emphasize the need to restructure the workplace in a way that minimizes close human contact. Indeed, automation technologies are particularly suited to a world in which human beings can’t get too close to each other or are willing to reduce their interactions.
Yes. Superb. Still available on DVD I believe.
And free on Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/the-ascent-of-man-ep1
And here on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pMhqKVYNHA&list=PLVVydzWYmxcl5m0wXY5X176IvbJoLrz6q&pp=iAQB
i.e. Hubris on a monumental scale.
And as those of us lucky enough to have studied the Classics, Hubris (not “pride”, rather “breaking well defined boundaries”, is ALWAYS followed by Nemesis.
We all need to beware of what will be claimed in the name of AI. It is called Artificial Intelligence because it has no real intelligence. It is an artefact of human minds and is likely to embody their prejudices and preferences. This is already showing as left wing bias in Chatbot.
I recall an online discussion between a retired pilot and a young computer programmer. The programmer was proposing the removal of the ‘error prone’ human to be replaced with ‘reliable’ computers. The retired pilot urged the programmer that it is a very bad idea to replace the pilot. The programmer accused the pilot of trying to protect his job (the pilot was retired). The pilot’s age and years of experience was lost on the young programmer as lacking in years himself he had no concept of what experience actually is. The retired pilot was Capt. Sullenberger.
I picked up this discussion with another programmer and to back up the pilot story above I recounted a friends story about his father, a retired airline pilot. He was originally in the RAF and moved into civilian flying. Before a fight he would calculate his route, timings etc. He would then load the same inputs into the onboard computer and check if the computer gave the same result. If it didn’t he would ignore it. The programmer I was discussing this with asserted that this pilot was wrong and should always believe the computer.
“There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots”
Anon
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
T. Sowell
“I’m not young enough to know everything”
J. M. Barrie
Back in the early 1990s New Scientist ran an article about automation and concluded that there were two different drivers which had profoundly different outcomes. Either automation was used to replace humans or it was used to enhance humans. In the case of aviation automation must only ever be an enhancement to the skills of the pilot (this also applies to Sub-Postmasters), although there are also mundane and reliably repetitive jobs where automation is a bonus. In the case of flying auto-pilots have been a great help by reducing the work load, but it is also understood that automation can lull pilots into carelessness, or worse de-skill the pilots. This was evident in the case of Air France 447. Following this accident pilot training to deal with ‘upsets’ was re-introduced as it had been reduced in the belief that the auto-pilots would prevent the aircraft getting outside the flight ‘envelope’. And then there was the two Boeing 737 Max accidents where the auto-pilot flew the planes into the ground and the pilots were unable to dis-engage the auto-pilot. Automation must always, always be our servant.
The graph below shows a graph from Hans Rosling’s excellent book FactFullness, showing the dramatic improvements in airline safety since the 1930s. This is how Hans described it:
“Back in the 1930s, flying was really dangerous and passengers were scared away by the many accidents. Flight authorities across the world had understood the potential of commercial passenger air traffic, but they also realized flying had to become safer before most people would dare to try it. In 1944 they all met in Chicago to agree on common rules and signed a contract with a very important Annex 13: a common form for incident reports, which they agreed to share, so they could all learn from each other’s mistakes.
Since then, every crash or incident involving a commercial passenger airplane has been investigated and reported; risk factors have been systematically identified; and improved safety procedures have been adopted, worldwide. Wow! I’d say the Chicago Convention is one of humanity’s most impressive collaborations ever. It’s amazing how well people can work together when they share the same fears.”
All good, but what is interesting is the lion’s share of improvements that happened before 1944 convention. In addition fully automated airliners start appearing in the 1970s except the general trajectory of improvements remains the same. All this safety has been achieved not through regulation or punishment, but through pilots sharing their experiences and through skilled and diligent analysis of accidents and the general application of the knowledge gained across the various contributing professions, and for the most part, across the planet. In every case it is humans that make it all work.
