How do you work in abroad corporations?

At first, I was worried that it was only with any slip that I found the book “Korpo. How to work in abroad corporations.” But the second thought was that... it was nothing. After all, the reality of the company in Poland has not changed importantly since 2022. And if anything, it's for the worse.

First, a word about the author herself, due to the fact that it's worth it. I met her years ago as an untidy debutante who came from Kietra to Warsaw to advance her study on the mocking of Polish work. This was even before 2015, before PiS and before 500+. Unemployment was just beginning to fall below 10 percent. Regional work was inactive very bad.

In many places in Poland, the stakes of PLN 3.5 per hr were made, while the evidence holders took on on work 30 hours without a break to find their way out. I did. I'm not.

Who remembers, who knows. And he who is blessed with the grace of late birth, let him see.

Author with strong CV

The study was, of course, excellent. And then 1 more – this time about the consequences of outsourcing (exhibition of work outside the workplace) of auxiliary services in public units. In hospitals, for example. There were not only "bitter regrets" about the bad position of the Polish individual on the sloping "green island". But besides a number of good organization solutions. For example, public institutions (government and self-government) erstwhile they become employers themselves, at all costs, set a good example and did not spoil the garbage labour market. Even if this involves higher operating costs. any of these solutions – additional points in tendering for employment contracts – already be today. Though to perfection, of course, it's far from eternal.

These works placed Catherine Duda as a surname on the map of chroniclers of the valley and misery of Polish work. At the time, Duda wrote her first actual book “Life utilized to Be Here. Now there is only poverty.” The thing was from the series “Let us talk about Poland B, C and D”, i.e. the victims of the Polish neoliberal transformation. Duda was not the first or only author to plant her probe there. Unlike a number of salon reporters who "moved in Poland" in search of "pornography of poverty", she wrote about her fellows and her climates, in which she was inactive 1 ft at the time. To this day, that work by Duda – possibly alongside akin publications by Magda Okraski – remains a classic.

Then, in Dudy's life, a political issue arose. It's natural. You compose about something, you study, you complain, you propose. And you're starting to realize it's not gonna happen. Then comes the subject of individual commitment. Or just social activism and talking to a fewer people on the cross? Or is it politics? Kasia tried. She ran for parliament in the 2019 election. No luck. I hear from people that it sobered her up a little. And it's discouraged. Especially for the latest installment of our “left”. I'm not surprised. The crew from Czarzasty, Anna Maria or Gawkowski usually leaves specified an impression after a closer understanding. Especially if individual wants to make a left 1 where the occupation case is the core. Not just 1 addition to the main dish of a liberal (also economically) world-viewed voter. And specified a voter the Polish left has and serves today. End of story.

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Better than Springer

Anyway, respectable to Duda that she didn't resent social issues at all. He's working for OPZZ today. This is not "Solidarity", but it is difficult. You can't have everything. The crucial thing is that she anchored on the right side of class fighting.

It gives this characterization to the author due to the fact that it is acceptable to show that this is not the first better pen than work. It was not Philip Springer who shed tears all day over the destiny of Polish “people on the ground”. And then he eagerly went on to teach the same working classes that if they vote for the incorrect party, they're nothing. And in addition, the destiny of the Planet and democracy are no longer at all.

Kasia Duda does not come on specified shallows and is so worth reading.

Here besides in "Korpo". This book is simply a panorama of this supposedly better Polish work. The author had the thought that, after giving the voice to sixty- and fifty-year-olds who were being pushed over by the Balcerowicz, Hausner and Tusk cartel (this was in the erstwhile book “There Was a Life Here...” from 2019) she would now give the voice to younger people. They went to college, they left their hometowns, they bought apartments on loan, they got dogs, they went to the barber. And the job? Corpo, of course. At first glance, they caught on well. Their companies – in rule – are not "permanently unprofitable" as their parents have been. any even pose for cool places. Fruit Thursdays, canteens with good a la Ikea pattern on the wall, Benefit card. These things.

Plagues of Polish Work

But are these good jobs? Duda is multiplying doubts. Actually, they're multiplying her callers. As a result, “Korpo” is simply a kind of catalogue of various diseases of modern real capitalism. There's a plague of subcontracting. For example, in courier companies. Or I.T.s. As an employee, you're fundamentally no worker here. You have no direct relation with your actual employer. It's not even a classical B2B (i.e. self-employment). It's more like a small sub-employment chain.

As a result, if you don't let God aid you, you have no 1 to charge.

Mediators are an excellent buffer in demanding anything from the “mother company”. Or the phenomenon of "verbalism" (real capitalism is like Tinder – why associate permanently as you can have individual else all day).

There's inactive problem with the sense of being in the Corps. No influence on anything. The sense that a occupation can be expendable and sometimes even socially harmful (as in the manufacture of handling borrowing, which must besides be executed in person). There are besides problems that have highlighted the pandemic strongly.

Convinced of complete loneliness and snorting distant from people under conditions of completely disturbed “work-house” balance.

They're not just white collars. They're besides Amazon-style forms. With their obsession with dehumanizing optimization. With technologies for surveillance of employees. With the imposition of the lowest level of physical workers and the mediate grade of managers. They are called “leaders”. But actually set up as “slave drivers.” It's besides hard to see in this book.

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Post scriptum 2025

And a post script. Over the 3 years since the publication of that book, another dimension of the problem has emerged. It's a fear that in the meantime began to spread in the corpoworld. It has 2 reasons. 1 is Polish and it is that the prosperity of the times of the Law and Justice (low unemployment, advanced employment, expansion of social programs) is slow beginning to collapse. This can be seen from further reports of group dismissals in different places of the economy. With peculiar attention to large companies and corporations.

The second origin is more systemic. We have a tiny revolution in the improvement of artificial intelligence technology based on device learning (chatbots and others).

This phenomenon clearly threatens to automate a large part of the employees of the Corpowiech.

Also due to the fact that the large (often global) organisations in which they work are different from tiny companies, due to the fact that they are the first after AI on a large scale. As a result, graphists, programmers, or even creators of simpler content do not sit in the saddle very confidently.

You can see it, you can hear it, you can feel it.

Catherine Duda, Korpo. How to work in abroad corporations in Poland, Wydawnictwo Kołnierzyki, Warszawa 2022

The task was prepared as part of the improvement of the Centre for the Support of Councils of Workers co-financed by the National Institute of Freedom Centre for the improvement of civilian Society under the Government Programme for the improvement of Advisory Organisations for the period 2022–2033.