Towards a theory of thralldom (from Carman de Voer)

October 4, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,

I love Sundays! Thank you for the references to Solzhenitsyn. It’s interesting that thralldom figures prominently in his text: “The whole raison d’etre of serfdom and the Archipelago is one and the same: these are the social structures for the ruthless enforced utilization of the free-of-cost work of millions of slaves” (Chapter 5). I’ve been bridging concepts we’ve discussed over the months and believe I see sufficient patterns to construct a comprehensive Theory of Thralldom.

Patterson describes the slave as dehumanized being who lives only through and for the master:

SLAVE

“The slave was a dominated thing, an animated instrument, a body with natural movements, but without its own reason, an existence entirely absorbed in another.”

MASTER

“The proprietor of this thing, the mover of this instrument, the soul and the reason of this body, the source of this life, was the master. The master was everything for him: his father and his god, which is to say, his authority and his duty…Thus, god, fatherland, family, existence, are all for the slave, identified with the same being; there was nothing which made for the social person, nothing which made for the moral person, that was not the same as his personality and his individuality”(Henri Wallon on the meaning of slavery in ancient Greece, Cited in Patterson).

Though Friere does not use the word “thrall” or “slave” in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he does use almost identical language to describe “the oppressed”: “For the oppressors, ‘human beings’ refers only to themselves; other people are “things” (p.39). Friere says that the “oppressor consciousness” tends to reduce everything-including people-to “objects at its disposal” (p.40) Science and technology, says Freire, “are used to reduced the oppressed to the status of things” (p.114). The educational system is their “enemy” (p.16) and management is an “arm of domination (p.50).

Patterson’s decription of slavery also illuminates Freire’s statements, such as “adhesion to the oppressor,” the “boss within,” subjects-objects, and Friere’s discussion of the difference between animals and humans (thank you for your reference to dogs!). I could never quite understand why he devoted so much analysis to the distinction. Animals, for example are “ahistorical,” “beings in themselves,” “cannot commit themselves,” are “not challenged by the configuration that confronts them,” and so on (pp.78-79). Obviously, animals and thralls are subhuman, objects, things. Now I see why Freire spoke about the “ontological vocation to be more fully human-“fully human” versus “anatomical fragments” and “automata” (things).

Middle class educators reading this blog might bristle at my suggestion that we humans exist within a web of thralldom. Freire predicted such reaction when he spoke about the middle class’s “fear of freedom” which “leads them to erect defense mechanisms and rationalizations which conceal the fundamental (i.e., the conditions of oppression) emphasize the fortuitous (i.e., let’s be “positive”) and deny concrete reality” (the misery of the oppressed) p.85. (parentheses mine). Freire was clear that praxis meant reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.

Freire’s indictment of global educational systems is understandable now given that the “educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is a better fit for the world” (p.57). It now makes sense to me why Freire saw the need to develop a completely different “pedagogy”-a pedagogy of the oppressed, whose organs of sense perception have been switched off so long that they need educators’ help to reactivate those. I can now understand why Freire’s text appears in many graduate programs (I met “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” while enrolled in Athabasca University’s MDE Program).

I appreciate your allusion to perception Lisa. Patterson (quoting Weber) notes that slavery is built upon a power relation which has 3 facets: social, psychological and cultural. Perception, I believe, falls under the second category:

1) The use or threat of violence in the control of one person by another (Social)

2) The capacity to persuade another person to change the way he perceives his interests and his circumstances. (Psychological)

3) Authority: the means of transforming force into right, and obedience into duty (Cultural)

But how is slavery distinctive as a relation of domination? Perhaps we could discuss that later on.

Bye for now,

Carman

I would call my posts ‘messays’ because they represent mental chaos searching for coherence. Thank you for the ‘mutual flourishing’ you promote Lisa.

References:

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Category: All Posts, Culture, Education, Organization, Partnership, Power, Psychology, Science, Values /

Self Actualization vs. Dehumanization

October 3, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, Thank you for your note! I appreciation this whole process of deconstruction and reconstruction of ideas. It takes courage to relinquish our certainty enough to open our minds to new connections and possibilities. There is a period of chaos before new structures coalesce, which can be uncomfortable, to the say the least, but the insights we gain by allowing and processing this chaos or change can be enormously rewarding. Therefore, I appreciate Rosemarie Anderson’s term for that period, “auspcisous bewilderment”(1). One of the benefits of Partnership systems is that they are safe enough to allow the uncertainty inherent in the creative process.

