Evolution has created the rules that one doesn't mix politics with business. Google has skirted this rule for some time but now it's not going to be pretty.
This 'rule' is a purely artificial construct encouraged to ensure the common employees keep their heads down and let those in charge continue screwing over them and/or society. The history of organized labor involves no less than straight murder of labor activists by company owners.
Saying "oh we should keep the office apolitical by not having a union" is a political act. Saying "oh we shouldn't complain about the kind of customers our emplyoer has" is a political act.
Acting in opposition to political acts is in itself a political act. The apolitical thing to do would be to _not intervene in others' political processes_. If mgmt let its employees organize labor actions with the same willingness as a movie night, then they would be acting apolitically.
> Saying "oh we should keep the office apolitical by not having a union" is a political act. Saying "oh we shouldn't complain about the kind of customers our emplyoer has" is a political act.
That isn't keeping politics out of the workplace - it's the exact opposite. That's explicitly bringing politics into the workplace by trying to tell coworkers what views they should have. Curbing this behavior is exactly what keeping politics out of the workplace is about.
> Acting in opposition to political acts is in itself a political act. The apolitical thing to do would be to _not intervene in others' political processes_. If mgmt let its employees organize labor actions with the same willingness as a movie night, then they would be acting apolitically.
For the third time, Keeping politics out of the workplace does not oppose any view. It's about making clear that the office is not a space for political activity. Yes, the apolitical thing is to not intervene in others' political process.
The reality is, bringing politics into the workplace is a very significant intervention in people's political lives. In the politically active offices I've worked in, plenty of employees feigned support for things they didn't support because they felt it was expected of them. Co workers whose views were part of the company majority dominated the conversation, because co-workers with minority viewpoints didn't want to risk repercussions for voicing unpopular views.
So if you want a company that does not intervene in others' political lives, keeping politics out of the workplace is the most effective approach.
That isn't keeping sex out of the workplace - it's the exact opposite. That's explicitly bringing sex into the workplace by trying to tell coworkers what preferences they should have. Curbing this behavior is exactly what keeping sex out of the workplace is about.
> Acting in opposition to sexual acts is in itself a sexual act. The asexual thing to do would be to _not intervene in others' sexual engagements_. If mgmt let its employees organize relationships with the same willingness as a movie night, then they would be acting asexually.
For the third time, Keeping sex out of the workplace does not oppose any preference. It's about making clear that the office is not a space for sexual activity. Yes, the asexual thing is to not intervene in others' sexual relationships.
The reality is, bringing sex into the workplace is a very significant intervention in people's sexual lives. In the sexually active offices I've worked in, plenty of employees feigned support for things they didn't support because they felt it was expected of them. Co workers whose preferences were part of the company majority dominated the conversation, because co-workers with minority preferences didn't want to risk repercussions for voicing unpopular preferences.
So if you want a company that does not intervene in others' sexual lives, keeping sex out of the workplace is the most effective approach.
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It was fun, but it didn't _quite_ work...
If an office instituted a policy where sex was allowed in the office, and now you have co workers having sex in the cubicle next door and making sexual advances towards you, then that absolutely is intervening in employees' sexual lives.
No.
> Or, if you are not discussing politics, _are you being political?_
No.
"Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to group of members" - Wikipedia
> An apolitical office is political in the same sense that secularism is a religious stance.
This sentence doesn't make any sense as Secularism is a political concept and not a "religious stance".
An office can never be an apolitical entity, given that it involves the organisation of people and decision making about their activities, AND that office necessarily interacts with wider society which is unavoidably a political area.
When you think about it, it's really quite baffling that people can think they can spend almost 30% of their waking life within some system that is devoid of political relevance. Life is political. Society is political. What you do in your work and career is one of the most politically impactful parts of a persons life.
To be generous, treating the workplace as devoid of politics is just support of the status-quo.
Not sure whether I should belabour this point...
> Yes, the apolitical thing is to not intervene in others' political process.
Given that many people are socialists and want to live in a society where say, Education, is a public good and managed by public institutions, then simply maintaining private educational institutions is intervening in the "political process" of others.
And thus, an office in which this "set of activities" is not permitted is an apolitical office.
> An office can never be an apolitical entity, given that it involves the organisation of people and decision making about their activities, AND that office necessarily interacts with wider society which is unavoidably a political area.
I think you're failing to distinguish between an apolitical office, and the company being an "apolitical entity". A company of any significant size is going to end up interacting with politicians. But this does not mean that its offices cannot be apolitical spaces. I do not know why you seem to insist that this is the case. All that is necessary for an office to be an apolitical space is to make political activity off limits in the office.
> When you think about it, it's really quite baffling that people can think they can spend almost 30% of their waking life within some system that is devoid of political relevance. Life is political. Society is political. What you do in your work and career is one of the most politically impactful parts of a persons life.
