Avoiding the Corporate Dragnet

Fake 'em out and climb the ladder

Large corporations are especially keen on promoting conservative employees.  Even those with
little skills are promoted over their more talented counterparts who espouse liberal attitudes.  Success is insured if management feels they can trust the conservative individual to carry out their policies without question.  Those with liberal views are not promoted and at times can be hounded out of the workforce.  Some victims of harassment even believe that their employers have been instrumental in putting them on the harassment list.  This can be avoided by becoming aware of how it is done.
 

Corporate spies:

Some company employees are paid bonuses to spy on their fellow employees.  This is easily done as they observe the target daily in the workplace.  These spies usually go through a corporate approved training program that is done two or three days at a time so as not to arouse suspicion by their absence.  Some spies are trained in a week or two while they are supposedly "on vacation".  Their training becomes obvious as on their return to work, their demeanor and behavior will change to become more hostile to targeted individuals.  Their work assignment may change as well, so as to facilitate their new role as spy.
 

Break time - deceptively casual conversation:

Casual conversation at break time is a good way to find out about an individual's political affiliations and how they vote.  People like to talk about themselves and may even reveal some of their medical problems.  That information is then relayed to the employer, who can decide if they want this individual in their organization or not.  This technique has become more popular as corporate power wielders seek to rid the world of those who would question their actions.  The rule is:  "Do not nurture the enemy."  Therefore this method of screening is always used on temporary employees before they 
are hired permanently.
 

Spies that never sleep:

The entire building of any large corporation is bugged with cameras and microphones.  Sensitive areas, such as rest rooms and break rooms require that the apparatus be installed during holidays while most employees are not there to observe what is being done.  Telephones are easiest to bug, and much can be learned about an employee just by listening to their phone conversations.  Of course, all e-mail is captured and sifted through.  There have been cases where employees were fired for misappropriation  of resources if too much e-mail traffic is evident.  Unauthorized long distance calls should never be made on company phones and is also clear grounds for dismissal. 
 
 

Assume even the walls have ears:

Do not say or do anything that you do not want management to see or hear.  Regardless of where you are your conversation is probably being recorded.  Right or wrong, there is no privacy at work and the courts have ruled that employees do not even have the expectation of privacy at work.  Even cameras can be hidden in a clock, behind a mirror, inside furniture, in the hollow of a pillar, etc.  The courts have consistently ruled that businesses have the right to install whatever surveillance equipment they deem necessary to protect their property.   Be advised the cameras can be used to target you.  For example:  You sit at your desk with your head down, intensely working most of the time until you need to sit back and stretch to avoid a creak in your neck.  This is the only time your supervisor walks by your desk.  This happens day after day, no matter when you decide to stretch.  Obviously, the decision has already been made that you will not be a permanent employee, but it is best not to leave until you get another job.  Hang in there.
 

Carefully observe your co-workers:

Be assured there are spies among your fellow employees.  Watch carefully their actions and listen to their questions and comments.  They appear to engage in mindless conversation, then they will ask a question about your politics, religious beliefs, plans for the weekend, etc.  This will go on every day for weeks as they slowly build a profile on you.  This information will be used by management to decide if you will be hired permanently.  This is also a good method to identify "subversives" and "radicals".  These folks will be put on a list to be harassed.  Pay attention to when the questions are asked.  Did the spy deliberately wait until you were relaxed before asking the question?  Remember all spies and harassers (perps) go to the same school and learn the same methods.  Keep in mind that some of the spies are also agent provocateurs.  Their job is to make your work day miserable.  They often head up a clique or gang to sabotage your work while you are on break.  The real tip off to identifying the sleaze bags is that no matter how badly they disrupt the workforce, management never seems to notice and your complaints are ignored or you are found to be at fault. 
 

Learn to Present the "Right" Image:

Money is essential to life in our society.  No money = no home = no life.  Therefore, you are fighting for your life.  You have a right to defend yourself in this government sanctioned war against the working class.  Understand that this war is fought with information and the fat cats are holding all the cards.  They have all the cameras, microphones, spies, money to pass laws in their favor.  You have a brain and that is all.  Never forget that this is an information war!  Do not give out any information that can be used against you.  Realize that if you clam up completely, nothing will be gained.  You must appear to be open, candid even.  Bluntly speaking:  Learn to lie!  Have your story thought out ahead of time.  Build your own profile.  The preferred corporate employee profile is:  A Management oriented anti drug, pro life Republican, ROTC or ex military, Protestant, hates socialized medicine, Gays, Feminists, Liberals, Communists, eco-freaks, and the Homeless, all the while, decrying the millions of dollars spent on programs for the poor and minorities. Never admit you are a Democrat or Feminist. The word Democrat has been re-defined as socialist and talk radio has demonized the word Feminist until most of the public has no clue as to the real definition of the word.  Voters ballots are still secrete so how you vote is your business.  Remember:  Pro management conservatives are usually the last to be down sized.

However, if climbing the corporate ladder does not appeal to you, there are other options.
 
