An all-pervasive ‘just be kind’ mindset in every walk of life is turning the economy to mush, says Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Telegraph. And it’s being driven by out-of-control HR. Here’s an excerpt.
One way to respond to this [explosion in worklessness] would be to say that Britain is a sicker country than it used to be. But as one noted psychiatrist put it earlier this year, the “rate of defined disorders has not changed for 50-60 years”. What may have changed instead is our willingness to describe ourselves as being mentally unwell, and the willingness of the state to accept that claim without excessive interrogation.
Indeed, in the HR state, attempts to shift people into employment are frowned upon as unkind, even though work can be beneficial for mental health. And so the taxpayer continues to fork out for workers who don’t work, public services decline and the tax burden grows.
Once you start to see the growing power of HR culture, it’s everywhere. It’s in the way we speak to each other, with normal, everyday interactions increasingly governed by rules on what can be said, on what level of rudeness incurs civil or criminal liability.
Rather than taking offence – with the implication that we can choose how to respond, including shrugging ill-judged words off – we are harmed by insensitive language. And the HR state intervenes to protect us, levelling jail sentences at people who are rude online, or handing massive payouts to those offended by their colleagues at work.
It doesn’t matter if that offence is given with good reason. Demanding excellent performance from highly paid civil servants and employees is out. And getting rid of employees isn’t always an option either: in one notable case, a judge found in favour of an employee complaining about being let go after 808 sick days (and racking up £96,000 in sick pay).
You aren’t even really free to choose what you pay your employees. At any point, the state could decide your arrangement is insufficiently fair.
Take the de facto bankruptcy of Birmingham City Council. Poor decisions, like spending millions of pounds taxiing students to school, played a role in this affair. But perhaps the biggest blow came when a judge determined that completely different jobs, with completely different demands – and market rates – met a nebulous definition of equal worth.
It didn’t matter that men and women in the same roles were paid the same wages. The simple fact that some jobs – such as street cleaners and refuse collectors – received bonuses that others – such as cooks and care workers – did not was enough to show that the council had breached the law. The result was £1.1bn in payouts, with possibly another £760m in liabilities remaining, and a torrent of follow-on lawsuits against councils, supermarkets, and all sorts of other employers.
From an economic perspective, this is nuts. It’s closer to old Marxist theories of value than it is to anything modern economists would recognise. Different jobs earn different wages because they are different; they differ in staffing levels, capital intensity, travel time, injury risk, hours, unpleasantness, and any number of other features.
Wages reflect all of these things and more. Of course different jobs pay different wages! But in the eyes of the HR state, none of this matters. All that matters is that a judge believes they are of equal worth.
Worth reading in full.
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