THERE’S this sensitive issue that we in the corporate world are very reluctant to talk about except in very few occasions when we’re in a huddle in one corner of a luxury hotel. Yes, it’s about outsourcing and its direct impact of weakening a labor union.
Imagine this private conversation between two top business people that is equally informative and predictive:
First Boss: What’s the matter, Luis?
Second Boss: I’m winning the war against the militant union.
First Boss: Is that so? Up to when and where?
Second Boss: Very recently at the Supreme Court.
First Boss: You mean the Rubber Band?
Second Boss: You bet! Thanks to my blue chip, genius lawyer.
First Boss: You call that winning?
No, the issue that I’m reluctant to talk about is even more sensitive than that. The issue—and I will try to be tasteful here—is that sometimes it seems like maybe this old capitalist from the Marcos-era is a kind of d**b—if you know what I mean.
What I mean is—I am not totally confident that Luis would finally get what he wants from the flip-flopping justices; unless his aides have the unadulterated courage to explain its long-term effects on his many businesses, including the probability of the union bringing the matter to the International Labor Organization, among others.
This is unsettling, although I don’t know why they appear to ignore this probability. For the past two decades or so, this company has been a remarkable manifestation of management hanky-panky, comical incompetence, and outright weirdness.
In sum, I should call them an organization with “the analog mind,” which is described by Morgan Jones as something when our “mind takes the shortcut by patterning, treating the new information as it did the old, drawing the same conclusions, experiencing the same feelings, taking the same actions.”
“Thus the mind operates analogically, not logically,” according to Jones’ book The Thinker’s Toolkit (1998).
I don’t mind President Noynoy Aquino being bizarre by supporting the company’s move. Really, it’s getting harder and harder to understand the explanation like what the government is saying with the term “area of temporary stay” for the MILF.
I realize that many of you out there in Readerland are sick to death about these many scandals that are causing multiple orgasms for us in the news media, because of all these shocking revelations, the most amazing one being that every president of this country (with the probable exception of Ramon Magsaysay) viewed the labor union as a sort of chattel that can be dumped into the sea at the first sign of corporate trouble.
This bothers me a lot even if I’m part of management, which is why I have developed this euphemistic way of describing people manager’s behavior, namely as “autocratic” as in “how many autocratic managers are needed to change a light bulb in the corporate building’s basement?”
Of course, the capitalist aides, in an effort to receive their biggest bonus this Christmas have arranged to cut costs by dismissing a lot of people out of the payroll, in the name of outsourcing and rightsizing, without first considering other invisible wastes in their work processes like what Toyota has proven time and again.
My concern is that we should not go any further removing people from their jobs in the absence of an honest-to-goodness effort to save on other costs, like reducing executive compensation, for instance.
Why not? The first rule of leadership, according to that popular animated film “A Bug’s Life,” is that—“everything is your fault.”
Rey Elbo is a consultant in human resources and total quality management as fused interest. Send feedback to or follow him on Facebook or Twitter for his random management thoughts. –Reylito a.h. elbo, Manila Standard Today
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