For this isn’t a time of crisis for Tyson. The same day the company made the announcement, Bloomberg News quoted Garrett Dolan, an executive, as saying that the firm had been actively recruiting from the waves of migrants who have ended up in cities such as New York seeking asylum. Tyson Foods, which already employs some 42,000 immigrants, said it had placed some of the migrants to work at its plants in Tennessee. “We would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them,” Dolan said. The dual headlines caused a storm on social media, with many calling for a boycott over claims that the company was replacing Americans with immigrants who will work for less. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance described the company’s actions as the “decimation of the American Dream”.

Tyson Foods is far from alone in acting in this way. Many corporations have called for increased immigration as a solution for rapidly rising wages. And several business groups are also pressing policymakers to support programmes to extend legal protections to those who entered the country without documentation. “Any pro-immigration policies that would be implemented will benefit us on increasing the availability of labour throughout the country,” said Andrew Masterman, the former head of Brightview, the nation’s largest commercial landscaping company, when pressed by investors two years ago on how he would respond to upward “wage inflation”.

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“And that’s whether that’s… immigrant labour that exists in the country or whether it’s guest immigrant labor coming in,” he added, according to a transcript of his remarks. “We’re fans of that.” In 2022, Scott Salmirs, the president of ABM Industries, a nationwide building maintenance and janitorial firm, raised similar concerns on an earnings call. “The labour pressures we are currently experiencing are largely unprecedented,” said Salmirs. He cited reduced immigration, historically low unemployment and sudden demand from an economy in rebound for raising wages.

It’s a direct result of the pandemic. The closure of the border and reduction in foreign-worker visas has led to a tight labour market and the most rapid wage increases seen in a generation, particularly among the low-paid. The current numbers at the border, therefore, while a political nightmare, pose an economic opportunity to business interests. And corporate interests have not sat idly by — they have started marshalling their resources to lobby Washington for change, especially on immigration policy.

The Business Roundtable (BRT) and the US Chamber of Commerce, the influential lobby groups that helped mobilise support for the 2017 Trump corporate tax cuts, have turned to immigration reform to confront labour market dynamics. In meetings with Congress, the BRT has promoted its agenda of increased agricultural worker visas and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programmes, the latter of which grant certain asylum-seeking migrants the legal right to work in the United States. The Chamber, meanwhile, backs the legislation known as H.R.16, which gives long-term recipients of TPS the ability to obtain permanent resident status.

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The BRT represents the chief executives of the largest businesses in America. And its board includes many firms reliant on low-wage labour, including McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Walmart, and Yum! Brands. Donnie King, the CEO of Tyson Foods, is also a member. Meanwhile, Suzanne Clark, the president of the Chamber, has cited “wage growth” as a top concern for her business members, and has previously called for a doubling of the rate of legal immigration. Business lobbyists were quick to hail President Biden’s decision last year to extend TPS protections for over 470,000 Venezuelan migrants, and the administration has since announced an extension for programmes granted to nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua.

Business groups with a financial stake in immigration policy are also deeply entwined with the pro-immigration activist base. The National Immigration Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) are prominent examples of this relationship. And Tyson Foods was among the sponsors of LULAC’s February legislative conference, which focused in part on the need to pass greater immigration protections to migrants. The event featured recorded messages from several Democratic lawmakers and a speech from Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra.

The National Immigration Forum, which has organised coalition efforts to expand TPS programmes and other immigration reforms, similarly received financial support last year from Amazon, Tyson Foods, Walmart, the BRT, the Chamber, and Marek, a construction firm. Tyson Foods’s in-house lobbyist, Nora Venegas, is also active in several immigration reform groups. “Tyson Food supports bipartisan immigration policy solutions,” said Vega, at a press conference with other immigration reform leaders in 2021. “Whether our team members came as refugees or Temporary Protected Status, TPS, holders, we support policy solutions to provide them stability,” she added. Meanwhile, Tent Partnership for Refugees, a new group connecting migrants with employers, has formed alliances with dozens of employers around the country, including Brightview, Amazon, and Walmart. Tyson Foods, in a Tent press release, announced it would hire 2,500 refugees.

