Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Corporate Stockholm Syndrome

belboid said:
aah, so now odd comments from the odd person are supposedly 'typical' of everyone.
Click to expand...

When they form the vast majority of comments I've heard and are reflective of the general mindset, yes they are. They form a whole that's greater than the sum of it's parts.

I know that every time a new attack on our conditions is launched, I'll have to argue with most people who will be in full support of whatever "intitiative" it is this time - nomatter how patently harmfull said "initiative" is to their own interests.
 
poster342002 said:
You may not (or choose not) to believe it - but the reality is there is NO solidarity in the vast majority of workplaces. In it's place is bitchiness, machievelliean scheming that wouldn't be out of place in a medieval king's court, backstabbing, sycophantic endorsement of whatever the senior management "politburo" decrees - nomatter how patently unjust or absurd - and all the things descibed as Corporate Stockholm Syndrome. When someone's being victimised most people will look the other way and not want to know. "I just want a quiet life" goes the excuse.
Click to expand...

On what are you basing that assumption? Your own vast experience of many, many workplaces?
 
poster342002 said:
Why? It's facing up to reality far more than a load of vacuous "brillient! massive! solid" self-delusional crap ever could.
Click to expand...

Because it reads as a stream of consciousness, with poor grammar and peppered with spelling mistakes, which makes it seem ill thought out and ill considered. It isn't backed up by any evidence, or even personal experience. It's like a schoolchild essay in the science fiction category, or something! :eek:

I am sure there are better sources you could have quoted to back this up, or to open the debate on whether such a syndrome exists? If not, one might wonder why! :eek:
 
Guineveretoo said:
On what are you basing that assumption? Your own vast experience of many, many workplaces?
Click to expand...

Actually, it is a possibility - most folk could not stick with the moaning arse for a 'colleague' for too long - the suicide rate in the unfortunate offices starts going up into double figures in a week!! - hence lots of workplaces

Could you imagine it - walking past office buildings as poor sods fling them selves out of the windows - thud - ...."see posterXXX has started at the new job then"...

its the children I feel sorry for *crocodile tear*
 
Das Uberdog said:
More than that - I'm not talking about having historical meetings on the dots and crosses of lefty history - I'm talking about having contemporary meetings on things that are happening right now - perhaps on the Egyptian strike movement, upcoming films, art, books, telly-programs, etcetera...
Click to expand...

Why would having a meeting on art, outside of work, help us confront problems in the workplace?
 
belboid said:
no, me neither. And I have worked in some shitty places, where people have accepted (reluctantly, and pissed-offedly, never ever happily as some imply) pay cuts as an alternative to job cuts. Such things may happen in smaller workplaces, the ones where TU organisation is very weak and very hard, but, thankfully, most people don't work in such places.
Click to expand...

Most people do work in offices where TU organisation is weak. Only about 28% of the workforce in the UK are unionised (16% in the private sector). Only a third of private sector workplace have any union presensce at all. Compare this to public sector unionism (58%).

As I have said time and again, you find the left in these public sector workplaces so they tend to underestimate how difficult and different it is to get workers unionised in the private sector.

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39006.pdf

[this is a decent thread, and although I sympathise with a lot of what poster says, he seems to ignore comments both pro and anti his position, and just slags off the left instead of ignoring them and working out ways to improve his workplace].
 
mk12 said:
Why would having a meeting on art, outside of work, help us confront problems in the workplace?
Click to expand...

It wouldn't, directly. But building up a proper culture (in which the more fundamental ideals of Unionism can be discussed, in a way it's often hard to when referring to specific workplace disputes. The best Unionists are ones who actually believe in the whole shebang - infact, they're actually necessary. Restricting our activity to the direct and the practical means that whole other realms of developing people's general consciousness is ignored.

Obv some cultural meeting ain't gonna solve direct problems in itself - but (if chosen carefully and selectively) they can do wonders for educating people's outlook and their perceptions of what can be achieved.
 
You don't even think people need more of a world-view of their actions (and how they might find a place in the politics of the rest of the world) than is offered by the insular realm of specific industry/workplace related disputes?
 
Not when we haven't even got anywhere, no. What's the point in talking about struggles in a country thousands of miles away when we haven't even managed to get people in a union in our own workplace?
 
poster342002 said:
Just googled this and found this interesting site

http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?CorporateStockholmSyndrome

Sound like anywhere you've worked? Pretty much most of the UK's workplaces seem like this and confirms my thoughts about workplaces where - nomatter how atrocioulsy the workforce is treated - people sycophantically defend and support the attacks on their own working conditions.
Click to expand...


