ANN CROTTY: If Eskom workers should ‘do what’s good for the country’, shouldn’t CEOs do the same?
CEOs don’t even have to threaten to strike to get their excessive payments
It’s difficult to understand why people who seem to have a high tolerance for steep levels of executive remuneration are incensed by the demands of the Eskom workers. It is of course very easy to get incensed about anything to do with Eskom and I certainly look forward to the day when it has trimmed back its bloated workforce by 15,000 or so; I hope that process will involve the culling of all the managers who were falling over themselves to do the bidding of the Guptas. And I hope this culling process starts sooner rather than later; it’s remarkable how quickly people begin to think utterly pointless jobs are essential. David Graeber, the anthropologist author of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, estimates that as many as 40% of workers (in Europe and the US) secretly believe their jobs aren’t necessary. Most of the "un-necessaries" are in high-paying legal and financial jobs. It’s impossible to know how many of the excess 15,000 Eskom employees are doing financial or legal work, but it’s i...
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