Slave driver Truss, says British worker's need 'more graft'!

 

Slave Driver - Liz Truss

Liz Truss, a fanatical free-market ideologue, and slave driver, co-authored the 2012 book 'Britannia Unchained'. One passage in the book says that British worker's are "among the worst idlers in the world." 

When Truss was questioned about this remark, she blamed the infamous passage on Dominic Raab, who is backing Rishi Sunak, to be the next UK Prime Minister. But a  leaked audio recording has now revealed that Truss has said that British worker's needed 'more graft'. 

The book argued that Britain rewarded laziness and avoided risk. The authors wrote that, "the average Singaporean worked two hours and 20 minutes a day longer than the average Brit." They also lauded the Chinese for their rigourous education standards and intense spirit of competition. Dubai is praised for its lack of regulation. 

Polly Toynbee, the Guardian journalist, wrote that the book revealed "an un-nuanced Darwinian attitude" and that many of the views expressed in the book, seem to have been derived from conversations with "industrious London cabbies." 

Critics have pointed out that the book is relentlessly negative about feckless British worker's and does not deal with how poor management and low capital investment, are linked to low productivity. It's well known that low pay - something that Britain is notorious for - can act as a break on productivity because firms will use cheap labour rather than invest in machinery and higher technology, to improve productivity. For years it was said that the French could produce more in four days than the British could in five days. The book also ignores human rights abuses in some of the country's that it praises. 

In 2010, in Apple's forbidden city, in Shenzhen, China, where they make iPhones, there were a spate of suicides linked to low pay and brutal working conditions at the Foxconn City industrial park, where unhappy worker's started killing themselves by throwing themselves off the buildings.  There were 18 reported suicide attempts that year and 14 confirmed deaths. A Reuters journalist was once dragged out of a car and beaten up for taking photos outside the factory walls. 

Foxconn is said to be the largest single employer in mainland China; there are said to be 1.3 million people on its payroll. Working conditions at the Foxconn plant have been described as "high pressure" and management are said to be "aggressive and duplicitous" often scolding worker's for being too slow and making promises they don't keep. A former Foxconn employee told a reporter, "It's not a good place for human beings." 

Are these the sort of working conditions that British workers can expect if Liz Truss becomes the next Prime Minister of the UK? Are British worker's going to be turned into doormats for billionaires? Is this what she means by British workers needing "more graft"?