As you requested, I moved our earlier conversation in the comments area of “Freedom vs. Slavery” http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/09/23/freedom-is-slavery/ to the main blog to make it easier to read.

Your quote from Freire aptly contasts the difference between the experience and concept of work as self-actualization in the context of community and work as dehumanization or exploitation. These are two different paradigms of leadership and organization (social relationship), and of ways of being in the world.

The Partnership paradigm reflects an ethic of mutual flourishing. Conversely, a dominator paradigm reflects a “dog eat dog” or “dog oppress dog” 😉 ethic. Both are part of our historical inheritance, but the ethic of domination goes deep. What is our reaction when we are crossed? And then, what response do we choose…

In considering Friere’s comment, I am also reminded of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s reminder that there is freedom and power throughout the system. Even in situations of extreme oppression, such as former Soviet labor camps, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago demonstrated that the human being could choose a perspective of self-actualization. So we have these mulitple frontiers, the social and the psychological, for moving towards more creative, adpative and fulfilling systems..

It’s a pleasure to read and post your insightful and creative essays, as always!

Lisa

1. Rosemarie Anderson, “Intuitive Inquiry,” Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human Experience,” eds. William Broud and Rosemarie Anderson.

Anderson includes a quote from the mystic Jelaluddin Rumi in the opening to her chapter, which speaks to this place of auspicious bewilderment and creativity: “Today like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Power, Psychology, Values /

Dehumanization of Work

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

10/1/09  Hi Lisa,

Thank you so much for your gracious comments. It’s wonderful that our minds can interplay notwithstanding our constraints and commitments-you within an intellectual orchard, and me within a psychological sarcophagus.

 Lisa, you ask if I would like to see the discussion move up a little. I believe I would find it easier on the eye, if you don’t mind. I keep trying to post directly but the site simply won’t let me in. I will attempt again on the weekend. I also have a new e-mail address I’ll forward to you when time permits.

I’ve been doing a lot of demolition and re-construction on my Mythology of Organization. The wrecking ball has been my so-called ‘theory of thralldom.’

In closing, I thought you might enjoy a quote from Freire:

“People are fulfilled only to the extent they create their world, and create it with their transforming labor. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure and totally threatened-if their work does not belong to them-the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.126).

Bye for now,

Carman

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(Reply) Bullying & Dominator Systems

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

Carman, I apologize for the delay in responding (I’m still writing on a deadline). I appreciate your exquisite thought process. Yes, understanding a problem more deeply can create a perspective from which we can see possible solutions. Personally, I suspect that because the problem is systemic, solutions must be multi-level and multidimensional. When the time comes, I am very interested to hear your ideas with respect to “bridges.”Bullying is a good example of dominator behavior. And we do (unfortunately but not unexpectedly) see this kind of behavior in the workplace.

I really like your fishing metaphor, “big ideational fish”!

Does this thread work for you as a locus for our conversation? If you should like to see some of this discussion move up a level, just let me know. You are, of course, always welcome to post there directly, if that seems appropriate.

Best wishes,
Lisa
P.S. I always enjoy your description of the local sounds and surroundings. Having lived on a boat for several years, in Monterey and Moss Landing, California, I remember seeing seals sleeping on sunny sea walls… We really enjoyed that lifestyle.

Category: Culture, Partnership, Power /

Bullying in Dominator Systems

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,  I am happy to hear that you have experienced Partnership relationships where thralldom was not an active force. I would like to include myself in that relationship. Succinctly, I would say that “partnership” is more probable where one is not subject to the will of another. Even slaves experienced a kind of partnership, according to Patterson, in that they ‘had strong social ties among themselves though their relationships not recognized as legitimate or binding.’

However, as you observe, it is not enough to highlight elements of domination in our existing models of organization; it is also incumbent upon us to ‘explore some psycho-social-spiritual bridges to Partnership ways of being.’