The Tyson Foods scandal eventually blew out: the company said its executive misspoke and denied any wrongdoing, while parts of the press downplayed the issue. “It’s not really news that Tyson hires many immigrant workers,” scoffed the Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler. Salon claimed those voicing concerns about corporations replacing Americans with foreign workers were “spinning a narrative” akin to a racist conspiracy.

Tyson Foods also moved to counter its critics. The company released a statement to Fox News clearing up “misinformation” about its hiring practices: “Any insinuation that we would cut American jobs to hire immigrant workers is completely false.” But while it is true that the company’s reported recruitment efforts are centred on those with legal authorisation to work, such as TPS holders, many did not enter the country legally. And many of the refugees who entered the country without documentation later gained legal status through the focused activism of business-funded immigration advocacy groups and business lobbying from interests such as Tyson Foods. The company is far from a bystander in the process.

And these vested interests are just one part of what constitutes a persistent oversight in discussion of mass migration: the role of the business lobby in shaping both migration law and the policies that some argue continue to attract those making the journey illegally. As is so often the case, the net result is the relegation of the lowest rungs of America’s working class to an afterthought, crushed beneath the imperatives of America’s biggest corporations.

For women with impressive careers, one legacy of mainstream feminism is that there’s almost nothing you can do that won’t incite people to think of the potential consequences for the rest of your sex. It’s just about the only area of public life left where your womanhood is reliably judged relevant to your fate. Perhaps you’ll get treated as an inspirational female role model, or perhaps — as Gill would have it — you’ll be a cautionary tale for other women. Either way, you won’t just get to be a person, birthing or otherwise.

Generally speaking though, Gill is right to be suspicious of the familiar trope of the “strong female role model”. For one thing, there’s rarely anything strong about it. It seems we can enjoy a thrillingly cut-throat, venal businesswoman as long as she is entirely imaginary — Shiv Roy from Succession comes to mind — but when it comes to the real thing, we apparently prefer them to present as boring, overtly worthy drips, madly hitting “like” on LinkedIn articles about the value of kindness in the workplace, when they are not otherwise busy saving the planet. (Newton-Smith herself says she is “passionate about… climate and biodiversity” in her Twitter bio.)

Meanwhile within the world of women’s magazines, websites and weekend supplements, a profitable sector devotes itself to imposing dewily soft-focused “inspiring” or “influential” role models upon the seething, sweaty mass of female wage slaves. Basic prerequisites include a photogenic bone structure, comparatively high levels of personal grooming and a willingness to comply with a vapid, generic narrative about your “positive impact” that will empty you of all individuality and spark, in the service of promoting various capitalism-friendly feminine ideals.

The two chief mechanisms of the Inspiration Industrial Complex are the awards ceremony and the list. Each is used to manipulate common enough female emotions such as competitiveness, anxiety and envy, but with a twist — it’s all in the name of sisterhood. Might you be a Woman of the Year; a Woman of the Future; a Woman of Vision; a Remarkable Woman; an Uplifting Woman; a Champion of Women or a Powerwoman? Lured in by the opportunities for networking and showing off, nominees dress up to the nines, neck free drinks, take selfies and rehearse heartfelt speeches about staying passionate about what you do, tackling imposter syndrome and paying it forward. Website editors will then make it all look as glamorous and enviable as possible, further demoralising poor saps sitting in canteens or office cubbyholes, scrolling through their half-hour lunch breaks.

The list, meanwhile, is another stiletto-like weapon of female socialisation, implicitly reminding the reader that she is only as good as her last assessment by faceless others. Whether you are a woman in cycling, hospitality, mining, tech, tourism, shipping, social enterprise, supply chain, finance, sustainability, cybersecurity, or Westminster, you’re never safe from being suddenly catapulted into the spotlight of some top 100 — or else cruelly denigrated by omission. Some lists will even rank you in relation to others in your field. The compilers at 100 Top Women in Shipping note that in their 2022 list, “some retained their previous places more or less”, which makes you wonder about the feelings of those who did not.