I think this kind of thing does happen but in a very few workplaces. It is also not a permanent state of affairs.
I have worked in some shitty workplaces with similar atmospheres but I found that management had difficulties sustaining that kind of environment. These kind of workplaces generally have a low turnover of staff so for the employer CSS is easily managed.

Every workplace has issues that unite the workforce, however minor. In a CSS workplace, if the employee doesnt like it he fucks off to another job. Unless you are really fucked up I cant see any normal sane person putting up with it.
At a certain stage people naturally rebel in one way or another, sometimes collectively.Or they get another job.

Poster342002, your very limited experience has seriously coloured your attitude to workers everywhere. It is not like this in all workplaces, just the ones you work in. Maybe you are attracted to this kind of environment.
 
mk12 said:
[this is a decent thread, and although I sympathise with a lot of what poster says, he seems to ignore comments both pro and anti his position, and just slags off the left instead of ignoring them and working out ways to improve his workplace].
Click to expand...

And given that is all he has done for months and months and months....
 
These workers here were once considered to be placid workers taking the shit put up them by the employer.

Ideal CSS material.

They hadnt taken industrial action for nearly 80 odd years yet they struck over pensions for future workers, a very noble unselfish position. Workplaces can change.
 
mk12 said:
Not when we haven't even got anywhere, no. What's the point in talking about struggles in a country thousands of miles away when we haven't even managed to get people in a union in our own workplace?
Click to expand...

so until everyone in this country is in a uynion, we should ignore other countries' struggles? fortunately, most people aren't as insular and narrow minded as you
 
I'm talking from the perspective of someone (like myself or poster) who is in a workplace with no union presence, and in an evironment similar to the one described in the original post. I don't think talking about art, left history or struggles in countries thousands of miles away helps improve the situation in these places.
 
how do you klnow? have you tried?

they are probably not the most vital issues, but then again, maybe they are to your colleagues, or maybe they thibnk they are somethng that they cabn do something about (something a bit liberal maybe, but you arent actually trying to set up a revolutionary workers union are you). who knows. the point is, try anything, all sorts of things can and do work sometimes.

but you wont, cos you, like failure342002 have no real interest in doing so.
 
btw - would it make any difference if they were countries only 'tens of miles away' or 'hundreds'? why sdo you think everyone is as small minded and insular as you?
 
belboid said:
how do you klnow? have you tried?

they are probably not the most vital issues, but then again, maybe they are to your colleagues, or maybe they thibnk they are somethng that they cabn do something about (something a bit liberal maybe, but you arent actually trying to set up a revolutionary workers union are you). who knows. the point is, try anything, all sorts of things can and do work sometimes.

but you wont, cos you, like failure342002 have no real interest in doing so.
Click to expand...

What is the aim of these types of meetings though? To educate? To inspire people to do something? I just don't see the purpose of them. Sitting around and talking about, for example, current events in Iraq is all well and good. But how will that change anything internally in my office? How will it improve our pay for example?
 
Slowly.

If there were a single obvious incident/policy/event/whatever that would suddenly draw the workforce together to challenge too low pay, then, no, you obviously wouldn't need any such way of organising. But, assuming that that isn't happening, which it isn't from everything you and failure have said about your workplaces, then you need an alternative way in.

The point is to bring people together on issues that interest and arouse them, because that is what you ned to start getting any kind of organistion together.
 
Christ, now we have the solution to Corporate Stokholm Syndrome: talk about Iraq.

Yeah - can see that working. :rolleyes:

The most it'll do is bring forth choruses of "yes, but we had to get rid of Saddam somehow" - which is exaclty what I've heard whenever the subject has been raised. Shortly followed by: "anyway, haven't you got any work to do?"
 
Das Uberdog said:
You really fucking hate people, don't you?
Click to expand...

Not all of them - but, so far as I can tell, a good 70% of people seem to be utterly unscrupulous, venal, integrity-devoid, "me! me! me!", arseholes who'll happily fuck somemone over if they think it'll get them a bit of status. Failing that, the sheer "fun" of doing it will suffice as motivation enough.

The spirit of the 80s is alive and well, having been given a fresh lease of life and new "recruits" this decade.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ElizabethofYork
Met Police to Stop Non-Crime Hate Investigations
2 3
Replies
84
Views
1K
A380
A380
hash tag
customer service is dead
2
Replies
39
Views
904
mentalchik
mentalchik
O
Fabian Society - Conspiracy or Truth?
3 4 5 6 7
Replies
191
Views
3K
Aladdin
Aladdin
A380
International White Power Concert Great Yarmouth 5 6 September 2025
Replies
27
Views
1K
Karl Masks
K
weltweit
Royal Mail scraps 2nd class mail on Saturdays
2
Replies
40
Views
948
Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Back
Top Bottom