I think I may have located one such a “bridge.” However, rather than rush to ‘prescription,’ I would like to devote more time to ‘description.’ Using raw materials from Patterson’s analysis of slavery, and incorporating the straight-edge of your critique, I would like to continue constructing a Theory of Organizational Thralldom that can speak to some of the more trenchant and troubling issues of organizational behavior. I want to demonstrate that asymmetrical power relations, characterized by domination and submission, activate the principle and practice of thralldom.

Let’s illustrate one such issue: psychological abuse, colloquially called “bullying.” To bully is to intimidate through blustering, domineering, or threatening behavior: workers who were bullied into accepting a poor contract (http://www.thefreedictionary.com). Bullied Persons are routinely forced into submission through fear. Now, most texts I’ve consulted approach this ubiquitous phenomenon through the perspective of the powerless. They typically treat the abused worker to psychology-How to understand the abuser, What are the characteristics of the abuser? How to personally cope, and so on. Because the systemic relationship remains untouched-and unchallenged-power continues to be weighted in favor of the abuser.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) website observes: “On June 1, 2004, Quebec became the first North American jurisdiction to include protection against psychological harassment of employees in its Act respecting Labour Standards.

Bullying, known as psychological harassment is defined as:

“Any vexatious behaviour in the form of repeated and hostile or unwanted conduct, verbal comments, actions or gestures, that affect an employee’s dignity or psychological integrity and that results in a harmful work environment for the employee. A single serious incidence of such behaviour that has a lasting harmful effect on an employee may also constitute psychological harassment” (http://www.cupe.bc.ca/stopbullying).

Two things stand out in the above:

1) Quebec is the first “North American” jurisdiction to legislate against the practice, and

2) “Protection.” There’s that word again.

In his discussion of injustice Patterson quotes an American ex-slave who recounts: “the most barbarous thing I saw with these eyes-I lay on my bed and study about it now-I had a sister, my older sister, she was fooling with the clock and broke it, and my old master taken her and tied a rope around her neck-just enough to keep it from choking her-and tied her up in the back yard and whipped her I don’t know how long. There stood mother, there stood father, and there stood all the children and none could come to her rescue.”

I have personally witnessed the verbal equivalent of such physical abuse as colleagues stood by and did nothing to stop a psychological assault. Patterson rightly asks, How could persons be made to accept such natural injustice? Not simply the victim but more particularly, “those who stood by and accepted it.”

Patterson isolates two dimensions: 1) denying the slave’s humanity, his independent social existence 2) the master’s authority was derived from his control over symbolic instruments, which effectively persuaded both slave and others that the master was the only mediator between the living community to which he belonged and the living death that his slave experienced.

Perhaps we can expand on the above dimensions later? I trust that as we cast our mental seine wide we will capture some really big ideational fish.

Bye for now,

Carman

I love listening to the University of Wyoming classical station in the morning. Saturday mornings are especially exquisite. I wonder how many seals I’ll see on the seawall today. Hey, that alliteration sounds a lot like ‘the big black bug bled blue blood.’

Reference:

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982

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(Reply) Freedom is Slavery

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

9/23/09 

Carman, Hello,
I apologize for the delay in posting and responding. I’ve been on a writing vacation for the past two weeks (continuing this week).

You’ve begun a powerful analysis of the dominator paradigm, and I am looking forward to reading how you further develop your tree of knowledge! It’s useful, I think, to expand our awareness of underlying structures and assumptions. (Even to the psycho-spiritual level).

You assert that thralldom “is the active force underlying virtually all relationships.” This is true by definition in dominator systems. On the other hand, I have experienced Partnership relationships where this is not the case. (And of course, my purpose in this blog is to both highlight elements of domination in our existing models of organization and to explore and describe some psycho-social-spiritual bridges to Partnership ways of being).

Thank you for sharing here!