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Why do women do this to themselves, and to each other? For, I’ll wager, it is mostly women who are organising the awards and making the lists, not men. In most cases the ostensible motive is positive representation of women in male-dominated fields, though this goal doesn’t seem relevant to already female-heavy sectors like social enterprise or tourism. “You can’t be what you can’t see” goes the hackneyed phrase — but equally, if all you see is women tottering about in spike heels and ASOS workwear, ranked like show ponies, mindlessly regurgitating Brené Brown quotes about being authentic and daring to lead, it’s unclear how onlookers are supposed to be inspired. It hardly screams Nietzschean Übermensch, does it?

Women from the past are not safe from list-makers either. Presented as educational tools, lists such as “100 of the most inspiring women from the last 100 years” retrospectively translate complex, difficult, multifaceted human beings into gift card messages. Rosalind Franklin becomes “We have to celebrate our achievements, even when others don’t”; Virginia Woolf becomes “Speak your truth and you could inspire generations of writers”; Hillary Clinton — admittedly, sounding a bit like Napoleon — becomes “Even in the jaws of the most galling defeat, we must learn from our mistakes and carry on fighting for what we think is right”.

The truth is, nobody involved in these efforts is seriously interested in presenting good role models for other women, either in terms of ethics or efficiency — as is plain from the number of times Nicola Sturgeon has appeared on Women of the Year lists. If the three main elements of being an effective role model are, first, inspiring others to desire some goal for themselves; second, demonstrating the possibility of achieving that goal; and third, modelling behavioural skills for how to get there, then awards and lists do none of these things particularly well. Your best hope, rather, is to model yourself on someone you work or otherwise collaborate with, and not a glamorous stranger intoning meaningless platitudes into the ether.

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What rituals like these are really good at is circumscribing what counts as acceptable behaviour for women in whatever career field is being highlighted. Officially, what is celebrated are the sort of pink and fluffy values that might easily end up printed on a yoga sweatshirt: things like compassion, positivity, self-care, inner strength and authenticity. Perversely, though, the eventual result seems to be an increase in narcissism, envy, self-criticism, weakness and the slavish copying of others.

In real life, everyone knows that career success — whether for women or men — requires some degree of aggression, competitiveness, dishonesty and selfishness. Humans are hardwired to compete with each other for resources, after all, and socialisation can only transform the methods, not remove the trait entirely. In reality, women often resent the successes of other women rather than celebrate them. It is telling that Angela Rayner polls as men’s most popular politician, but only seventh with women — while men take all the spots above her.

Still, it seems that such facts can only be acknowledged by women when swiftly followed by self-chastisement. In this suffocating environment, characteristics like aggression and spite get shoved into what Carl Jung called the “shadow” — still present unconsciously, but explicitly disowned and projected onto others. We’ve all seen it — mixing sideswipes with excessive praise, picking fights while claiming innocent victimhood, finding quasi-objective reasons to criticise rivals, constructing “relatable” confessional narratives for social media with just the right level of humblebragging, and so on.

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The shadow side of glossy positivity discourse for women also includes the gossip website, where women go to savagely mock and deride other women under the guise of anonymity — and jolly good fun it looks too, as long as you aren’t the unfortunate subject being discussed. Bitching, backstabbing, gossiping, mobbing — all can make a workmate’s life hell and contribute to a toxic environment. Men do these things too but not as much, because masculine culture isn’t as focused on disavowing the originating traits in the first place.

So, what’s the solution? Tempting as it is to imagine an alternative workplace culture involving mandatory secret Fight Clubs for girls, the very least women can do is to stop sublimating our darker instincts into passive-aggressive rituals and ceremonies that ultimately make everyone feel worse. We could just admit to ourselves that we can be as angry, envious or competitive as the next bloke — without immediately feeling we have to confess the fact on Instagram, “educate” ourselves, chant self-help mantras, or otherwise atone for our sins. We could just — and hear me out, here — get on with our jobs. And if that’s not possible, then perhaps we could start giving out much crappier prizes. If any would-be awards organiser is interested, I hear there’s a warehouse full of Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Selected Speeches of Nicola Sturgeon going extra cheap at the moment.

