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Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick

Added 2023-08-02 16:39:15 +0000 UTC

“New Starbucks CEO plans to pull barista shifts in stores every month,” CNN announces. “Uber’s CEO moonlighted as a driver and it changed the way he operates the company,” Fortune insists. “Your DoorDash driver? He’s the company’s co-founder,” the Associated Press smirks.

Month after month or week after week, we seem to hear the same stories about bold corporate executives who’ve decided to roll up their sleeves—metaphorically or otherwise—and join their lowest-level employees as a delivery driver, barista, or retail worker. Their stated goal: to “stay connected” to and “better understand” the company, its customers, and its workers.

While these attempts to foster and express empathy may appear noble on the surface, they’re 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 “empathy” 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’ rights organization in New York City.

Guest

Ligia Guallpa (@LigiaGuallpa) is Executive Director of the Worker's Justice Project, a community-based, workers’ rights organization in New York City.

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Show Notes

Happy 10th anniversary to Undercover Boss, the most reprehensible propaganda on TV

Alex McLevy | February 5, 2020 | AV Club

‘Undercover Boss’: disciplining workers for fun and profit

John-Henry Harter | February 17, 2017 | Canadian Dimension

Starbucks informs workers at two stores of closures, union claims retaliation

Kate Rogers | August 23, 2022 | CNBC

California Labor Commission rules an Uber driver is an employee, which could clobber the $50 billion company

Alyson Shontell | June 17, 2015 | Insider

After another controversy, is it still worth it for companies to be on ‘Undercover Boss’?

Emily Yahr | February 17, 2015 | The Washington Post

'Undercover Boss' CEO Fires Employee For Not Wearing Bikini On Camera, Offers Another A Boob Job

Alanna Vagianos | December 29, 2014 | Huffington Post

The Ludlow Massacre Still Matters

Ben Mauk | April 18, 2014 | The New Yorker

Reality TV Left This CEO 'A Raw Nub'

Rachel Feintzeig | January 24, 2014 | The Wall Street Journal

CEO Pay and the Great Recession [PDF]

Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati & Kevin Shih | September 1, 2010 | Institute for Policy Studies

How Undercover Boss raised US unions' ire

Andrew Clark | April 17, 2010 | The Guardian

'Undercover Boss' review: Literally crappy reality TV

Ken Tucker | February 7, 2010 | Entertainment Weekly

‘Undercover Boss’ not paying employees

Sean Daly | January 11, 2010 | New York Post

The Myth of the Robber Barons

Burton W. Folsom, Jr. | 1987 / 1991 | Young America's Foundation

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can find transcripts of past episodes and News Briefs here.

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