Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the power imbalance is the whole problem. Unfortunately it seems to be human nature that those who seek and gain power are compelled to exercise it to benefit themselves, to the detriment of others. What sort of compromise are you thinking of? I get the impression that workers have done a lot of compromising (involuntarily) in the past decade or two and bosses have not. The idea of a co-operative has always been…
I understand and I too have clients. This feels completely different indeed, but that is exactly why I came to think of these things: the power structure is not fundamentally different. If anything, it’s more volatile and I need to watch what I am doing all the time. I can be dumped at a moment’s notice and to be honest, I like it that way because that works both ways. (My wife thinks differently about these matters.…
> Perhaps my idea of compromise is that you, as an employee, need
> to come to terms that you might not be perfect and that there is
> a lot you do not understand, but that is OK. Try to do a good
> job and don’t point fingers (“they started!”).
I think this describes most people already. I mean, I've encountered some prima donnas but that problem solves itself eventually (they flounce off). I'm not sure what you're suggesting ordinary employees should be doing that they aren't already, and what it would cause their employers to do differently?
It's a good point about small businesses, I much prefer dealing with them to bigger firms. If my point of contact is one of the directors then everything flows so much more smoothly. (Smallest direct client had 7 employees, biggest I think about 200K - very different experiences.)
When I refer to "the bosses" I really mean the set of people at the upper layers of larger companies who, week to week, have no contact with staff who are doing actual productive work - their subordinates are managers, and the subordinates of their subordinates are also managers. They're insulated from, and often unaware of, the effects of their decisions - they probably don't consciously intend to grind their staff to dust, but everyone they talk to is happy and the numbers look good so surely everything is fine.
Further down the chain you've got a bunch of middle-managers with no investment in the overall good of the company and no power to really improve the conditions of the workers beyond passing messages up the chain, and the truth in those messages is filtered and transformed with every extra layer of people. Nobody wants to tell their boss stuff he/she doesn't want to hear.