Hearing the cries of the Working Wounded

DURING the election campaign, Fine Gael took pleasure in saying that “we are approaching full employment, where there is a job for everyone who wants one”.

Which is nice.

Or not, as the case may be. There have been times when this would have been unambiguously good news, 1986 being one of those times. That was the year of Self-Aid, a marathon gig in the RDS, a telethon with the aim of doing something about the unemployment figures of roughly 250,000. Which didn’t include all the thousands who had simply left the country.

One recalls “Ronald McDonald” in the RTE studios announcing that there were jobs available in his establishment, implying that the lives of a few young people at least were about to be greatly improved.

This was how employment and unemployment felt at the time — even the offer of a job in McDonald’s, where they tended to be always hiring anyway, seemed to promise some kind of salvation. It was enough to get you on television.

Employment represented wondrous things such as security, mobility, peace of mind. Unemployment meant the absence of these things, it meant a life of anxiety and boredom and powerlessness and of course poverty. The concept of employment generated feelings which were essentially the opposite to those suggested by unemployment.

And then, in more recent times, this started to change.

When people talk about feelings of anxiety and insecurity and powerlessness in their lives, they are quite likely to be talking about their job. They might be talking about some short-term contract of the type handed down by an executive class loving the idea that the most important aspect of the working relationship is to determine exactly when to get rid of people.

Or it might be the fact that between going to work and coming from it, and living where they must live, they are nearly as poor as they would be if they had no job at all — without any of the advantages of unemployment such as being able to relax and enjoy Dr Phil.

We tend to hear of this mostly during election campaigns, because otherwise the commentary on the mood of the people in this regard is provided by people on six-figure salaries, saying things in radio studios like,

“we are approaching full employment, where there is a job for everyone who wants one”.

Our old friend, the “disconnect”, is never more obvious than in this selfsatisfied pose — indeed even after an election in which they really should be starting to understand that having a job is not necessarily making people happy, and may indeed be making them very unhappy, there is incomprehension on the part of these deeply comfortable folk.

Yet anyone who is putting himself forward as a thinking person, should be acutely aware of this phenomenon of the Working Wounded. They are everywhere, and they did not appear by accident, or because the wind just blew the wrong way.

It is self-evident in the corporate culture which has largely triumphed in this century, that employees are ideally kept in a state of permanent insecurity — and if you can get away with pretending that they’re not employees at all, so much the better.

At some point in ancient history, efforts were made to encourage a different kind of culture, the famous Quaker capitalists felt that it was better for all parties — all “stakeholders”, if you like — if their employees felt valued and secure. And interestingly, firms with this philosophy — firms such as Cadbury’s — haven’t done too badly over time, all things considered.

Now in our relentless retreat into more primitive practices, a corporation will feel no such sense of obligation, no such inclination at all — indeed they will go to the gates of legal hell to try to prove that their employees don’t really work for them at all, inspired as they are by this ingenious concept of bogus self-employment.

Or a worker might just be a “hire” — yes, at some point “hire” became a noun — so that a new boss, taking over from the old boss, can say things like, “I’m letting you go, because you weren’t my hire.”

Unions are dying, their bosses are almost unrecognisable from any other breed of fat cat.

And while the individual employee feels hopelessly isolated, the bonds which unite the executive class in solidarity are strong.

Moreover, it has not escaped the attention of many of the Working Wounded that those in the strata above them are apparently immune from this culture of impermanence and insecurity, regardless of talent — indeed in a great many such cases the only talent which is apparent is the ability to get away with it.

Yes, I think that lowly “hires” can accept that if they are being ruled by people of genius, a certain amount of latitude is allowed, that a job for life isn’t out of the question in such exceptional cases.

They don’t automatically resent their superiors, they’d just like to be able to pay the rent like their forefathers did, if they had a job — like whoever was lucky enough to get that job in McDonald’s back in 1986.

‘When people talk about insecurity, they are likely to be talking about their job’