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Saturday, March 12, 2005
Fascist Dictatorship is Here Already--On the Job
by Dave Lindorff

There is a delicious irony in the rapid fall from
grace and power of Harry Stonecipher, CEO at
scandal-plagued Boeing Corp., who was fired by the
board of directors after his affair with a junior
executive was exposed.

What brought the company's chief executive low was the
company's invasive email monitoring program, which
allowed security personnel to keep tabs on every
employee's email messages. Of course, that monitoring
was supposed only to nail low-level workers, but
someone got hold of some love notes being exchanged
between Stonechipher and his paramour, Debra Peabody,
a manager of office operations, and spilled the beans.


Apparently such intra-office liaisons are considered
taboo under the company's official "Code of Conduct,"
and are considered "embarrassing" to the corporation.
This was apparently viewed as a much more serious
transgression (he was gone in 10 days!), than the
overseeing of a massive government contract fraud by
Stonecipher's predecessor, Boeing CEO Phil Condit, who
hung on for months of truly embarrassing investigation
and bad press until finally being forced out in 2003.
(One must assume that the company's vaunted Code
doesn't say much about defrauding the taxpayer.)

What this latest little incident highlights is the
degree to which all American workers have come under
the jackboot of a fascist-like corporate culture that
wants absolute control over what we say, do and think
on, and even off, the job.

The very notion that a relationship between two people
who work at the same institution could be
"embarrassing" and grounds for dismissal is an
outrage. The idea that their harmless private
communications on the company's email system would be
monitored and then made public is equally outrageous.

And let's face it, this is the environment in which at
least 25 percent of American workers reportedly now
labor (a percentage that is rising every year). Some
17 percent of American companies report that they
dismissed workers last year for "improper" use of the
company's internet and email system. Most of these
victims were caught by automated spy systems installed
to monitor employee email. Even universities are now
monitoring employee email--including the mail of
professors who are supposed to have academic freedom.

Phones too, are subject to monitoring.

We grow up hearing about the glories of America's Bill
of Rights and especially of the First Amendment
guarantee of freedom of speech and association, but
the ugly truth is that those freedoms only apply to
that narrow sliver of waking time when we are at home
or commuting to or from work. During the most
important part of the average person's day--those
eight or nine hours when she or he is at work--there
is no such freedom at all. What you say, wear, or
maybe even think, and whom you choose to hang with,
can mean the end of job or career. On most jobs, you
have to wear certain things and at some even say
certain things (like a company cheer!) on pain of
losing your job.

And it gets worse. A new trend in which companies are
telling employees that if they smoke, even at home,
they can be terminated, heralds a brave new world
where corporations will begin setting all kinds of
behavioral rules for employees to follow off the job
if they want to keep it. How far off are we from a
time when going to a demonstration on one's free time
can be grounds for firing?

Wait a minute, the San Francisco Chronicle did just
that last year to one of its columnists. We're there
already!

My question is, why aren't we freedom-loving Americans
raising holy hell about this trampling of our rights?
Where's the outrage at our being treated like the
citizens of China, Saudi Arabia or Burma on the job?

Forget Jesus. What would Thomas Jefferson say about
the new corporate rules of behavior and the new
monitoring of workers' private communications and
private lives?


Source:
http://thiscantbehappening.net/2005.03.01_arch.html#1110644131101