 

 As working Americans, we can choose not to buy from sweatshops.  And there are other options
as described below:

Reprinted in part from: www.thenation.com

Going Down the Road--Dressed for Success

  by Jim Hightower

    (snip)....
   It's not that Americans are unable to make quality stuff, but the ugly fact is that
  corporations have abandoned US workers and communities in hot pursuit of
  ever-fatter profits, rushing off to the lowest-wage hellholes they can find.
   (snip)...
   The corporations
  gleefully pocket the difference in labor costs--and claim that this is the "magic"
  of the new global market at work. It is certainly magic for them!  (snip)....

SweatX Is Chic 

   (snip)......
  The good news is that people themselves--especially children and
  young people--see sweatshops as a moral abomination, putting
  them (yet again) well ahead of officialdom. Major groups like
  United Students Against Sweatshops, the National Labor
  Committee, Global Exchange and the garment union UNITE
  have been aggressively exposing, agitating and organizing against
  sweatshop labor. As this political organizing expands, an
  important assault on sweatshops has come from the one place the
  multibillion-dollar industry least expects: The marketplace itself. 

  SweatX is a new brand of garment in every sense of the word.
  The Hot Fudge Social Venture Fund, set up by Ben Cohen, the
  puckish entrepreneur and social activist of Ben & Jerry's ice
  cream fame, has invested $1 million to date in a brand-new
  garment business in Los Angeles. The business, called teamX, is
  based on a thoroughly radical principle: "Garment workers don't
  have to be exploited in order to operate a financially successful
  apparel factory." Imagine. 
 

  (snip).....
  TeamX is organized

  as a worker-owned co-op that (1) is a union shop organized by
  UNITE; (2) pays a living wage starting at $8.50 an hour; (3)
  provides good healthcare, a pension and a share of profits
  through co-op ownership; (4) practices the "solidarity ratio," in
  which no executive is paid more than eight times what the
  lowest-paid worker gets; and (5) intends to make a profit, grow
  and spread its progressive seed. 

  This is no touchie-feelie, froufrou social exercise but a
  bottom-line business initiative to show that doing well can also
  mean doing good. Pierre Ferrari's twenty-five years in the
  corporate world ranges from being VP of Coca-Cola to being
  director of Ben & Jerry's...to now being CEO of teamX. These
  entrepreneurial folks believed that there had to be a better way
  than sweatshops. Ferrari immersed himself in the economics of
  garment production. His most shocking (and enlightening)
  discovery was that a sweatshop worker in the United States gets
  about 25 cents to make a T-shirt that retails for as much as 18
  bucks. Let's say that a worker grosses about $9,000 a year.
  Poverty. What if you doubled the wage--to 50 cents per shirt?
  The increase would not affect the buyer, but that worker would
  suddenly be getting $18,000 a year. Not exactly a fortune, but a
  livable wage. "Come on," says Ferrari, "they're exploiting people
  for a lousy 25 cents?" 
 

  Building the Brand 

   To build the brand identity, teamX is initially targeting the activist
  community--campuses, unions, churches, local governments, nonprofits, etc.
  (The T-shirts for my Rolling Thunder Downhome Democracy Tour proudly
  bear the SweatX label.) This "market of conscience" alone has a huge and
  virtually untapped potential--as Ferrari discovered, for example, unions buy a
  lot of T-shirts for rallies, organizing drives and such. After Oprah recently
  featured teamX on her show, the phones began ringing off the hook with
  orders, and Ferrari now expects this upstart startup to break even by July--an
  investment miracle by anyone's standards. 
 

  By tapping this growing market of conscience, SweatX not only
  can be successful but will put the lie to the garment industry's
  cynical assertion that low wages are an inevitable component of
  globalization. We can help by talking to our local organizations,
  clothing store managers, school board members and others,
  introducing them to the SweatX possibility (www.sweatx.net),
  showing with our dollars that commerce and conscience can
  cohabitate. 

Evidence is ncreasing that there is a strong incentive to have 
many people locked up as a source of cheap labor.

Prisons are increasingly private, for-profit institutions, owned
by large companies.

Well, the old-fashioned idea of prisoners making licence plates
has been quietly morphing into prisoners making every product
we buy these days.  For about 25 cents an hour, so say the
patriot broadcasters and their guests.  A number of familiar 
product lines have been named.

Apparently what happened with the rush to relocate plants in
Mexico was that Mexican workers began to demand wages
more like their U.S. counterparts.  Aaand, it's kinda messy and
disruptive to move plants south of the border.

So - let's have PRISONERS make the goods.  Prisoners are
paid even less than Mexican workers and are closer to market.

Sounds like a plan.  A plan that might well appeal to CEOs of 
companies who coincidentally just happen to own a chain of 
prisons.

Of course, with, for example, huge numbers of auto workers
being turfed out of their jobs at the moment, even this plan 
may not stave off eventual banana republic status for the
United States.  If you are one of the ultra-wealthy, that sounds
like even a better plan.

A plan for a race to the bottom.  We're already there.