6 ★ FT Weekend 9 November/10 November 2019From his late teens, Vladimir Bukovsky
fashioned himself into an ever-sharper
dissident thorn, enduring a total of 12
years in prisons, camps and “psychiat-
ric” institutions for refusing to compro-
mise with a Soviet communist regime
that he saw as a conspiracy against
human freedom.
Bukovsky, who has died aged 76, was
among the most unsparing of the dissi-
dent exiles, rivalling the better-known
Alexander Solzhenitsyn n his loathingi
of the system that had imprisoned them
both, that was coupled with a distrust of
the west for a refusal to see the scope of
the evil manifest in the system’s works.
He made use of his various periods of
imprisonment to illuminate the Brezh-
nev-era means for suppression of dissi-
dent criticism, arguing that the brutali-
ties of forced feeding through thick
pipes forced up the nose or being
required to sleep on an iron bed frame
were more effective than the use of
medieval instruments.
His experience of these methods put
him, unusually, on the liberal side of the
opposition to the methods employed in
the US such as waterboarding and sleep
deprivation to break prisoners in its
jails. “If you cynically outsource tortureto contractors and foreign agents, how
can you possibly be surprised if an 18-
year-old in the Middle East casts a jaun-
diced eye toward your reform efforts
there?”he wrote in 2005.
But his greater mission was to
unearth, in the post-Communist 1990s,
documents showing how deeply the
KGB had inserted itself abroad by using
western communist parties and other
leftists and liberals inclined to greater
co-operation with the Soviet bloc in the
name of detente. These, he thought,
were near-traitors.
He saw communism as unchanging in
its lust for power, and refused to accept
the reforms ofMikhail Gorbachev, the
last general secretary of the Communist
party of the Soviet Union, as anything
other than a snare for credulous west-
erners. Briefly lionised by Boris Yeltsin,
the first Russian president — he was
considered for the post of vice-president
— he soon came to see the faltering of
radical social change as a sign that the
KGB was again controlling Russia.
That view claimed eventual justifica-
tion in the presidencies of Vladimir
Putin: but it was not confined to Russia.
He viewed the EU as the foundation for
an authoritarian superstate, writing abook with his long-term collaborator,
Pavel Stroilov, calledEUSSR, in 2004.
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky
was born in 1942 in the town of Belebey,
in what is now the Russian Republic of
Bashkortostan, his family having been
evacuated there during the war. Soon
after their return, he was expelled from
school for criticising the Young Commu-
nist League, but gained entrance to Mos-
cow State University to study biology.
There, he was increasingly drawn into
dissident activity, and frequently sent to
jail. At his trial in 1967 for organising a
demonstration, he confronted the
judge, saying — in wordsthat were
widely picked up abroad — that “the
people on the street will remember that
this forgotten method of protest still
exists. And you, citizen judge, will not
forget either this case or us”.
Stripped of Soviet citizenship and
deported in 1976, in exchange for the
general secretary of the Communist
party of Chile, Luis Corvalán, he made
his home in Cambridge, England, and
took a masters degree in biology. He
wrote a memoir,To Build a Castle 1978),(
and threw himself into exiled life, lob-
bying politicians and journalists on
issues of Soviet flouting of human rights.In 1983, he co-founded a group that
became the American Foundation for
Resistance International, with figures
such as the writer Saul Bellow and diplo-
mat Jeane Kirkpatrick on its advisory
board, dedicated to promoting protests
in communist states and opposing links
with their governments. He met a range
of political figures, mainly on the right,
and was for a short time an adviser to
UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
His efforts to have Communist-era
leaders stand trial for their violations of
human rights made little progress —
though his 1995 book,Judgement in Mos-
cow, was a trove of documented efforts
on the part of these leaders to subvert
democracy.
As he became ill in the past few years,
he was accused of hosting indecent
images of children on his computer — a
charge he denied and put down to Rus-
sian hackers. The case never came to a
full trial, because he was judged too
unwell. His supporters dismissed the
unproven accusations, arguing that they
could not dim the light he shone, at con-
stant loss to his freedom and health, on
an ideologythat he ranked among the
most vicious in the world.
John LloydObituary
Dissident who
shone a light
on abuse in the
Soviet system
Vladimir Bukovsky
Human rights activist and writer
1942-‘The people on the street
will remember that this
forgotten method of
protest still exists and
you... will not forget us’
Bukovsky illuminated the Brezhnev-
era methods of suppressing criticismNavigating the new rules
I
n May, the race for the Democratic
presidential nomination took an
unlikely detour through the
McDonald’s drive-through.
Candidates including Vermont
Senator Bernie Sanders, New Jersey
Senator Cory Booker and Texas Con-
gressman Julian Castro adjusted their
campaign schedules to join workers at
McDonald’s protests cross the country.a
The headline grievance was a com-
plaint about low pay. But they were also
protesting about another issue: claims
of rampant sexual abuse of women in
McDonald’s restaurants.
