TRASHFUTURE - TRASHSUPPLEMENT to The Presidents Club: A Club for Presidents

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

Content note: sexual assault Riley (@raaleh) and Niamh (@Niamh_Mcintyre) sit down to re-hash the conversation from the original President's Club episode that got eaten by audio goblins. Specifically, we talk about Niamh's Vice article on sexual harrassment in the service economy. We go into why events like this are a hydra, and without robust labour protections given to casualised service workers to cauterise the wounds, will continue to spring up. Full episode later this week now that Riley's back from holiday! xoxo

Okay. There we go. I think that's got it. I mean, that's, that's one thing we are on this show. If nothing else, we are professionals about audio. Because it's not as though this conversation that we're having right now is arising from us maybe being less than professional about audio in the past. No, no, that's not what happened. Which of course I can assure our listeners is merely an artifact of hallowed antiquity and not something that currently affects the production staff of trash future. The podcast for how the future is trash, but this is bonus future. The podcast about how the future sometimes gets released as an addendum to a previous episode. I am joined now by Neve McIntyre, a journalist who was on our Presidents Club episode.

Who I invite to say hello now. Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me back again for even more content. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the content really does never sleep. You do have to keep putting it out. Yeah, that's so true. And then when you die, whoever has the most content wins. How much content do you reckon you've got at the moment? Do tweets count as content? Yeah, yeah, I can say. Good ones. I do not have much content. My tweets are rife with misspellings. And at the time of recording, every third tweet I do, is a request for a track suit. Okay, someone. Yeah. Oh, hence your new Twitter name. Yeah, someone by please buy riles a track suit and hence my pin tweet, which contains a link to an

Amazon wish list in which there is. I'm not going to buy you a track suit. I'm sorry. Okay, well, this interview is the track suit is so I can podcast at maximum efficiency and I can game harder than ever. Right. That sounds like noble endeavor. Earlier, I did I did sort of suggest there was going to be some casting back of minds into hallowed antiquity. And we are casting our minds back into several weeks ago, which it feels a lot longer. Yeah, yeah, it does. I've been on holiday between now and then so feels ages, ages away. You're lucky enough to have been on holiday. The rest of us have been here with the fucking news cycle. It's like, just like what three, three weeks ago, what? There was a, there was a president,

there was a club elected a president. What happened? We're dealing with all the fires that are currently here. But we were sort of, so for those not familiar, Neve wasn't on our president's club episode, the audio goblins gobbled it up. But we sort of figured that it would be, it wasn't enough just to spend the entire episode, you know, making fun of Brandon O'Neill as fun as that genuinely is. But to actually talk about some of, to actually get the real point of view on what was actually going on there and why, how sort of rife sort of like sexual assault is in the sort of gigged service industry. And your article on this was I think quite sort of, quite sort of succinct and high quality, all this. And so I was sort of very keen

to redo this talk, this chat. So can you remind our listeners exactly what kind of event it is that we're talking about? What is this president's club? Like old boys, kind of Victorian paternalist charity type auction thing where you bid for terrible things like surgery for your wife, for good causes. Yeah, really good banter from the president's. And every single president. And part of the draw for the event is young, attractive waitresses who haven't really been given all the details about what the event is and are put in a kind of really dangerous position in lots of ways in terms of the actual contractual nature of their work by signing a NDA or the fact that it's zero hours and there's just not really any kind of institutional

sort of accountability structures there down to the fact that on the night the girls weren't allowed to have their phones. So obviously it transpired that a lot of them were harassed and assaulted in that event. I mean, I have your article up here. It says the staff on the night were completely violated, told to wear skimpy black outfits by their agency before being groped sexually harassed and propositioned. But to really confront the exploitation of young women, we have to look a little bit closer to home in the bullying in baddies. So these, you know, sort of walrus like Tory Grandi is covered in hair grease and gold rings of pop mythology. Like you say, these guys are very pantomime and they're very easy to, hey, but the problem

within the president's club and the problem with the kind of stories about assault and harassment that are coming out as part of the me to movement are only partly explained by the behaviors of individual perpetrators. And it would be much more effective to examine the power structures in which these things happen. And that doesn't just happen at like fancy dining societies in Mayfair. It happens all the time in, you know, your high street pub or wherever because employees fundamentally don't have the collective power to to meaningfully deal with instances of assault. So in this case, the girls who worked at the event and the kind of events that I used to do that were along these kind of lines, we were all on

on zero hours. And that meant that we were instantly disposable. And there was a constant reminder of like how how disposable you were. So if you kind of complained or kicked up fast about something like this, it was kind of like, strongly, strongly implied that you could be fired. And that's because because of the nature of this precarious work, there aren't any of the kind of, yeah, traditional accountability structures that you would get in a more formalized workplace. Yeah, you use the word impunity here. You say powerful men believe they were active with impunity. While women knew they risked losing their pay or their job if they complained. There's there's there's such a power imbalance between the rich men that attend these

