Media such as
The Atlantic, Fortune, The Economist
or
Financial Times
have a dire prediction for 2024. In the opinion of these leading newspapers, it will be the year of the counter-reform at work and the return of the providential man (there are some women, but are mostly men), or corporate tyrant.
In the opinion of BBC labor trends expert Alex Christian, it is already happening or is going to happen a little everywhere, but especially in that catwalk of global capitalism trends that is the United States.
As Christian explains, in the years since the pandemic we have witnessed a “dramatic pulse” between bosses and employees around an issue as crucial as returning to the office.
Employees of all kinds have fought hard to preserve the margin of flexibility and quality of life that they associated with teleworking.
Some even obtained “better salaries, more dignified conditions and a higher degree of autonomy.”
More information
How to do absolutely nothing at work: between employee roguery and company incompetence
Between 2021 and the summer of 2023, they had a formidable resource, something like the nuclear button for labor relations, The Great Resignation.
That is, as Anthony Klotz, the economist who coined the expression, defined it, the massive loss of fear of abandoning their jobs if they did not find a way to make them compatible with their most intimate priorities and their life project.
If you don't play by my rules, I'm leaving.
For Christian, it became a real “workers' revolt”, but it ended up being put down, without the slightest effort, as soon as the pace of hiring slowed down.
Companies like Disney, Amazon and KPMG were pioneers, already in the first half of last year, in imposing a massive return to the fold on their employees.
In the words of Grace Lordan, associate professor of Behavioral Sciences at the London School of Economics, “bosses were already resorting to strategies such as encouraging people to return to the office with free meals and yoga sessions,” but those who took the step After simply demanding it, “substituting the carrot for the stick,” they found that their employees were no longer as willing to leave as they were a few months before.
And, as expected, with the office the usual servitudes of corporate culture have returned.
With the return to the office, the usual servitudes of corporate culture have returned.
Beatrice Nolan, a
Business Insider
reporter , believes that “bosses have regained control,” once the sword of Damocles of the Great Resignation has proven impotent in this new climate of resurgence in authoritarianism, layoffs, and the sustained rise of artificial intelligence. .
A symptom of this sudden change of direction is that a subgenre that we considered almost amortized is once again making its way in the international economic press: the success stories of unscrupulous bosses.
This is the case of Wang Chuanfu, the man who has just taken from Tesla the crown of the world's leading producer of electric cars.
President of BYD, a company based in the Chinese city of Xi'an, and partner, among others, of Warren Buffet, Wang has become, as explained by Edward White and Peter Campbell in the
Financial Times
, the fashionable man in the business schools for his visionary drive, “his emphasis on technology, cost reduction and tight control of the supply chain” and his “firm and merciless” management style.
As they describe him, the top Chinese executive would be both a scourge and a figure revered by his employees.
These suffer from their very high level of demand — “Wang doesn't believe in nonsense like work-life balance,” says labor consultant Michael Dunne in the same report — and their tendency to replace them at the first sign of weakness, as if they were “ simple robots.”
But the workers are also infected, in theory, by his Stakhanovite work ethic.
Wang has been able to compete with Elon Musk because, always according to the thesis outlined in the
Financial Times
, he belongs to the same lineage, that of bosses willing to sleep on a dirty pallet in a corner of the factory if circumstances demand it and are inclined to , consequently, to demand the same level of involvement and commitment from the people they have on their payroll.
Even those who earn the least.
The epicenter of Wang's electric sedan emporium is in an authoritarian state, the People's Republic of China.
But the leaders of the new labor counter-reform, those who advocate an unmitigated return to the logic of effort that is not negotiated, of exhausting hours, fanatical commitment and lives converted into careers until the last drop of energy has been squeezed, they continue to proliferate in all latitudes.
Some of them engage in pathological narcissistic behavior, such as those reported by Pilita Clark in her article
The Inescapable Tyranny of Bad Bosses
, published, again, in
the Financial Times
.
'Rex, a different labor inspector' is a series that would be a sure success.
Clark focuses on a couple of particularly grotesque cases, such as that of Steven Yousif, an Australian businessman prosecuted for engaging in “motivation” practices that could be considered torture.
And then he provides a striking fact: more than two-thirds of American professionals say they have at some point suffered the tyranny of a “toxic” boss and just over 31% say they are suffering from it now.
In Europe, with a less dynamic labor market but, in general terms, not as sensitive to the mythology of the great guru and exceptional leader that Silicon Valley has exported, the percentage is reduced to 13%.
Sometimes, as Clark points out, the worst bosses are the ones most obsessed with projecting an image of disruptive leadership.
This is the case, in his opinion, of Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater Association, one of the main investment funds on the planet.
Dalio not long ago fascinated business management experts with his culture of “radical transparency,” which consists of subjecting his employees to a series of mass meetings in which they are aggressively encouraged to express their ideas out loud. , without filters, and it is assumed that those who are not willing to speak assume without nuances the basic guidelines of the company, collected in an argument known as
The Principles
.
In his book
The Fund
, published in November 2023, journalist Rob Copeland explains how this demand for intense, horizontal dialogue translates into a nightmare climate, with employees suffering anxiety attacks after being questioned, pressured or subjected to public ridicule. by a “leader” who needs to exercise autocratic control of the company he directs and very often confuses frankness with cruelty.
Bernat Muniesa, professor of Political Thought at the History Faculty of the University of Barcelona, dedicated to his students a couple of phrases that have barely lost relevance in the last 30 years: “Speak freely, let's pretend that we live in a democratic society.
Then you will go out into the labor market and see to what extent that is a naive pretension.”
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