Two anecdotes, a dangerous trend
Let’s start with an anecdote: About a year ago, a friend of mine become the regional HR director in an industrial company with several factories, countries, thousands of employees, and millions of urgent and important problems to deal with. Only after a few months later, when he was still trying to control the situation, he had a request from his boss, the corporate HR director.
Among the many priorities and problems (salaries, talent attraction and retention, HR policies, internal organization, communication, etc), she asked him what was his plan to celebrate the LGTBIQ pride. She didn’t care if there were many other HR issues that could affect business, but she insisted that this was her priority, and therefore also his. So he had to waste his precious time and improvise some events, rainbow flags and pollitically correct communications (that noone cared about) to make her happy and allow him to focus on real HR issues.
(Before I get lynched, I must clarify that neither him nor myself defend any discrimination at the workplace. That’s the usual accusation and stigmatization that is used to erradicate any critical thinking.)
Another anecdote: My bank, ING, around those dates, thought that it was a good idea to send me a message celebrating my sexual diversity and pride. I formally complained that my sexual tendencies were none of their business. As a customer, I expect my bank to be ideologically and politically neutral. Of course, they answered with the usual nonsense disguised in good intentions.
But this are not exceptions, but rather the norm. In the ideological warfield that our society has become, wokeism has conquered not only the public institutions, but also many of the private ones. Wokeism is the troyan horse that allows totalitarian ideologies to conquer power in institutions and organizations from within.
In fact, most HR departments and trade unions are led by left-wing activists, creating an authoritarian and single minded environment.
There’s group thinking, censorship, «equality and inclusion» policies that actually discriminate normal people who don’t fit into certain (allegedly victimized but in fact privileged) collectives, virtue signalling, hypocresy, lack of individual accountability and meritocracy, etc. Any discrepancy is labeled as fascism or worse, and severely punished. And the result is that the interests of shareholders, customers and workers get left behind, putting the whole company in danger.
Go woke, go broke
Several companies have already paid the price of putting their woke ideology before their business: Disney, Gillette, Starbucks, Bud Light, Jaguar… Customers, shareholders and workers have left them woke and broke.
Trade unionists start waking up from the woke nightmare
But trade unions usually support these woke policies. They have betrayed those who they were supossed to represent: the workers.
Many workers are realizing that betrayal, and the union’s reputations are worse than ever. And within the unions, very few have the courage to speak up. Paul Embery, a traditional trade unionist, argues that this trend — especially as manifested through the adoption of structured diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies — risks dividing workers along identity lines rather than uniting them around shared class or job-related interests.
I find it refreshing and gives me hope that we can still find reasonable allies to rebuild a humane but reasonable workplace and labour relations.
Even more interesting than the speech are the reactions, that show a strong backlash.
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