kind of events who have have access to, you know, lawyers and feel comfortable negotiating those kind of systems where as these are like low paid workers who aren't unionized or otherwise kind of empowered to take action against against men like that. So it really sort of speaks to, I think, something that comes up again and again, is that these the systems of laws and contracts that sort of govern worker relationships, especially in casualized employment. Every time we talk about these on the show, it sort of comes back down to the idea that these protections can't really be used by anyone except those who can afford to access them. You know, the the Tory Grandi, who grabs your

ass at the president's club, he can protect himself very effectively from what otherwise might be a very legitimate complaint, simply because he can bury you in lawyers. Right. Yeah, he's I know, I guess you saw that when the the government introduced employment tribunal fees over here, which has now since been overturned. But yeah, that was a super clear example of there being like a very high cost barrier for entry into those kind of like official official channels. But even then you I imagine it would be very difficult to get a labor tribunal going because the work is so casualized and people are so desperate that they'll just that they'll just if you say you don't you're not comfortable being you know, being treated like this, they'll

just find someone who is yeah, or someone in the case of the president's club, it seems like someone who doesn't know what to expect. There's a highly transient and highly replaceable workforce is going to be in a super dangerous position. And then also I guess in kind of in casualized work where there's some form of a rating system or whatever for your service is kind of another way of of cementing that imbalance because then you're you know, kind of relying on someone to say that your service has been in of a certain level for your to continue to keep working there. So there's even a greater kind of disincentive for complaining about somebody being a freak. And I get this is again, I think a liberal

canard that we kind of deal with relatively and disprove relatively frequently. In fact, almost in every episode, especially when we talk about labor, which is the idea that that in in in in society now, most economic activity takes place between sort of freely consenting partners agreeing to do business not under duress is an utter fucking fiction. That every every interaction, whether it's between the staff and the and and the agency or the staff and the people they're serving is highly coerced. Definitely, definitely my experience of this kind of work. And then I guess it's interesting then, like the sin in the sort of days and weeks that followed the president's club, there was

a lot of the debate became kind of an anti sex work kind of thing about how, yeah, how like sex workers were like routinely coerced into doing these terrible things. And then, like you say, it's like, yeah, all all of this kind of shitty, badly paid work is coercive, but it's kind of a singular and also very liberal version to to sex work, which they see as coercive as opposed to all other forms of precarious work. Fucking lips, the lips. In this gig economy, I'll never make enough to own the lips. I can only rent the lips. I know. Thank you. Thank you. So you mentioned earlier that you have some say this is your experience. So can you talk a little more about your experience of working in

these these kinds of jobs? I know what you say in your article that you were an abysmal waitress. Yeah, no, for real. I was so bad. I'm like a bit dyspatic. And I have really bad spatial awareness. And you often have to carry a lot of fragile things on these jobs. And I'm not good at carrying fragile things. I'll I'll I'll I'll share now I worked at a pub for two shifts before I was asked to not work there anymore. And the first time I ever took a card payment, I sort of did it so overzealously that we're using the card I missed the slot and then push the card machine out of my hand and broke it. Wow. That is that's pretty impressive payment number one. They're not that yeah. See, I smashed a good few champagne flutes in my time, but like a car machine is quite hard

to quite hard to smash. That's quite yeah, a skill. Okay, so I have interjected. Yes, if we could talk a little more about your experiences of this kind of work and being an abysmal waitress, like an abysmal but sexy waitress. Yeah, that's that's what's on my CV. Holy shit. That's definitely my CV now as well abysmal and sexy. Like like a hot BLs above. Like a thick as shit. Yeah, so like I used to when I was at university would do waitressing jobs because you could fit it around degree stuff quite easily. But then through doing standard agency catering jobs, someone told me about these ones that you could do if they deemed that you are attractive enough and they paid

much, much better. It was like the difference between minimum wage, which at the time was like six pounds, 20 or something and like 10, 10, 11, sometimes 12 pound an hour, which was, you know, like nearly doubles. So it seemed worth it. But yeah, they were often so and then you would like every every job you had to send a photo of yourself, which presumably went to somebody on the client side to see whether you fit the like aesthetic of that event or whatever. And you it was they got paid way more. It was a lot harder because you had to wear high heels, which are really uncomfortable. And you especially when you're an abysmal sexy waitress. And then yeah, they they were often full of very entitled and well paid dicks who I guess I was reasonably lucky. I never really

