Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick
\u201cNew Starbucks CEO plans to pull barista shifts in stores every month,\u201d CNN announces. \u201cUber\u2019s CEO moonlighted as a driver and it changed the way he operates the company,\u201d Fortune insists. \u201cYour DoorDash driver? He\u2019s the company\u2019s co-founder,\u201d the Associated Press smirks.
Month after month or week after week, we seem to hear the same stories about bold corporate executives who\u2019ve decided to roll up their sleeves\u2014metaphorically or otherwise\u2014and join their lowest-level employees as a delivery driver, barista, or retail worker. Their stated goal: to \u201cstay connected\u201d to and \u201cbetter understand\u201d the company, its customers, and its workers.
While these attempts to foster and express empathy may appear noble on the surface, they\u2019re anything but. In reality, the CEO-as-worker stunt is an entirely self-serving project, creating a pretext for worker surveillance and a distraction from labor abuses like poverty wages and union-busting, all the while seeking to convince the public that corporate executives are honest, hardworking folks, Just Like You.
Today, we will be dissecting the past and present of Undercover Boss-style corporate maneuvers, looking at the ways in which the C-suiter-in-the-trenches routine advances the squishy concept of \u201cempathy\u201d in order to obscure and undermine the material needs and demands of labor.
Our guest is Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of the Worker's Justice Project, a community-based, workers\u2019 rights organization in New York City.