In this season of quizzing, here’s a real head-scratcher. Can you name the big British employer that punished staff for boycotting a small fraction of their work by taking all of their pay for each day of their boycott? So that even while employees did their other tasks, putting in weeks of work, their pay packets were pilfered, month after month, from high summer until almost the start of advent. Some had to take extra jobs, others drew on hardship funds or stuck essential bills on credit cards. Amid a cost of living crisis and with Christmas looming, the Great Wage Robbery carried on. But who was responsible?
Perhaps your imagination has entered some grim distribution hangar, or is hovering above a building site. Or maybe you’re thinking of a care home bullying its migrant workers who are fuzzy on their rights and scared of speaking up. You’re seeing ruthless, rapacious big-C Capital opening its giant, bloody maw wide to chew on some low-paid and underqualified labour. Right?