Warm regards,
Lisa
P.S. We have a beautiful day here in Southern California on the cusp of Summer and Fall…

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Freedom is Slavery

September 23, 2009 / / 5 comments

While the following may shock the sensibilities of some, I want to emphasize that I am doing sociology, not ideology. That is, I am not exalting one political system above another or indicting either management or labor. Rather, I am attempting to understand the themes of domination, exploitation, and dehumanization-recurring issues on this site. Hopefully, with your help as intellectual mid-wife, we can attempt to surface entrenched assumptions which I believe catalyze most human-to-human interaction.I learned something about the word “leadership”: “laeden” is to go upward and “schaeppen” is to create a thing of value. Evidently, the word “shop” derives from the suffix. We buy things of value in shops. However, like the Dutch word “boss,” “leader” essentially means “master.” You allude to leadership as a creative act in your question, “What steps can leaders take to create an environment of trust and safety to support open and constructive communication?” Both words connote the right to command and the duty to exact obedience.

For the past few weeks I’ve been attempting to give my vague notions about leadership more concretion-to surface and challenge my assumptions about leadership. The exercise is both fatiguing and exhilarating. I’ve also taken a deep mental plunge into Orlando Patterson’s book “Slavery and Social Death, A Comparative Study.” I am attempting to integrate Patterson’s insights into my own experience. The fruit of this synthesis is what I term

THEORY OF THRALLDOM
(Bondage, Slavery)

I DISTINGUISH:

-PRINCIPAL OF THRALLDOM
-PRACTICE OF THRALLDOM

As a principle, thralldom is the condition of being entirely subject to another’s will.

As a practice, thralldom is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others.

I submit that the principle of thralldom is the active force underlying virtually all relationships. It is the bedrock of all social interaction. Thralldom is complete control over someone who is subject to that one’s will. The controller is subject, the controlled is object. The controller is a person; the controlled is a non-person-a thing.
Thralldom has two dimensions about which you have spoken at length Lisa: 1) domination 2) dehumanization.
The Tree will illustrate how I see thralldom as a ubiquitous phenomenon:
Leaves and Fruit: labels, language, media, scholastic systems, products and services, which simultaneously obscure and express the reality of thralldom.

Branches: interpersonal and organizational expressions of thralldom (e.g., organization as machine, organism, instrument of domination, political system, psychic prison).

Trunk: thralldom [slavery] as social fact [reality]

Root System: propensity to dominate, legitimacy of the State and its military apparatus, ideology, tradition, forgotten history.

Thralldom is:

Mediated: by money
Modified: by the character of the organization
Mitigated: by labor relations and human rights legislation.

Based on the above, “freedom” would be the degree of “protection” within an experience of exploitation.

While the conditions of slavery vary from relationship to relationship the dimensions of domination and dehumanization remain constant.

For example:

• discipline: punishments and rewards
• subjection and submission: (inferior) status
• performance: duties performed under duress
• treatment: as objects, human tools, instruments
• perception: as commodities

If you like, I will expand on my research, which we can discuss and debate to our hearts content-time permitting of course.

Bye for now,

Carman (My new e-mail address is not yet established–please bear with)

Reference:

Leadership: http://www.learning org.com/98.04/0257.html

Category: All Posts, Ethics, Leadership / Tags:

Illuminating implicit assumptions about organizations

September 13, 2009 / / 2 comments

Hi Lisa, It’s so good to be back. Internet interruption, following a move to another apartment, has afforded me ample opportunity to consider your question: “What steps can leaders take to create an environment of trust and safety to support open and constructive communication?”

I consider your question to be “pragmatic” in that it concerns practical matters. However, what if the question were re-worded thus: “What steps can “workers” take to create an environment of trust and safety…” Your question, I suggest, insightfully acknowledges that in many modern organizations “all the thinking is done by the managers and designers [leaders], leaving all the “doing” to the employees.” Images of Organization, p.23. Parenthesis mine.

In the next few days I would like to proffer an “ontological” framework-wherein we question what exists and how it is defined and grouped within a hierarchy of meaning. Let’s call it a heuristic device because it will elaborate a conceptual framework for inquiry. I believe leaders and led might benefit by observing the shoreline of social fact when the tide of traditional thinking is out.

While not side-stepping your excellent question Lisa, I would like to propose some of my own: How many learning programs are devoted to the behavior of leaders and managers-i.e., introspection, development, character, dialogue, and ethics? Rather, are not most books and programs instrumental in that they focus on the ‘management’ of employee behavior?
Over the last few weeks I have been researching a social phenomenon that I hope will integrate everything you and I have discussed, while avoiding the metaphor trap. The trees that dominate Stanley Park furnish an excellent metaphor for my proposed radical approach to “leadership.”