Life and society are indeed political. Sure, some people may want to bring politics into the 30% of their lives that they spend in the office. But plenty of other people are happier when a company has employees use the 70% that is spent outside of the office.
> To be generous, treating the workplace as devoid of politics is just support of the status-quo.
For the fourth time, absence of a political view is not the support of any view. This is a toxic "you're with us or you're against us" mentality and it's exactly this kind of thing that people are sick of hearing from their co-workers.
> Given that many people are socialists and want to live in a society where say, Education, is a public good and managed by public institutions, then simply maintaining private educational institutions is intervening in the "political process" of others.
And in an apolitical office they are free to organize activism to push politicians towards achieving those ends - during the 70% of the time they spend outside of work.
Maintaining an apolitical office is not an endorsement of the status quo or any other viewpoint. It prevents people who want to change the status quo from bringing their politics into the office, but also prevents those people who want to defend the status quo. The only thing is does is it makes people carry out their political activity in a space other than the office.
You don't have to defend the status quo, if no one is allowed to challenge it. In other words your ideal office is set in favor of the status quo. And a century ago, would likely not have hired women or blacks. Since that would have been "political".
Thing is, I'm actually in favor of this. Most companies should probably stick to avoiding politics as good as possible and give their employees freedom to do whatever they want outside of work. At the same time, "X employee does [bad thing]" headlines make this damn hard, and thus the company will have to distance itself from what such employees do... worst case by terminating the relationship.
Long story short, having a highly divided society will lead to a lot of pain. No way around it. Finding ways to work against those divisions before they get even worse, even if that means conflict, seem more important than to just bury one's head in the sand.
Organization of people involves power dynamics. Maybe you can make an argument that something like holocracy generates an apolitical environment, though I think that doesn't hold up experimentally.
Management deciding whether or not to increase vacation days is a political act. Employees deciding whether they want to stand together in negotations with management or handle stuff individually is a political decision. Hell, trying to push for more/less meetings in day to day work is a political act.
It's pretty hard to have any sort of organization without the political aspect coming into play immediately.
No, it's a company policy. There is a contingent of people who believe everything is a political act, and perhaps you are among them. But know that this view is not as widely held as you might think.
> Employees deciding whether they want to stand together in negotations with management or handle stuff individually is a political
Interestingly, unions actually try to argue that they are not political. That is the cornerstone of their arguments as to why union dues are not compelled speech.
> Hell, trying to push for more/less meetings in day to day work is a political act.
Again, not for the overwhelming majority of people who consider this an apolitical change.
Yes, if you believe everything is political then everything in the workplace is political. But most people don't subscribe to this view.
This works both ways: what data do you have that workers consider adjustments to things like meetings political acts?
Well no, you made an unsubstantiated claim. I'm just noting it was unsubstantiated. Given when I work, I suspect a survey of my co-workers would reach a different conclusion than you would.
As for why it might be political: encouraging certain working styles is political, is it not? Pushing people to work independently as opposed to collaboratively is a highly political choice.
Look, functionally you're defining an "apolitical" office as unquestioning obedience. Which is fine, just own it instead of trying to dress it up.
An apolitical office is one where political activity isn't held in the office. That's it. I'm really not sure what is confusing about this.
I've worked in apolitical offices before, and people do feel comfortable to question business decision and technical choices. In fact, I'd say people were more comfortable in questioning those decisions than in political offices, because in political offices people are loath to be perceived as political enemies.
There is a lot of tension in labour relations but no-politics-in-the-workplace philosophies cover a lot more than that.
But I don't see how anyone can reasonably make the case that (much of) the recent political activism at Google has been an example of defending general workers rights against abuses. It seems more like an attempt to push group politics (the group in question not representing the viewpoint or interests of all employees) onto an institution.
As a rule of thumb, if the idea of the opposite side of your stance doing the same thing, with the same tactics, makes you feel uneasy - you might think twice about setting the precedence.
I agree that censorship of political discourse is a problem. Or religious, or of any subject. The "let's not talk politics amongst friends" (or at work) line of thought is a form of censorship that is in many ways self-imposed. I think that we're so bent on being right that we become blind to others' incentives, interests and other elements of subjectivity and lose the ability to resolve conflicts. Then the obvious option is to evade situations where we might have conflicts. A culture-wide communication problem. I'd like to see people comfortable discussing anything anytime with anyone.
And yes, I'd agree that in this case it could likely be considered a general workplace issue where most employees would be on the same side against the corporation. I think the original comment was talking more about the recent instances of protests however (don't do business with X, Y, Z because it conflicts with my politics etc).
History is history. Comparing Google to murderers are just false. They are not. In fact Google got where it is today, is mainly due to the fact they previously intentionally obfuscated the ownership between management/employees. Apparently, it no longer works for it now. Time to move on. Learn to act like MSFT/IBM or maybe even Amazon.
They are not discussing the power imbalance between workers and the owners of capital. They are not discussing Google's abuse of private information at large. Just as many Americans watch Fox News or CNN every night and yell at the TV, Googlers are getting upset at tips of the iceberg.
