“Furthermore, they’ll play hardball with you,” Rachel said. “They’ll threaten your loved ones, mess up your financial records, do anything to get you to toe the line.”
“But that’s harassment!” Michelle protested.
“And they’re very good at it,” Alan said. He regarded her calmly. “Look at it this way. You’re strong-willed, very independent, can think for yourself. Suppose you were a single mother and left your child at a combined school/day care center during the day while you worked. The daycare in question closes at six and you’re always able to get your child by five-thirty. Ninety percent of all employers realize their employees have children and must make arrangements for child care, plus most employers operate from eight to five anyway. Now suppose you’re suddenly told that your workload or your projects are so important that you have to stay at the office until your tasks are done for the day, even if it means missing the deadline for picking your child up. You know you can’t do that: the daycare center will dock you five dollars for every minute you’re late. And you don’t want to do that anyway; your child will grow worried that you haven’t picked him or her up, they’ll get very upset. So you do what any parent will do who puts their child first, and you leave when you usually leave. Maybe you leave a little late, but you still make sure you have enough time to get your child. Only your employer doesn’t like this. They start guilt-tripping you, questioning your loyalty to your job and your profession. You stand your ground. Later that day, they tell you some very personal things about your child, things only you can know. This is delivered as a veiled threat, that if you don’t toe the line at work, your child will be hurt or killed.”
“That’s when it would stop,” Michelle said, the thought of this scenario chilling her blood. “I’d tell them to fuck off and walk out of there.”
“That’s what you would do,” Alan said. “But there are people in different situations that wouldn’t do that at first. Maybe they’d be under financial pressure, scared to do anything. Some might try to fight back, but they’d be dealt with severely.”
“You make these people sound like the mob,” Michelle said.
“That’s because they behave that way,” Alan said. “I’m not saying they are the mob, but they employ those same methods.”
“But why would they do this? Companies that would treat their employees that way are only going to lose them and—”
“They treat their employees that way because they can,” Rachel said. She took a drag on her cigarette, her features stern. “That’s what we’re trying to get through to you. They can do this because they’ve been doing it time and time again. They don’t give a shit about the people who work for them. Their entire goal, their mission, is to make as much money as possible. When they first started such strong-arm tactics, there were people just like you that filed grievances, got lawyers and sued them, the whole nine yards. The courts always sided with the company, especially if it was a company with Corporate Financial on their side.”
“You mentioned earlier that you admit that working conditions in this country are growing worse,” Alan said. He glanced casually out at the parking lot as he spoke. “Longer hours, companies having less loyalty to their employees, drastic reduction of benefits. It’s been happening very gradually since 1980. And it’s been happening gradually to slowly acclimate the American Worker to this state. Prior to 1980, most employees in office jobs worked seven and a half hours and enjoyed a forty-five minute lunch break—a lunch break that was paid for, I might add. Now what’s the norm? Eight hour workdays minimum, an hour for lunch unpaid. Most people are putting in nine, ten, and twelve hour workdays, if not more. These longer workdays have become more common, and it’s been happening gradually. People in Germany and France work fewer hours than us and they’re more efficient.”
“And companies there have long promoted shorter working hours and more vacation days,” Rachel said. “They realize that a healthy, happy employee is a more productive employee.”
“They’re less apt to call in sick, there’s less turn-over, the burnout rate is much lower, and people do tend to be more productive when they’re not so stressed out,” Alan stated.
“That’s all changing over there, too,” Rachel said. She took a final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Corporate Financial has become global during the last ten years. They’re starting to change the way business is being run all over the world.”
“And they’re doing this simply because they want to be the dominant Corporate force in the world,” Michelle said, musing over everything Alan and Rachel had been telling her.
“You see how this is all taking place now, don’t you?” Alan asked. “How they’ve influenced our work structure, our government?”
“I guess,” Michelle said; she was still having a hard time believing it but, crazy as it sounded, it was all adding up.
“If it keeps up, pretty soon independent business will cease to exist,” Alan said. “Corporate Financial will keep swallowing company after company. Their influence will work its way into everybody who works for the companies they do business with. People who work for them will become slaves in the literal sense—they will only exist for the company they work for.”
“And the bigger they get, the stronger they’ll get,” Michelle said, running the figures and scenarios in her head and suddenly not liking it. She was connecting the dots now—the FCCs gradual relaxation of the rules in regulating competition among competitors, allowing rival companies to swallow the competition in buyouts, the drive to eliminate benefits in order to drive down costs, sending jobs overseas to drive down costs; and the result was those who pulled the strings getting richer and richer at the expense of the workers who poured their livelihood into their chosen trade.
“You see now,” Rachel said. She was looking at Michelle in a new light and Michelle realized the younger woman could tell she and Alan had gotten through to her.
“Yes, I do,” Michelle said, the implications so clear and terrifying now. “The bigger they get, the more power they’ll yield over everybody, especially thanks to all the deregulation. In fact, they probably already have control of the government.”
“Not completely, but it’s getting there,” Alan murmured.
“What happens if they succeed?” Michelle asked.
“At the rate things are going,” Alan said seriously, his features grave, tired. “We could see the global enslavement of the human race.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SUNDAY WAS A whirlwind.
She went to sleep finally at 4:30 a.m., physically exhausted but mentally wired, still fretting over everything she’d learned. She tossed and turned for an hour and finally arose at 5:30 to take a sedative—she always traveled with them because she always slept badly when she was away from home on a business trip, and she dropped off like a stone fifteen minutes later. She finally arose at twelve-thirty p.m. to the ring-tone of her cellular.