Rick Raw: Orwellian Corporations Turn Employees into Compliant Automatons

By Rick Grant rickgrant01@comcast.net www.rickatnight.com

To cut expenses, Orwellian corporations strip employees of their basic rights, reducing them to compliant automatons. Workers are obliged to get urine tested for nicotine and drugs. They are made to lose weight; and generally oppressed so the company can save money on health insurance. So called "health maintenance initiatives" are forced on employees. Presently, company co-pays have steadily gone down from 48% in1960 to 15% or zero by 2007. Unions are fighting this trend, but even the most powerful union, the Teamsters, is having to make concessions to avoid strikes. Soon, at this rate, corporations will not offer any healthcare benefits to new hires.

More significantly, corporations downsize older workers (as early as in their 40s) and keep younger employees, who make less money, thus reducing the payroll significantly. Consequently, the younger workers have to work much harder to make up for the loss of the older employees. When one considers that the CEOs of most corporations are bleeding the companies’ assets by earning obscene amounts of money and stock options, making employees miserable to save paltry sums of money makes no sense.

Big name companies such as Verison Wireless, Microsoft, and Dow Chemical make new employees sign health pledges not to smoke or take drugs and agree to urine testing. Microsoft does award bonuses to workers who meet their healthcare standards, but others make it a condition of employment. These so called healthcare standards are devious ways for the corporate bosses to control their employees lives to save money and to get more production from each and every automaton or slave. You must march to the beat of the company’s drum, or you’re out.

In our society at large, corporations and our government (which are closely aligned) are chipping away at our freedoms of speech, assembly, and our vices. Prohibition proved that the government can’t dictate society’s behavior. Likewise, corporations can’t dictate their workers’ health or habits. People will drink, hire prostitutes, smoke, and use drugs, regardless of any outside restrictions. It’s human nature. My solution: Make all vices legal and subject to taxation. And we the people should rebel against corporate tyranny by being fiercely independent. Don’t work for these evil doers.

From 1965 to 1977, I worked for the corporate giant United Technologies as a chemical engineer. As long as I did my job well, no one cared what I did outside work. I had long hair and played music on weekends. And, there were areas where I could smoke. However, it was a draconian environment of crawling up the corporate ladder by kissing ass and stepping on colleagues, which is why I got out. I was miserable.

Now, corporations want to own their employees’ souls. In the beginning of the labor movement, unions were formed at great risk to fight corporate oppression of workers. Since then, many of the gains that the unions made have slowly been eroded. Yet, incredibly, there is no en mass outrage–just dogged compliance.

Actress, Annabelle Gurwitch turned her outrage at being fired for smoking from a Woody Allen play into a popular documentary Fired, which kicked off her filmmaking career.
Rise up and be independent. Do what you want and let the Orwellian corporations build robots to do their bidding.