This works until you must, by necessity, either mix work and politics or suffer some indignity.
Advocating for parental leave? Politics. Mothers rooms? Politics. Prayer rooms? Politics. Trans inclusive health care? Politics. Domestic partner benefits? Politics.
Unfortunately, for many folks politics at work is a reality whether they want them to be or not, just because of who they are.
Yep all politics. As political issues they should be dealt with in the political arena of whichever branch of government is responsible. If you strongly believe in these rights and priveleges you'd be spending your time advocating for universal access to them. Doing it on a per company basis is ineffective and selfish, there will always be a race to the bottom and it gives your competitors an advantage.
I disagree, you are making perfect the enemy of good. The only solution is not "make the government mandate the solution".
Whether they should or not is irrelevant, it's what they do. Companies com and go, companies that spend more than they have to tend to go faster, employers change even more frequently. Do you want to put up this fight every time you change employers? Do you want to be stuck at one employer because changing jobs means losing benefits?
> We only win if everyone gets the benefit?
I don't consider getting these benefits for the privileged few with job mobility to be much of a win. Even for them it's probably not a long term win.
> The only solution is not "make the government mandate the solution".
It's not the only solution just the best solution, more unionization would be another solution that's way better than a piecemeal company by company approach though. The government solution also offers up some much better alternatives in cases like healthcare.
Google goes to extensive lengths to pay the minimum taxes required by law, exploiting every loophole they can find. Just saying.
Naturally if many people band together that constitutes a better bargaining strategy. (Sounds familiar?)
But unions and all the formal groupings are problematic, because they quickly regress to representing only the very common issues and/or smaller issues themselves become bargaining chips.
Solidarity organically grows these flocks of people banded together, and thus pragmatically these kinds of ad-hoc organizations have the same bargaining power as formal unions. (And the fact that Google fears this so much that they are willing to risk breaking the law because of it shows this.)
You are simply saying to your employer (or potential employer) that I have this need (disabled toilets, minimum wage, safe working conditions, whatever), and that were they willing to provide that you are going to work there.
Should we end government disability regulations and let workers negotiate it for themselves? Is it really too much too ask governments to provide a base regulation for prayer rooms like they do disabled toilets? Minimum working conditions have always been set by government, especially for people who lack job mobility, which is why I consider a privileged few campaigning to do it at there tech corp to be selfish.
The lack of diversity of workplaces and work structures is a very big problem. (It results in dumb congestion problems, like rush hours, high tuition and student debt because of the super popular signals, peer pressure for uniformization and conforming, etc.)
Unions would just provide another very big hammer instead of incentivizing meaningful dialogue and custom agreements.
I'm not saying they would be worse than the status quo though.
It also feels like many tech companies actively advertise "to millennials" by advertising that their culture is the kind of place at which "you want to work". When that company/mission starts to lose its polish[1], it becomes harder to recruit for that talent[2].
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/16/facebook-has-struggled-to-re...
I don't know anything about what's happening at Google, but this either involves some talented mental gymnastics or it's obviously false.
Places of business have politics. Always have, always will. Internal politics and very frequently most companies involve themselves in local/state/national/international politics.
- Joining a chamber of commerce or a trade organization is participating in politics.
- Having a PR campaign or a lobbyist which affects public attitudes or legislation is politics.
- Sponsored an ice rink in the middle of small town Texas[1] (hint: it's a symbol that the company, even though it is based in South Korea, depends very much on the good will of jurors and judges in that smallish town).
- high quality talent is scarce (hence all of the famous Yahoo/Google/Facebook/etc perks for engineers),
- the transparency of associations[2][3],
- the political climate of associations (eg. [4][5]), and
- boycotts (of many forms) can hurt the bottom dollar[6]. Sometimes it has the opposite effect[7].
[1] https://ipcloseup.com/2015/02/25/for-samsung-charity-begins-...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/facebook-employees-reportedl...
[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
[4] https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/harvard-professor-ron-sull...
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2017/08/14/charl...
[6] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/insi...
[7] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/nike-reports-dou...
"Evolution has"? Are you invoking evo-psych to say politics and business don't mix.
It's really quite amazing how the dominant corporate ideology has become so invisible that people think that by going to work and doing whatever your boss says to do is somehow devoid of political involvement.
Pretending "business" has nothing to do with politics is absurd. You can only believe it if you think corporate capitalism is apolitical.
You mean, the power of the ruling class has created the rules that ruled class doesn't mix challenging their masters in with their service that is required for their survival.
Because politics and business are deeply mixed when you look at the ruling (capitalist) class, your “evolution” rule doesn't apply there. And politics that involve bootlicking for their particular masters is also rewarded in the working class, your “evolution” rule.dorsnt apply there, either. It's only politics that challenges one’s capitalist masters (usually embodied in a corporate employer) that is discouraged.