OPINION: This morning I read that Victoria Beckham is laying off staff at her fashion label because of the brand’s predicted drop in profit this year. And while you might think that this would be a sad piece about people losing their livelihoods during one of the most difficult social and economic periods in living history, it’s actually a really positive move, explains Vicky B.
“It feels very relevant now to take things back to basics,” she told reporters. “It has fostered great energy and a real sense of creativity amongst the teams.” So sorry-not-sorry then, because it’s actually a great result for both the business and the shareholders.
Perhaps I have woken up in a mood for anarchy, but my tolerance for this level of baloney is at an all time low.
In this period of momentous change, when we are looking at all of our existing structures and asking, “Is this fair, is this right?”, how can we excuse these kinds of decisions? How can we say that it’s ok for someone who is richer than God to make a choice to protect her own wealth at the expense of other people’s ability to earn any kind of income?
Now, of course, I don’t know anything about these people who have lost their jobs. If you are working at a luxury London atelier then maybe you are already fabulously wealthy in your own right. There’s probably not a direct career path into this line of work for people from impoverished backgrounds. Clearly, I am taking a very broad view of a situation that I do not know the details of, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping me from feeling incensed.
And nor am I trying to take a cheap shot at a former pop star here, because generally speaking I am very on board with all the Spices. I once chased the Spice World double-decker tour bus around the streets of downtown Sydney and it was a really happy day for me.
Posh was without a doubt the weakest link who made a chunk of her fortune from lip-synching, but she has subsequently proven herself to be very good at making trouser suits so credit where credit is due.
What I would really like to see though is CEOs and other people in positions of power stop presenting redundancies as a positive story for their businesses. At least be up front and admit that after a good hard think you’ve decided to put money ahead of people – because that’s how this whole game works.
And yes we are living in a late capitalist society where these are the primary levers that are available to pull but also, quick question, where is the humanity? Will we really go to our graves thinking that ensuring that rich people stay rich at the expense of those less privileged is an understandable and completely acceptable course of action?
I know the answers to these issues are not simple and I get that changing the system in which we have all been complicit is not an easy transition but will we really look back and think that these types of actions and decisions were perfectly ok? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no.
