Things have changed a lot in the workplace in the last 30 years, and much of it has been good. Women having babies in the 1980s had no paid parental leave, and may have been allowed to take a few months unpaid leave (if they were lucky), but fathers basically had to get back to work pronto. Things are so much better for new working parents nowadays. While equal pay has applied for decades, sexual harassment in the workplace was rife until the 1990s, when suddenly women, rubbed up against in corridors once too often by what can only be described as dirty old men, started to fight back.
But, as always, things have gone too far. While companies make an effort to focus on the wellbeing and work-life balance of their employees, many big companies simply overdo it. In an effort to be seen as woke (and therefore not cancelled by the permanently outraged), many large companies go overboard. Think about Coca-Cola being slammed for a training video telling their employees to try to be ‘less white’… whatever that means. Short of painting one’s face, which is heavily frowned upon nowadays, how does a white person become ‘less white’? Sure, it is all about the mythical white privilege, which seems to avoid a fair number of white people, but even white people who are down-and-out are seen to have privilege anyway. Don’t ask me how.
And then there is Google, and its ‘diversity training’. Google are absolutely correct in wanting to create an open, inclusive environment, but have also been criticised for their actions not matching their words.
Google’s workforce is, by its own accounting, 69% male and just 2% African American. Just 20% of technical jobs are held by women. Google may be unequivocal in its “belief” about diversity, but the figures make its shortcomings clear. The company tends to hire white and Asian men over women and other racial minorities.
The Guardian
Let me be clear. I have no problem with this, but if you are going to die in a ditch over diversity, you could probably do better than 2% African-Americans, particularly as record numbers of them attend university these days. This seems to be a case of talking the talk rather than actually doing anything.
Well… there’s a surprise.
A survey in Britain has revealed that those ordinary punters, who spend their lives going to work, paying the mortgage and bringing up the kids, don’t want a bar of all the stupidity. They would like business to concentrate on… business.
Businesses should avoid wading in on political and social issues, almost half of Britons believe, according to major research which dismisses “wokeism” as a “fringe” movement.
Offered a selection of 10 possible ways that businesses could be “good corporate citizens”, only 9 per cent of respondents said that the most important was to “speak out on important social issues that matter in Britain today”.
The research, conducted for the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank, amounts to one of the most comprehensive surveys to date of issues that underlie wokeism and “cancel culture” in Britain.
I feel sure that, if a similar survey were to be carried out here, the results would be strikingly similar.
The research was carried out online, with 1,500 people asked about political issues and a further 1,500 asked about economic and business issues.
It comes after several firms withdrew advertisements from GB News, the new centre-Right broadcaster, after coming under pressure on social media.
But Frank Luntz, the US pollster who carried out the research, said it showed that many business leaders were misguided in thinking that members of the public wanted firms “speaking up about social issues”.
So What Did the Polled Brits Think Was Most Important?
The most popular way in which businesses could do good was to “make a profit so they can continue to create jobs for British workers” – an option selected by 19 per cent of respondents as the most important.
Well, who would have thought it?
Only 10 per cent said that firms should take political positions or clearly express their political or social views on controversial topics, while a further 45 per cent said that they should “sometimes” and on other occasions should not.
And even better…
Only 13 per cent said that a company “remain[ing] silent on key social issues” was among the top least favourable accusations.
But wait! There’s more!
The issue selected by the fewest people as an issue on which companies should take a lead was LGBTQ rights, which was chosen by 8 per cent of people, including 11 per cent of Labour voters and 5 per cent of Conservative voters.
It just shows that it is hard to believe sometimes that your views are the same as those held by the majority because the screaming minorities drown out all reasoned talk.
In an interview with The Telegraph last month, Dr Luntz said: “Wokeism came about because of a legitimate concern about inequality. Populism developed because of a legitimate concern of entire segments of the population being ignored, or forgotten. Both of them come out of a legitimate problem, but both of them have elements of extremism that are as bad as the problem they wish to address.
Absolutely.
“I think that the combination of populism and wokeism will lead you to a winter of discontent as bad as what we saw in 1979.”
The Telegraph UK
How I wish similar research could be done here, but the media in this country, biased to a fault towards the hapless government, would not like the results they received. What would they have to write about, were it not for outraged trans people or companies that have not gone woke enough, so they are hounded into oblivion?
Never think you are alone in your conservative and reasoned opinions. The truth is out there… it just takes a bit of effort to find it.
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