When we don’t have religion we don’t believe in nothing, we believe in anything.. I can’t even remember whose that quote is, but it’s one of the best!
Climbing on the shoulders of the giants of the Enlightenment of the past 400 years, we collectively, complacently imagine that we are so wise and intelligent.
The opposite is often the case and ‘knowing thyself ‘ remains as elusive as at any time in human history.
The cult of Science/Technology and the online/digital world of the past few decades deludes us into believing we are all knowing, with our super intelligent electronica to hand.
In fact the opposite is, as often as not, true. Hence the belief that computer modelling, based on the often highly questionable assumptions of the programmer, have more validity than mere speculation, or that any computer programme is somehow more able than the abilities of the human being that created it.
The evidence of the online age of the 21st century, with infinite distraction, and with the decreasing attention span of most of the population, is a return to pseudo religions and cultism, as witnessed with the, yet to be proven, climate emergency death cult, with it’s unquestioning belief system, and it’s need to silence and vilify heretics.
Science and technology are not cults. It is people that become cultish, and arrogant and hubristic. I think that we have been predominantly collectivist and cultish for most of human history. In addition when humans come up with better and more powerful ways of doing things these become targets for corruption, whether by an individual or the group. Thus we have Galileo being threatened with torture and death unless he renounced the idea that we lived in a Solar System instead of an Earth centred system. The Church had become cultish and malevolent towards any threat to it’s power. Jon Huss was burned at the stake for having Bibles written in English. Therefore, I’m not convinced that the predicament we are is entirely due to a lack of religion. Most people behave in a civil manner and not because of the threat of punishment if they don’t. The Rotherham rape gangs are not lacking in religion. Although I do agree with your last paragraph.
GK Chesterton. And boy, was he right. Climate Change for example; Marxism, all full-blown quasi-religious faiths, in which belief replaces reality. And Covidmania/Jabmania
Konstantin Kisin opened up his Substack for questions for one hour yesterday.
I asked him a question:
“What will constitute a meaningful life once AI takes over?
Jobs left will be in IT and regulatory bodies.
Shall humanity just eat and drink and be happy?
Will humans feel satisfied and meaningful in that world? Purposeful?
Sorry, feeling a bit gloomy on this wonderful sunny day!”
Konstantin Kisin’s answer:
“Humans will never feel happy or satisfied by eating and drinking and consuming. Life is suffering. Life is struggle. Without that, there can be no meaning. But, like all disruptive technology, I think AI will simply change the nature of the challenges we face. We will find new struggles and new challenges to overcome.”
Re. The Post Office scam, even the big banks have errors that affect people. Here’s a little extract from a recent document issued to me in my account with one of them: “Between 3 January 2019 and 27 July 2022, we have identified that as a result of an error some customers’ may have incorrect figures showing on their Return on Investment figures within their GIC costs and Charges statements. We’re really sorry about this. This issue has been fixed and all future statements will show the correct figures. If you have any questions about this or would like us to provide corrected figures or any previous Costs and Charges statements, please let us know by calling us on the number at the bottom of this statement.” It came to light on 16/1/2024 (sic). It won’t be in the press.
I think this article is good and quite true (he might have said that hugely increased use of technology is aided and abetted by the desire of so many for convenience, time-saving, whatever it might be, as well as just pure laziness). However, I believe that we need to acknowledge our sinfulness (inadequacy??) before God and turn to him in repentance – in the face of all that is going on in our world, we have no hope otherwise!
Top article on the flawed ideology of some of the major people behind it:
The Right Wing Progressives (RWP, like Elon Musk) and their commonalities and differences with conservatives, lefties and libertarians.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-progressives
More here
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-progressives
You can all start by ditching your Smartphones (form which every piece of personal data is scraped off to be used against you). It will also help you to live in the here and now – someone on their Smartphone is not here, not present. Appalling effect on society
And this…
“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff — Big Tech is stealing our lives”
https://archive.ph/D0dJi#selection-2527.8-2527.149