kerkko.fi

Arguably the most pervasive element enabling exploitative office culture is the postmodern trickery of the contemporary working environment. [The Slovenian philosopher] Slavoj Žižek argues that modern employment tactics create the illusion that our employer is our friend. This fabrication empowers the employer while denying the employed the right to vocalize and protest dissatisfaction of their working conditions. “You’re not going to stick around and help out? I thought we were a team? I thought we were friends?”

Žižek suggests that the environment of the workplace has been twisted, using architectural devices, to manipulate employees. Kitchens, "break-out spaces," lounges, free food, free coffee -- all this is a postmodern sleight of hand designed to manipulate and disarm staff. By fabricating the illusion of employer as friend, the employed is denied the opportunity to protest, argue, fight, be adversarial, and demand more of their working conditions. These informal spaces are political spaces of control, surveillance, and manipulation.

Never expected to find myself torn between my solidarity for the working class and my love of beer. A court in Lithuania has declared beer an "essential service," on par with drinking water and the internet, The Telegraph reported. Brewing group Carlsberg applied for the reclassification to forestall industrial action by workers at its Lithuanian brewery, Svyturys-Utenos Alus. The staff had decided to stage a walk-out for better pay and conditions, but the court declared the stoppage illegal. Jennie Formby, national officer at Britain's UNITE, called the situation ridiculous. "Of course many people think beer is great but it does not save lives," she told The Daily Mirror.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/9122762/Carlsberg-reclassifies-itself-as-an-essential-service-to-prevent-Lithuanian-strike-action.html

An Iranian former non-Marxist revolutionary activist asserted that Iran's communist Tudeh Party is reorganizing among factory and government workers, and intellectuals. He claimed that many former Tudeh sympathizers hold positions in the bureaucracy and elsewhere, and opined that many still privately support the movement. He mentioned one organizer who has re-emerged behind the scenes of recent bus worker and other labor strikes.

Capitalism relies on inequality. Pay disparities steer resources to where they would be most productively employed. Inequality spurs economic growth by providing incentives for people to accumulate human capital and become more productive. It pulls the best and brightest into the most lucrative lines of work, where the most profitable companies hire them.

Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try. The odds are not on their side. Inequality has been found to turn people off. Ultimately, the question is this: How much inequality is necessary?

A massive transfer of wealth, David Cay Johnston contends, began in 1981 when there was "an abrupt change in tax and economic policy. Since then the base has fared poorly while huge economic gains piled up at the very top, along with much lower tax burdens." Thus it was Reaganism that set these forces in motion, a process that has had a devastating impact on the working class both economically and ideologically.

"This systematic destruction of the working class and middle class has come during an era notable for celebrating the super-rich just for being super-rich," Johnston writes. "Money voyeurism has grown in tandem with stagnant to falling incomes for the vast majority. There has also been huge income growth at the top and the economic children of income inequality: budget deficits and malign neglect of our commonwealth."

http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/capitalism-sucks-unless-you-are-very.html

Gordon Brown's abusive behaviour and volcanic eruptions of foul temper left Downing Street staff so frightened that he received an unprecedented reprimand from the head of the civil service, the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley reveals today.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, became so alarmed by the prime minister's bullying of staff that he gave the prime minister a stern "pep talk" and ordered him to change his behaviour. "This is no way to get things done," he told Brown.

Rawnsley's book, The End of the Party, charts Labour's second and third terms in power and is based on hundreds of interviews with witnesses to the key events in the government's life, including cabinet ministers, No 10 officials and senior civil servants.

When briefed about the loss of confidential data discs, containing the personal details of more than 20 million people, Brown leapt across the room and grabbed his deputy chief of staff by the lapels. Brown snarled into Kelly's face: "They're out to get me!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-abusive-treatment-staff

Income has a greater impact on the happiness of people paid by the hour than people paid by salary, according to research at Stanford and the University of Toronto. The relationship between money and happiness is stronger for people paid by the hour because they are more often reminded of how much they earn. When time is money, the linkage between how much you earn and your happiness increases.

"If you are paid by the hour, you begin to see the world in terms of money and in terms of economic evaluation," said Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Hourly paid employees know the exact worth of each hour of work. They think about their income regularly and begin comparing the value of their time to the amount of their happiness.

http://www.physorg.com/news183632533.html