These rallies may have presaged the
downfall this week of the company’s
chief executive and embroiled a corpo-
ration that likes to view itself as an
exemplar of wholesome Midwestern
values into an anguished public debate
about how companies should manage
workplace romances inthe #MeToo era.
Steve Easterbrook, a 52-year-old
native of Watford in England is credited
with helping McDonald’s navigatethe
demand orf healthy eatingand reviving
profits growth since he became chief
executive in 2015. Itsshares have nearly
doubled onhis watch.
Yet Mr Easterbrook was sacked on
Sunday after the company revealed that
he had been involved in a romantic rela-
tionship with an employee. Mr Easter-
brook is divorced and McDonald’s has
said the relationship was consensual.
The company’s global head ofhuman
resourcesfollowed his boss out the door
a day later.
Mr Easterbrook was hardly the first
McDonald’s employee to have found
romance at the office.
Founder Ray Kroc was at a conven-
tion in 1968 selling franchises for his
fast-growing southern California burger
chain when he encountered Joan Smith,
then married to one of his franchisees.
After a long and boozy night, the two
would end up leaving their spouses and
running off together — seemingly with-
out ill-effect for McDonald’s drive
toward global fast-food dominance.
Times have changed. Today’s workers
spend long hours in offices where, in
many cases, the old hierarchies and
standards that governed behaviour are
fast melting away. After alternatively
ignoring it or trying to stamp it out,
many companies have come to accept
that desire — like gossip and jealousy —
is an inevitable feature of office life.
The challenge, then, is to devise poli-
cies to police fraternisation so that rela-
tionships do not become anabuse of
power. Even consenting office relation-
ships can corrode an organisation by
distracting employees and fuelling sus-
picions about how certain executives
have advanced their careers.
Consent itself can be ambiguous.
“People in positions of power tend to be
oblivious to the influence they wield
over others because they are less likely
to take the other party’s perspective,”
says Vanessa Bohns, a social psychology
professor at Cornell University.Abuses of power
As companies attempt to draft new
rules, they are doing so in the glare of
lurid claims emerging bout men sucha
as film mogulHarvey Weinsteinusing
their professional power to coerce
women into sexual relationships.
“There are a lot of businesses looking
to see what their policy is — and if one
exists,” one corporate adviser says of the
panic that has followed Mr Easter-
brook’s ousting.
To Paul Bernard, a veteran New York
human resources specialist, the old
codes — if far from perfect — were at
least nderstood. Nowadays, “the rulesuof other top Alphabet executives — were
already well known. What appears to
have changed is the Alphabet board’s
awareness of the broader climate.
“Boards are now asking themselves: Is
this consistent with our culture? Is this
how we want to be portrayed?” says
Johnny C Taylor, resident of the Soci-p
ety for Human Resource Management.
Mr Taylor saw the complexity of the
issue when he took an informal sample
of opinion about McDonald’s at a confer-
ence this week. Older men tended to
understand the company’s decision.
What surprised him was that many of
the younger female attendees believed
the company had overreacted.
“This newer generation is saying: If
it’s not sexual harassment, if it’s not
quid-pro-quo, they should be able to do
what they want,” he concludes.
Some 36 per cent of workers admitted
to having engaged in a romance with a
colleague, according to the Career-
Builder recruitment site. Some of them
even worked out. The office, after all, is
where Bill and Melinda Gates and
Barack and Michelle Obama found love.
Mr Easterbrook’s expulsion has cer-
tainly prompted bewilderment in
Japan, where long working hours mean
the office is by far the most common
place to meet a romantic partner, and
magazines publish rankings of which
companies have the most internal mar-
riages. As one ex-chief executiveputs it:
if office romance was banned, nobody in
Japan would ever get married.
In France and elsewhere in western
Europe, executives and politicians arerarely bound by McDonald's-style rules
on personal relationships, and any
attempt to impose them would mark a
revolutionary change in corporate pol-
icy and social attitudes.A special case
Yet there are reasons beyond American
puritanism to explain why McDonald’s
took a hard line with Mr Easterbrook.
Few companies have found it harder to
distinguish betweenconsenting rela-
tionships and harassment.
McDonald’s olicy forbids employeesp
from dating or having a sexual relation-
ship with anyone with whom they have
a direct or indirect reporting relation-
ship. “It is not appropriate to show
favouritism or make business decisions
based on emotions or friendships rather
than on the best interests of the com-
pany,” its policy states.
For Mr Easterbrook, the chief execu-
tive, that pretty much ruled out the
workplace as a dating pool. His failure to
comply may have been more sensitive
as the company has increasingly found
itself in the crosshairs of activists, who
are campaigning for higher wages — the
Fight for $15 — and also against sexual
harassment at McDonald’s.
