Gulag in the WorkPlace

Gulag in the Workplace

By JMN Pasricha

I have lived through 21 years of Martial Law and Ferdinand Marcos' Rule in the Philippines. I was also in India under the Emergency Rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But I have not experienced this kind of Gulag life that I am going through in India. And this is not because of the government. This is because of the corporate culture in the top employer of India, Asia and Great Britain. This proves that the award is undeserved. Perhaps, it is even fraudulent, a misinterpretation of what employers and employees should professionally be.

That this is happening in a mobile global world of the 21^st century is incredible.  First, employees sign a contract that stops them from using social media. Perhaps it is acceptable to do so in the office. But to demand it from an employee in his/her private life is an intrusion into privacy. So my daughter is following the contract. But as mother I have not signed such a contract. As a private person, I am not supposed to be part of that contract. However, my email addresses, Twitter and LinkedIn are being monitored. My emails are being printed out and read by a whole floor of employees, as if they have no other work to do, but to follow my emails. And when they cannot watch over my emails 24/7, guess what is used as tool to stop me from communicating with the world. Talk about bad practices in the workplace. They cut my internet connection. They cut my Wifi connection. That is how and why we are invited into this Gulag Guest House, really a concentration camp.

This is all because my daughter has accepted a job, very much less in pay than the average pay of an Ivy League graduate. She has also asked for reasonable accommodation as a Person of Disability. And she was promised to be given an office that is disability friendly; reasonable accommodation in transportation, and reasonable accommodation in housing.

But what does she get instead?

Reasonable Accommodation in the Workplace:

My daughter was given a cubicle for an office. But she was given a desktop while everybody else has a laptop. When she asked for a laptop that she can also bring home; the employees say that she should be given the oldest and heaviest laptop and that she cannot open her files at home because that is a security risk.

Then there is the problem of a disability friendly bathroom. There are four floors in the office building. On the first day that my daughter reported for work, she discovered she could not use any bathrooms. The Power wheel chair could not enter any door. During the weekend, the administration hurriedly transformed a disability accessible toilet cubicle in the fourth floor. When my daughter went up to the fourth floor to use it; her number two boss asked her what was she doing there. It is a highly classified IT floor, considered a high security risk. Employees say that my daughter’s using a disability accessible toilet in the fourth floor is a high security risk. Perhaps, not even Bill Gates or Melinda Gates would agree to this downright discrimination in their IT fourth floor.

Everybody also has a card to swipe the office door open. My daughter has been asking for this card since the beginning. She is passed on from one admin staff to another. When finally she reaches the authority who releases the card, he says that it is not his job. One week after joining formalities, my daughter still has no card to swipe open the door. She has four titanium metal plates, two rods and ten screws in her spinal column, and she is forced to open the door manually with her meager strength, and from her Power wheel chair. The security people simply watch her and comment that she has studied so much abroad but such a simple problem of a card she cannot solve. The sub text to this kind of comments from employees is that Ivy League graduates are not as good as Indian educated MBA’s who proliferate but are becoming suspect in the international arena as falsifying their credentials.

Reasonable Accommodation in Transportation

Before accepting this contract to work, my daughter asked for reasonable accommodation in transportation. So she is given a monthly transportation allowance, even if at the end, it is deductible from her basic pay. She goes to work in a rent a car, which costs 350 rupees one way; therefore 700 rupees back and forth. My husband wakes up at dawn to fetch my daughter and bring her to office. He rides in a three wheeler for ten rupees, rides the metro train for twenty rupees, and then rides a three wheeler for fifteen rupees. He spends fifty rupees one way, one hundred rupees two way, or two hundred rupees a day just to fetch and bring my daughter to office in the morning; then fetch her from office and bring home to the company guest house. Two hundred rupees a day is out of his pocket. So he is literally subsidizing the office transportation of my daughter. That is the meaning of reasonable transportation in the Gulag company.

Reasonable Accommodation in Housing

My daughter and I am staying in a company guest house for fifteen days since joining formalities. There are twin beds, air conditioning and fan, hot and cold water in the bathroom. But the electricity is erratic. There are half a dozen blackouts a day. There is a converter that could provide power during this blackouts; but it could only accommodate lights and electric fan. You cannot even connect your laptop to the dead sockets.

Speaking of laptops. We have our own personal laptops. There is WIFI in the company guest house. But this is how the Gulag company monitors and harasses and abuses their incoming employees.  The contract says that employees cannot use their Facebook in and about work. But certainly, family members are not included in that contract. I should be able to access my own Email and Twitter and LinkedIn. My daughter has stopped Facebook, which is one of the pleasures of her life as a creative writer. Facebook has helped her recover from her surgery in the number one and top hospital of the United States. Facebook has given her encouragement and support as she plodded through her masteral thesis in graduate school. Facebook is a meaningful part of her life. Now for a job that pays one thousand five hundred dollars a month, and that includes all benefits, she is giving up her joy.

The lesson here is that an Ivy League graduate should not sell down her cutting edge degree. An Ivy League graduate is worth sixty to ninety thousand dollars a year salary. The minimum pay in an American corporation is forty thousand dollars. To agree to a salary of one thousand five hundred dollars a month and get relocated to the Third world is cheap. One ends up meeting cheap people, cheap mind construct, cheap human capital who do not realize they are abused as slave labor workers and consequently they also enslave their co-workers. Would Mark Zuckerberg even think of this?

Now what happens is that because whoever is monitoring us cannot do it 24/7; and it certainly is not their job nor is it included in their job description. What they do is cut off our WIFI connection. So here I am with no internet connection but having all the time to reflect and write about Gulag IT service companies.

Mitt Romney is really wrong about outsourcing to India. What about the policy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Conclusion
My daughter knows her rights as taught to her in Disability Law at Penn Law. She has the best professor. She knows that she should identify herself as a Person of Disability, and demand for her disability rights, in three prongs.

I write this to advance the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to give them opportunities and access to financial independence and economic empowerment. 
We are all human beings with dignity and human rights. 
We all have the right to food security, clean water and sanitation, safety and security, basic health care, universal education, social inclusion, political expansion and economic empowerment.
It can be a beautiful world.