Would You Like A Heaping Helping Of Hypocrisy With That?
a worker by another name, is still a worker
One of the many grating American hypocrisies is the deliberately twisted manipulation of language used to describe workers.
As corporate America does its best to tamp down labor actions as fed-up workers are telling their chintzy bosses to take their high-stress, low-wage, no-respect jobs and give ‘em a shove, labor unions are being given a much-needed look by workers. From Frito Lay to John Deere and Amazon to Starbucks, workers are serving up a much needed dose of reality to Wall Street: Time to stop ripping us off.
Grotesque corporate greed and hypocrisy has become the embedded, highly polished titanium cornerstone of the American workplace. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently noted that with an average individual CEO compensation package of $24.2 million per year, the typical CEO-to-worker compensation gap in 2020 was 351-to-1.
In 2019, it was 307-to-1.
In 1968, it was 61-to-1.
In fact, from 1979 to 2020, average CEO pay grew by 1,322%, outstripping the heady stock market growth of 817%
“In contrast,” the EPI notes, “compensation for the typical worker grew by just 18% from 1978 to 2020.”
The result is soaring rates of poverty with many parents having to work two or even three jobs just to make crushing rents and the ever increasing cost of groceries and gas. The result is half of all American workers would have
a difficult time meeting a $400 emergency expense, like keeping the car they depend upon to get to work running. One-in-five -- 20% -- have no way of meeting such an emergency expense. Given the increasingly grim reality of the workplace, one of the many grating American hypocrisies is the deliberately twisted manipulation of language used to describe workers. In today’s weasley corporatespeak, “workers” have become “associates”. “Employees” are now proclaimed “team members”.
And most grating of all, we are now told “counter clerks” are “partners”. Really?
If one is truly a “team member” or “partner” he or she will share in the victory and the profit. With every shift crew deciding to walk out of a McDonalds, or “fulfillment center” forklift driver who blows off showing up for her late shift, the cold, hard cynicism of such abusive language becomes more and more obvious.
Words matter
As any advertising executive can tell you: Language matters. That’s why they get paid so well. Individual words matter and do massage public perception of reality hither and yon. It is no accident that terms used to describe workers in all the cheery Walmart and Target advertising we endure have a more upbeat, cozy interpretation at the very time worker compensation and benefits -- if any -- wither away, brutally limiting the opportunities of workers and their families to the cushy benefit of the CEO class.
With all the awakening rage in the workplace it is time for the proud term “Worker” to be reclaimed. And time also for another important word -- “Unite.”