Workers at the chain have iled nearlyf
50 lawsuits and complaints with the US
Equal Employment Opportunity Com-
mission, which enforceslaws on work-
place discrimination. They allege grop-
ing, lewd comments, and propositions
for sex. In some cases those who
reportedsexual harassment saythey
were fired or suffered retaliation.A complaint rom a 17-year-old highf
school student working for $11.75 an
hour said that she was subject to
unwanted advances from an older male
co-worker at a McDonald’s in Cortland,
New York, including cornering her in
tight spaces and trying to kiss her. A
manager told her: “If you’re freaking out
so bad about it, stop talking about it so it
won’t get worse.”
“It’s a brutal reality across the fast
food industry that at least one in four
workers — especially women of colour
working low-wage jobs — experience
sexual harassment as a routine part of
their job,” Sharyn Tejani, director of the
TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, said in
May. “Every day, workers are forced to
choose between getting a pay cheque or
speaking up about their abuse.” Mem-
bers of Congress have written to McDon-
ald’s to demand that the company do
more to prevent sexual harassment.
In August, the fast-food chain
unveiled its response. It created a train-
ing programme aimed at all 850,
employees — not just managers as an
earlier one had done — that included
videos and in-person discussions about
unconscious bias, bullying, and harass-
ment. An anonymous telephoneline to
report incidents was also established.
There was a catch: The training would
be required only at the roughly 5 per
cent of McDonald’s restaurants owned
by the corporation. It was left to fran-
chise owners who operate the rest to
decide whether to use the programme.
Activists were not impressed. “This is
a company where the franchisee agree-
ment is so specific that they mandate
that everyone use a specialised gun to
put sauce on the Big Mac, so as to ensure
that every single burger has the exact
same amount of sauce,” says Linda Sea-
brook, a lawyer atFutures Without Vio-
lence, a non-profit group. “Isn’t keeping
the people who work for you safe as
important as the amount of sauce?”
McDonald’s Corporation says it
strives to operate “safe and respectful
workplaces in communities throughout
the US and around the world”.
Dorothy Stingley, a leader of a US fed-
eration of franchisees who herself owns
16 outlets in Arizona, says the company
is actively working to encourage fran-
chisees to takethe training.
“It is true that it is easier for McDon-
ald’s corporation to mandate that we all
use a certain blue spatula and then send
out people to count the spatulas,” says
Ms Stingley, a 67 year-old ho employsw
two of her children and two of her
grandchildren. “But changing hearts
and minds to really reform the culture is
another ballgame. It’s much harder
to do.”
Even the punishment meted out
against Mr Easterbrook struck some
experts as strangely lenient, sincehis
$37m of stock options remain intact.
“What does that say to people on the
front lines of McDonald’s, which is a
company known to have a real problem
with sexual harassment?” says Paula
Brantner, a lawyerat Workplace Fair-
ness, a workers’ rights non-profitgroup.
Ms Brantner warns that sweeping
prohibitions on office relationships
merely isk driving them underground,r
creating a climate of secrecy and suspi-
cion. “Companies need to be thinking
beyond: what are my legal risks in terms
of liability?” she says.
Mr Taylor agrees. Before a company
establishes a policy, he says, it needs to
first understand its culture and values.
“The board has to sit down and say:
what do we stand for?” he says. “There is
no one-size-fits all.”
In other words, it is not like a McDon-
ald’s hamburger.F T B I G R E A D. MANAGEMENT
The sacking of the McDonald’s boss is more than puritanism. The company also faces sexual harassment
cases that have put it at the centre of the debate over policing office romances in the #MeToo era.
By Joshua Chaffin and Leila Abboud
are much more nebulous,” Mr Bernard
observes. In particular, he points to “a
cognitive dissonance” between compa-
nies’ desire to create a permissive cul-
ture to appeal to young talent and their
sudden fear of#MeToo litigation.
“Boards are very wary,” he says.
According to The Conference Board,
five of the 12 S&P 500 chief executives
who were fired last year were #MeToo-
related. Indeed, days afterMr Easter-
brook’s sacking, the board of Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, revealed
that it was investigating how executives
handled sexual harassment complaints,
with a particular focus on the company’s
chief legal officer David Drummond.
What struck some observers is that
the facts about Mr Drummond’s rela-
tionships with co-workers — and those‘People in
positions of
power tend to
be oblivious
to the
influence
they wield
over others
because they
are less likely
to take the
other party’s
perspective’A McDonald’s in
Lynwood,
California,
reversed its
arches for
international
women’s day last
year. The
company this
week sacked its
chief executive,
Steve
Easterbrook,
above, for
having a
consensual
affair with an
employee— FT
montage; Bloomberg‘It is a brutal
reality across
the fast food
industry that
at least one in
four workers
experience
sexual
harassment
as a routine
part of their
job’Fast food workers protesting outside a McDonald’s
restaurant over wages and sexual harassment Reuters—NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Features Time: 8/11/2019- 19:02 User:nicola.davison Page Name:BIGPAGE, Part,Page,Edition:USA, 6, 1