The 'Worker' in Nigeria, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Addis Ababa, South Africa suburbs of the United States, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and Europe has found his situation as 'exploited' persisting over the years, and assuming new and drastic dimensions. The situation of the working class seems to be an unending vicious circle that annually brings many back to the same spot or worse. Respect for the dignity of labour is anything but that, better coined, 'indignity of labour'!
Formal 'Socialism' collapsed and left a free path for the growth and unapologetic expansion of 'Capital' and the Neo-Liberal ideology that underlies it. Deregulation has attained an unprecedented dominance in height and status across the world. Structural Adjustment Programs have left their debilitating effets across the world. It then seems the 'promise of the free market' was a farce and what is more, governments across the world are helpless in facing the situation due to ineptitute, complicity, incapacitation and sometimes brazen irresponsibility or a combination of these.
It would appear that private corporations have a profound control over the destiny of the worker, thanks to deregulation and the absolutely free market. Thus, employers like Zenith Bank determine the terms of employment of its workers in a manner most suited to capital devoid of a human face. Moreso, the prerogative to exert the 'maximum' from its employees as well as alter the terms and conditions of employment arbitrarily seems absolute! How has this come to be? Let us examine the Zenith Bank situation before the 'Solo Storm Revolution' of June to August 2010.
Zenith Bank Plc, a Nigerian Bank which operates in a number of African countries with a branch in London, had the practice (prior to the 'Storm'), of hiring employees on its own terms and observing those terms, to reasonable extents. However, a shocking trend developed from 2008, a trend in which Zenith Bank assumed a 'Deaf and Mute' position to its employees on the contract of employment entered. This was mostly in relation to new employees, often referred to as 'Trainees'. These employees were (are) graduates, and it is usual with many corporations to hire employees as trainees for varying periods of 3 months, 6 months or a year at most. In the case of Zenith Bank, it was a 1-year traineeship period. This 'Deaf and Mute' position of Zenith Bank involved ignoring the terms of employment requiring the trainee to be 'elevated' after a year upon confirmation of employment, which itself was a rigorous task requiring a miminum performance of 'B+' from the trainee's appraisal.
In concrete terms, Zenith Bank had these employees working extensively, often undertaking tasks proper to cadres 3 to 5 steps ahead of the 'Trainee' status while earning the same fixed rate designed for the trainee. Notedly, the trainee was not entitled to benefits accruable to other confirmed/elevated employees such as bonuses and allowances. The trainee was practically a 'Glorified Domestic/Contract' staff. Now, this 'Deaf and Mute' position did not just go on for the month following the completion of the 1 year trainee status, but months and months even exceeding 13 in some instances, (in my case it was 12 months)!
Zenith Bank was 'deaf' in that it will neither listen to the contract signed nor to the 'silent grumbles' of these 'sweatshop-like' workers. I say 'sweatshop-like not for the love of mere diction aggrandisement, but because i was there and i did it. Moreover, no one dared even 'speak' beyond the branch where one worked. It can be quite appalling to note the manner in which even top officers of Zenith Bank will not question these glaring absurdities or draw the attention of management to the situation, even where they were deeply convinced of the injurious nature of the situation. This i think, is testimony to a weird culture that has taken, and is taking further root. Nevertheless, there was stern deafness.
If Zenith Bank was injurious in being deaf, it was even more resolutely so in being 'Mute'! It failed, refused and calculatedly orchestrated conscious silence on the situation of these workers. (Subsequently, i will sketch a picture of the pattern of the daily life of these trainees in the socio-economic/professional context, but not in this post). The bank simply kept silent, but from this silence and general posture, a picture of the 'dignity' and 'honour' in which Zenith Bank held these employees was gradually emerging.
To say the least, the bank valued its counting machines and marketing vehicles far above these employees. They, (we) were effectively commodified in ways beyond the conventional commodification ideal of the capitalist free market system. This was a commodification with scorn! Indeed, even when I wrote as though from a son to a father, the then Managing Director who is now the 2nd defendant in the case filed did not deem it fit to 'clarify' the employment status of trainees 2 years on the job!
What, one will ask, was responsible for this situation where a corporation would exercise so much autonomous and arbitrary control over 'people' in such a degrading manner?. What happened to the Unions, Government, and most importantly, what happened to the people working in the system? Lastly, what happened to these hundreds of trainees, to the extent that they had no longer a 'human' sense- to the extent of just 'mowing on and on' like sheep in perpetual inaudible murmur?
Answers to these are not where they 'on first sight' may seem. They lie in a decryption of what the 'Globalising' pattern of the cosmos reveals. In undertaking this decryption, i will examine primarily, the emergence of what B.S. Chimney calls a 'Transnational Capitalist Class' at the service of global capital and the wheels of imperial globalism. This class as we shall see, is as much a victim as it is an agent (At times overzealous and tyrannical) of a pervasive globalising system...
TBC
