RETURN OF THE WORD WEASEL

Weasel Words 2: The Sequel

A few weeks ago I wrote to you of the word weasel, that shifty character that lurks on the boundaries of decency and respectable behaviour, and practices its dark arts and mystical word-spooling before latching onto our trusting natures and gullibility, using its silky tones and soothing smooth manner to hide the message so far behind the medium that it would take a whole squadron of spy-planes months to seek it out and eliminate it, only for them to then demand an apology and recompense from us for doing so.

Once you start to spot the weasel words, they get everywhere. From the oily sycophant to the slimeball with their carefully hidden agendas, you start to see the words behind the words and, when you do, you can never quite take anything at face value ever again.

For example when a telecommunications company announces that it is going to move one of its call centres from Mumbai and back to the UK. This is largely to be applauded, especially by the unemployed people of Burnley, and, in general, I have absolutely no problem with it at all.

Jolly well done Burnley, say I...

My friends whose jobs in the telecommunications sector were “relocated” just last year may very well find it all of great interest as they struggle (or indeed sail) along attempting to rebuild their lives after their many years of loyal service were abruptly ended in a wave of fiscal jurisprudence and an avid counting of beans. I don’t suppose that it’s ever easy to be told “Thank you very much, but your wages cost us far too much and we’ve got these plans to get people without your years of experience to do it much more cheaply somewhere very far away. Thanks ever so much for everything you’ve done, though…”

I’m an old-fashioned kind of a cove in many ways and tend to think that not jumping from job to job isn’t a sign of a lack of imagination or ambition, but is a sign of loyalty, which is something that I’ve always personally valued quite highly, but it seems less valued by those sitting in the ivory towers found at the very pinnacle of industry.

Loyalty really needs to be a two-way street to work properly and effectively anyway, which is something the more naïve of us sometimes forget as we put in the extra effort to help keep the company afloat and hit that ridiculous deadline yet again at no insignificant cost to our health or our family life. It’s oh-so-easy to talk the talk of “work/life balance” when you’re accepting that invite to your next game of golf, and far to easy to make an employee walk the walk because they had too much time off after their life-saving operation.

Instead, the word weasel will inform you that the first loyalty of the board of any business is legally and morally to its shareholders and not to its employees, and, whilst I will accept that I have a terrifically over-simplistic view of such things, and a distinct aversion to any claims made that the ends justify the means, I find that to be a fundamentally unacceptable situation and would go as far as to stake the moral high ground and call it just plain wrong. This is why of course, in the end, my own prospects for sliding up any greasy pole to the giddy heights of dubious corporate greatness were highly unlikely, because, even after all these years, I still find that to be a monstrous (yes, I think the word is so very appropriate that I’ll say it again, monstrous) philosophy to have. I guess this is why I do detest those over-ambitious monsters clambering over each other to become “The Apprentice” each week – surely there has got to be a better way of dealing with people just trying to live their own lives.

However, I seem to have digressed from the point a little and I am now being called back to pay some attention as my word-weasel radar starts to pick up some slightly troublesome vibrations emanating from the darker corners of that press release. There’s nothing too sinister, you understand, I suppose that the weft woven by the weasel wordsmith has made sure of that, but the words remain just the tiniest bit troubling…

“In India jobs are plentiful…” Well, not exactly. In India people are plentiful and poverty is plentiful, and because of that fundamental desperation, jobs have generally been cheap. The reason that those kinds of jobs might be plentiful is because of all the companies relocating over there to take advantage of that cheapness, but if you are not paying as well as the new guy just up the street, then you are bound to get that “attrition” of which you speak, especially after you’ve trained all those eager young employees to be terribly good at doing precisely the kind of work your competitor also wants them to do. It seems rather strange to complain about people being disloyal if you choose not to match the wages available just up the road, and let’s face it, if you’ve got good English and a pleasant manner it’s no skin off your nose to answer a phone and say one company’s name instead of another, especially if it means you get to eat more regularly.

“Over the last year (there has been) a growing trend in India for prices to increase in real estate, salaries and accommodation”. In other (less weasely) words, these companies have created themselves a boom town and now don’t like it because it’s getting too expensive. Gone are the days when they could pay starvation wages and it seems that they think that that’s just a bit of a shame. “I know” they seem to be saying, “let’s relocate back to the UK and find ourselves a town with a massive unemployment problem and pay them starvation wages instead.”

That way they can kill two birds with one stone because their customers will no longer be able to say they don’t understand the accents, and they’ll also get a grateful, willing workforce who have no other options and no choice of places to go to. Maybe another benefit will be that in a few years time, the Mumbai bubble will burst and they can relocate back again, in the process ditching the ungrateful Burnley rabble, when the ungrateful wretches over in India are hungry enough to accept whatever crumbs of cash they deem them worthy to have thrown in their general direction. Of course I might very well be wrong about all of this, after all, I usually am when I start getting all shouty on matters about which I am generally pretty ignorant...

I know that there are bound to be some weaselists out there who will have no sympathy whatsoever for the workers of Mumbai and will scream with outrage at their success, or delight at their plight. Those who complain constantly at being unable to understand the accents of the employees of any of the call centres that they have to deal with, or some of those whose jobs have already been relocated may be very pleased at hearing such news, but nevertheless, you can’t really mess people’s lives around like this no matter what continent they might be living on.

In the so-called “civilised” west we really do find it hard to accept the levels of poverty that some people are living their entire lives in over in some parts of the world, and the relief these job opportunities give to that suffering. One day, if the balance of economic power shifts too far in another direction, our society might very well find itself paying a very high price for being so utterly condescending and letting those weasels try to hide it all behind a mask of respectability.