Very interesting read about the truly horrible "proto-fascist" work conditions in UK banks.

[snagglepuss]

Nyla (not her real name) has an advanced degree in the humanities, as had many others in the graphics department (a design and layout job where you turn texts and figures supplied by bankers into documents with graphics). Applying her training to what she saw for seven years, she says: The systemic abuse in banks is still being understated and not named as the deliberate social Darwinist system it is.

snip


"I don't say this lightly but it is a proto-fascist ideology. This idea 'I am the superior species' and you, being losers, deserve to be brutalised. But by calling it 'leadership' they decouple the ideology from racism and sexism. It's simply the 'best and brightest' and the rest of us are inferior. Have lunch or be lunch. And they're so open about it! Not being successful is your own fault. It's a super-Calvinist universe. Americans believed it the most."

snip


"Pushing juniors to the breaking point, making them 'jump through hoops' and brutalising them was not an accidental byproduct. It was a major element in selecting and shaping future leaders. It took me a while to figure this out but when they say 'leader' they mean 'predator'. Senior bankers called themselves 'top predators', like sharks or lions. This made junior bankers the dogs, very afraid of them while fighting for dominance within their own group. We were prey.

snip


"Each shift had a supervisor and a QC 'style guide' representative. The QC guy would sit on a higher platform facing the room, and when you were new, after finishing a job, you had to get up, walk past 30 people and hand it over. Then they'd publicly tell you what you'd done wrong. Sometimes you had to repeat it aloud. Five or six times per night. This could also strike a veteran at any time. Even when you weren't subjected to it yourself you still had to sit there and listen to it.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2013/jun/20/graveyard-shift-graphics-worker-bank

[PDJane]

1. I wish I could say that this surprises me. It doesn't.

I remember working for a bank when my child was young. It was an interesting experience. At the time, we had just changed to a mechanized postal sorting system, and the post office sent out a large book with postal codes (the internet wasn't in use) and the clear instructions on the front page that stated that, because of the sorting machines, attention lines, commonly written at the bottom, should now be moved to the left, before the address. The bank section I worked at had a fit when I did it that way, because the instructions to change had to come from the president's office, and he hadn't said to do it. Ergo, I had to put it at the bottom so that the mail would have to be sorted by hand! The dress code was interesting too; no slacks, and the clothes could not "expose an undue amount of the wearer, either back or front." Oh, yes, and shoes had to be cut high enough that there was no "toe cleavage," although that wasn't how they put it.

Banks, there, here, everywhere are their own little fascist states. They don't pay for regular staff, and they scrimp wherever they can. That's why they have imported workers from Pakistan, India and sometimes China: they don't want to pay. That is penny wise and pound foolish, by the way; it takes the regular staff more time to train and clean up the mistakes than they save.

It's an interesting mindset: my brother and his wife work for banks. Not surprisingly, they don't speak to me, nor I to them.

If you wish to find the source of the corruption in this world, it's right there, in the banking system, and it is ingrained.