There is great saying “Love your work, but not the company”. However, it takes so much of time for most of us to understand the philosophy behind this great saying. One who comes from a village rooted with Buddhist value system usually takes longer time to understand the reality behind the above saying.
By the time he understands the reality it is usually too late because good part of their youth is already exploited by private owned or multi national companies.
The capitalist system
The post colonial political leadership has been dominated by comprador families in Colombo. Although Western colonial masters officially left our country, they had established the capitalist system. The capitalist system continues exploiting local labor in various industries ranging from white color IT industry to blue collar Garment industry. The so called open economy paved the way to pump out remaining money by selling excessive western junks ranging from Coca Cola spirit to Lux soap.
The village life
Village is a place where social bonds are tight. People respect deep rooted values conditioned by Sinhala Buddhist culture. They have ample time to care and help each other. Most of the time, the neighborhood in village consist of close relatives. Therefore, they hardly ever feel social insecurity in their life.
The temptation
The capitalist system demands people for their multi-national companies to operate. Their needs range from physical labor to supervisors and more privileged management posts. They use politico-economic domination to attract people for their system. Colonial educational system provides most of the management workers while the villages are targeted for cheap labor.
On one hand they have created a miserable reflection on the life of the village and on other hand creating a rosy cooperate image on their multi-national companies targeting relatively ignorant youth into their vicious.
The vicious cycle
A youth who comes from traditional village family background expect the same friendly and co-operative culture in the company. Companies usually promise the same and set various targets to keep the person motivated. He has thousands of dreams for the future. Ambitious employee is gold for the company. He will do anything and everything to fulfill his ambitions. Trap in to housing or vehicle loan will further tighten him into the vicious system. Now, he will be willing to give more than hundred percent to the company for his mere servival in his fantasy world! Late hours and long weekends will be taken for granted.
The reality - Company is not a human
The fact is that “Company is not a human”. A limited liability company is formed for the sole purpose of generating profits. There are no owners as such in a listed company. There are only share holders who freely buy and sell their shares eying for better profits for their investment. The same person who invested in your company this year may sell all his shares in your company and invest those in a competing company next year. He may be investing in a completely different area from your field. Though workers are victims of specialization, money is freely movable in market economy!
The investors’ interest on a company is short term and therefore company is always on a survival mode. Savings is not in the vocabulary of capitalist company. If the company has made huge profit last year the bulk is already shared among the share holders and new target is set for the next year. In the same time the same investors who benefitted the profit last year may attracted to some other venture this year.
Face the reality
You may have been promised a rosy way up by your top management to keep you motivated. But in reality, every company is in a consistent struggle of surviving in every year by year. The capitalist system is molded in such formula. You are not working for a human but for a mechanism meant for profit making. Therefore, if you blindly love your job you are just another fool.
The capitalist system has different branches name Human Resource Management to keep the spirit up in the company. Every one from top to bottom is asked to fool the next level. However the people in the top management who comes from comprador business families clearly know this reality and they are shameless to participate in this vicious system for their benifit.
But you may be an innocent victim of the vicious system at one level. You may be forced to play the dirty tricks on your sub ordinates at another level . If you are not moral conscious you may survive in the system or else you will be forced to quit soon.
Do you still love your job? The decision and subsequent consequences are with you!!
References:
- Love Your Business More Than Your Family (This is what the west moulded entrepreneurs are taught !)
Related Posts:
- The Myth about Money
- The political reading of American Idol
- Never fall into the trap of 'Flexible Hours' !
- Smart Employee in Open Economy
1 comments:
Good post. Corporates are a necessary evil in today's economy. I disagree that it is capitalism that is the bane of the village though, its bad management of the free market and the refusal of the leadership to take a more mercantilist stand on managing the economy.
If as you say, the villagers, through their innocense, are sucked into lifelong slavery, then it is their fault for not being savvy and intelligent at the outset. It is common sense not to blindly believe in any man made fantasy isn't it? Perhaps the cultural and educational values of villagers need to be relooked at, if that is the case.
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