Let’s examine leadership’s:

Root System: ideology, tradition, forgotten history, and human propensity to dominate.

Trunk: the reality that integrates all organizations.

Branches: interpersonal and organizational expressions of the social reality.

Leaves: labels, teaching systems, ideologies, sense of honor and decorum, which obscure and color the reality.

How does that sound?

Bye for now,

Carman

The leaves are performing their autumnal pirouette of death as the plummet to the ground. A beautiful ballet!

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Given the high cost of denial, how can we encourage open communication?

September 3, 2009 / / One comment

Carman,  Thank you for offering the example of Orwell’s Oceania, as perhaps the ultimate example of a Dominator organization. Oceania is perhaps a pure example of a direction that human organizations can take when their core value is power (money and power-over) and there are no other strong mitigating values or externally or situationally imposed limitations.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the role of “doublethink” and “newspeak” which are both reflected in the well documented phenomenon in which organizations say one thing and do another.

This gap between public communications and action can arise for several reasons:
1) Lack of self-awareness on the part of the leader (we are not always aware of our true motives);
2) Belief in an ideal but a lack of awareness of the true costs;
3) Cynicism.

Whatever the cause, doublespeak and newthink involve both conscious or unconscious denial and projection. This gap between what is said an what is done, leads to skepticism, a lack of investment on the part of organizational members, and ultimately poor performance.

One example, would be one in which organizational leaders and corporate policy discuss the importance of product quality or customer service, while acting in ways that reduce that capacity. The pressure to reconcile the public face and actual practice tends to flow downhill to the front lines (often the least powerful members of the organization). If a person at the front lines was to express the perception that the “organization isn’t really committed to quality (or customer service – whatever it might be), there is a good chance that that person would be considered perverse, negative – perhaps a poor performer.  “After all, it is obviously company policy that we serve our customers… and we’ve asked others in the department and they don’t share your view…”

The way a company approaches public statements regarding ethics and how it ensures that the organization complies with ethical policies is particularly sensitive. In one situation I observed, team members all privately identified ethical violations in their immediate environment, but most publically stated that they did not know of any violations. The reasons they gave for not reporting the violations were: 1) Fear of possible negative consequences, and 2) the belief that the company did not really want to know.

In this kind of environment, there is a deep lack of trust, and problems can become more difficult to identify and fix…

So, leaders who want to develop healthy, flexible organizations in which members believe and are invested have a stake in creating an environment in which organizational members can share their experiences and perspectives without fear of negative consequences.

The power differential between managers and individual contributors, itself, tends to reduce upward feedback. “Newspeak” further reduces trust.

What steps can leaders take to create an environment of trust and safety to support open and constructive communication?

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Analyzing Orwell’s Oceania (as a Dominator Organization)

August 28, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,Thank you for your illuminating pool of insights on the “dominator system” and “dominator paradigm.” I reflected on your comments all week-especially while walking to work over Vancouver’s Cambie Street Bridge.
Fear and punishment seem to be the dominant emotions fostered by dominator systems.

Orwell’s Oceania-a caricature of the ultimate exploitative and oppressive system-exemplifies the extreme end of organizational pathology. I thought it might be instructive to construct a profile of Oceania-its mission, vision, values and structure. As the example of the Chloe Factories (1999) shows, many organizations may not be too far from Oceania.
Organization of Oceania

Thesis: Organizations exhibit a propensity to malignant narcissism and radical mental manipulation.

Key Concepts:

§ Ingsoc-the prevailing philosophy.

§ Newspeak-the official written language of the Party

§ Doublethink-the officially induced trance state

§ Crimestop-party-protective stupidity

§ Goodthinkful-thinking in Party-approved ways

§ Blackwhite-unconditional obedience and unstinting abhorrence of enemies

 

The Psychological Profile of the Party

Organizational Vision

“A boot stamping upon a human face forever!”
Organizational Mission
1) “To conquer the whole surface of the earth”

2) “To extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”

 

Organizational Objectives

• Preserve hierarchical structure

• Preserve oligarchic privilege and power

• Protect the image of Big Brother as omnipotent and infallible

 
Organizational Climate

§ Dominated by fear and fanatical hatred of the “enemy”