experienced anything really, really terrible on the same level as some of the stuff that came out about the President's Club. But yeah, I talked about my article once when I finished a shift. And three guys came over to me and wanted to continue the party. And I had been working for like 13 hours and really did not want to continue the party. And one of them kind of basically squared up to me and spat on my face and it was really horrible. But like it didn't even because you have a different manager on every job basically. And you don't really have any kind of meaningful senior person within the agency is just an anonymous like email address who sends you to your jobs. It just didn't even like occur to me to tell anyone about it because you just have so

little sense of human contact is just so anonymized and depersonalized that I couldn't I couldn't even think of a single person that I could have told which yeah, which obviously also plays into the whole precarious and transient kind of vibe. But so yeah, and then after a few more jobs, I just got another job because I was able to but obviously lots of other people. I yeah, it's a big privilege that I didn't have to like continue doing the work that I found kind of gross and boring. When what's really sort of astonishing, especially with no, you know, sorry, you know what, it's actually it's not it's regrettably not astonishing. It's upsetting, but it's not astonishing is that sort of in your in your article, you say, you know, since the story

broke, men have been scraping their jaws off the floor, being mortified all over social media, and that essentially it feels and like from what you're telling me, it's just people don't really know this stuff is going on and almost can't believe it. I think yeah, if you've if you've worked in hospitality, like, you know that this this goes on all the time and I don't know, I actually think I'm not sure like how kind of how how genuine sometimes the the shock that people are expressing. I think I think a lot of a lot of people do know that this is going on in their workplace or in their friendship groups or whatever. But we often kind of use shock and indignation as a way of absolving ourselves from thinking about

you know, ways in which we're kind of our behaviors are in any way complicit in in these kind of cultures. So yeah, sometimes I think the the shock can be a bit disingenuous. Well, it's it's it's defensive, right? Yeah, I think that makes I mean, again, that makes regrettable sense. It's why you know, it's it's why it's why I've sort of corrected myself earlier. I'm I'm it's it's you you're not astonished because of course, you know, of course, that's what people would would would want to would want to put together. They'd want to put that together for them. So they want to put together events where they can just sort of enjoy the impunity that they seem to have and they want to enjoy it in every possible way.

And they want to do it in these people live a life without consequences. And the other thing that again is not surprising but utterly regrettable is that it's completely dropped off the news cycle at this point. Like I don't I think a couple people might have lost jobs. But other than that, you know, the impunities that you that sort of you describe and so on is it's still there. Yeah, I know for sure. I mean, there was yeah, I remember there was about one one day where there was calls for like that Tory minister to resign. I can't I can't remember his name now. He's not even a minister. He's someone quite junior. And then yeah, yeah, I forget his name. But and then there was a couple of like bad headlines. And now he's obviously still in

his job because he left he left early. That's the main thing. He he let he went and thought it was terrible and he left early and he was shocked at what he saw. Oh, yeah, that's that's what I find hilarious is that I don't understand how this party was even going. Everyone just left as soon as they got there. Yeah, no, that's exactly. Yeah, there was only there's only two people left. I would never do such a thing. I'm I'm an upstanding I'm an upstanding guy. I I didn't abuse anyone. I only voted in 2013 to reveal repeal section 40 of the Equality Act, which places a legal duty on employers to protect their employees from abuse by third party clients. And that's that's the thing. It's like sort of having these sort of formal protections from abuse

from against third party clients and so on is one thing. But without recognizing the sort of incredible unequal access to justice that we're dealing with, something like that only goes so far. Right. You know, if you have if you have a legal recourse, right, like you can use it if you can use it, you can use it if you don't really need the job. But yeah, unless you're like, yeah, unless you're as you were saying, you know, basically economically empowered enough to like be able to say no, then, you know, it's it's as coercive as anything. It's just coercion with the kind of respectable veneer of a contractual consent sort of slapped on top of it. And that's that's like where unionization comes in and like having having the sense of collective power,

which and I think there are some some sort of the the newer unions like United Voice of the World and IWGV have been doing a lot of really good work on unionizing kind of gig economy or outsourced workers. And I think what yeah, what you're saying about, you know, these channels might exist, but unless you have the capacity and the time and the money to kind of pursue them, that you see a lot with when there have been court cases around kind of gig, gig economy work. And the judges often rule that actually gig economy workers do have the same rights, like say the right to a minimum wage that employees do, but it's just the fact that you know, there's it needs an incredible amount of kind of labor and capacity

and knowledge to pursue those avenues. So yeah, I think that that that gap is definitely really important part of the problem. I think it's not controversial at least among our audience to say unionize fucking everything. Yeah, for sure. And on that note, I just want to say thank you, Neve, for bearing with how shitty we are at audio and coming back on to explain if you like the more sort of actually informative end of our president's club discussion for a couple weeks ago. Cool, thanks a lot for rehabbing me. All right, Neve, thank you and to our audience later.