Organizational [Psychopathic] Personality

§ Engrossed in its own image and impression management

§ Obsessed with the veneration and infallibility of Big Brother

§ Consumed with control

§ Contemptuous of the physiological, emotional, and spiritual needs of the people

§ Cruel

 
Organizational Program:

§ Eradicate all human qualities such as love, friendship, joy of living, laughter, curiosity, courage, and integrity

§ Execraete declared “enemies”

§ Torture and eliminate “dissidents”

§ Train children to place loyalty to the Party above human relationships

 

 Organizational Philosophy (Ingsoc):

 § Ingsoc has as its aim the preservation of power at all costs and even wages war simply to preserve its hierarchical structure-to the extent of bombing its own citizens.

§ All intelligent citizens are conditioned through fear to accept its worldview.

 

Organizational Technologies

§ Telescreen: utilized to monitor, control and discipline citizens; Members live from birth to death under the watchful eye of the Thought Police.

 

Organizational Culture

§ Crimestop [inability and unwillingness to think uncomplimentary things about the Party]. Crimestop is “protective stupidity,” in that it shields the Party from scrutiny. It is stopping a thought before it gets started, that is, at the threshold of consciousness.

Manifestations of Crimestop:

• the power of not grasping analogies
• failing to perceive logical errors
• misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc
• being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction

§ Goodthinkful– habitually thinking and acting in Party-approved ways

§ Newspeak– is the official written language of Oceania. Though no one speaks Newspeak in 1984, it is steadily becoming the lingua franca of the New Order. Newspeak is not a medium of communication, per se, but, rather, a vocabulary intended to narrow the range of consciousness and to make thoughtcrime [any thought diverging from the official philosophy] impossible. Its purpose is not to facilitate communication but to enforce submission, as is the case with jargon in present organizations.

Newspeak is the language of the lie. Newspeak is carefully crafted to focus the range of thought, to enforce a uniformity of opinion, and to render ‘unorthodoxy’ thought impossible. It is at once the manifestation and cause of evil (Peck, 1983, p.242).

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, and mental attitudes of Oceania are designed to sustain the mystique of the Party. Newspeak is the language of manipulation and deceit. Its purpose is to subvert intellectual engagement and to perpetuate the Party’s myth of omniscience.

§ Blackwhite– has two contradictory meanings. On the one hand it means that if the Party says black is white, then it is white. When applied to opponents, it means utter inability to believe any utterance. In either case, blackwhite is the ultimate test of loyalty to the Party. One must not simply know that black is white, when the Party declares it to be so, but, rather, one must thoroughly believe that black is white. This kind of mental elasticity is made possible through doublethink.

§ Doublethink– is the ability to hold two contradictory opinions simultaneously. It is consciously induced unconsciousness (orthodoxy). Put another way, it is the ability “to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies.”
Anatomy of Doublethink:

• to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them
• to forget any fact that has become inconvenient
• to deny the existence of objective reality while taking to account the reality which one denies

 Organizational Structure

• Ministry of Truth (promulgates propaganda)

• Ministry of Peace (perpetuates war)

• Ministry of Love (promotes torture)

• Ministry of Plenty (perpetuates starvation)

 

An excerpt from Organizational Behaviour In A Global Context, p.411:

The Choe Factories-Power Relations in the Workplace

“In the spring of 1999, the Choe factories, located in New York City, shut down operations due to wage claims from workers. The Choe factories operated as a contractor producing garments under an exclusive agreement for Donna Karan International. the workforce was comprised of 70 Chinese and Latina women. Workers were unionized under the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

Research carried out by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) found the organization, DKI, and the union representing the workers in violation of numerous international human rights. p.411

Over 12 years the workers were subjected to restrictions on movement and bathroom use, monitoring with surveillance cameras, unpaid overtime, and abusive supervision.

Constant surveillance meant that, if workers were to raise their head from their work, supervisors would immediately reprimand them by speakerphone, “No talking, work.” No one was permitted phone calls, even in emergencies, and phone activity was monitored by management. Lilia was not permitted to go to the bathroom (which was often padlocked) unless she had finished her piecework. Even drinking water was unavailable when the fountains on-site did not work.”

Bye for now,

Carman

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