It is, essentially, a new iteration of an old rule: the one stating that the person commonly to be found complaining most vociferously about a particular vice is the one disproportionately likely to be guilty of said vice.

Through decades past, this rule applied to people who were literally in the clerical class. It was, for instance (see the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien), the priest or bishop who denounced homosexuality in the most vociferous terms who would turn out to have their own peculiar interpretation of ‘the laying on of hands’, tending to revolve around the knees of young male seminarians.

And there is sense in this of course. Through overt displays of moral opprobrium, the petitioner imagines that everyone’s attention will be diverted. Through stressing their virtue overmuch, however, such people raise a perceptible flag to anyone with an eye for human hypocrisy.

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Today, of course, the clerical class is not the clergy. It is generally a rich, massively protected, metropolitan and often corporate or corporate-backed class which poses as the defender and then enforcer of all the easiest, least-controversial causes of the time. These shift, naturally, but today a person who wishes to cloak themselves in virtue will talk up their ‘anti-racism’ credentials; will talk about ‘feminism’ as though women’s rights have only just occurred to them; they will stress their green credentials; and of course they will rush to the defence of anyone who claims to identify as a tree or a hedgerow and assert that said person’s right to so identify is not just ancient and long-established but biologically incontrovertible. All give off immense warning-signs.

Among individuals who have recently come a cropper of this tendency has been the (to my mind) gratingly fake American talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen got a certain amount of credit at the woke bank years before anyone else, by coming out as a lesbian. Back then, it was claimed that she risked her whole career by doing this, though happily her career only went even higher into the stratosphere. After all the publicity, 42 million people watched the episode of her sitcom in which she came out.

From lesbian Ellen, she became a sort of Saint Ellen. As though being lesbian and chirpy makes you not just like everyone else, but distinctly better — indeed almost magical. A pixie-like fairy-dust spreader. Distributing prizes to the common people with a wave of her fabulous lesbian wand. On every easy issue of the day, Ellen could be reliably found.

So perhaps it was inevitable that while Ellen was urging the rest of to ‘be kind’ (as though the idea might never otherwise have occurred to us) she was presiding over a workplace which former colleagues have now described as ‘toxic’. There have been allegations that the magical one herself was ‘mean’ and ‘rude’ to the staff. Former colleagues also allege that harassment, abuse, sexism and racism were commonplace on the set of the show. Well knock me down with your fairy wand.

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Then, this week, a corporate was caught out in similar manner. On Tuesday, the social media geniuses at Ben & Jerry’s UK sent out a long thread addressed to the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel.

Hey @PritiPatel we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture. We pulled together a thread for you..

— Ben & Jerry's UK ? (@benandjerrysUK) August 11, 2020

The thread was a reaction to the Home Secretary’s efforts to clamp down on the illegal migration route which has seen a thousand people illegally enter the UK across the English Channel in the last week.

Ben & Jerry’s UK addressed the Home Secretary as though she were a particularly dim underling. “Hey Priti Patel,” they started off, “we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture. We pulled together a thread for you…”

If you are wondering why on earth the PR wing of an ice-cream company was “pulling together a thread” for the Home Secretary, then said thread soon made everything clear. The crew had “pulled together” a couple of articles from the Guardian and the Huffington Post to make the case that “strong borders” risk more lives. However, all the fruits of their Google searching were easily debunked. None of what had been “pulled together” constituted original research. But the junk food purveyors continued their thread in bumptious fashion, finishing by saying “Let’s remember we’re all human” as though this also wouldn’t otherwise have occurred either to the Home Secretary or the wider public.  And then “And once more for the back: PEOPLE CANNOT BE ILLEGAL.”

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Far from being some homespun company, with products made by a couple of hippies on their farm, Ben & Jerry’s is of course owned by Unilever. In March this year, Unilever was accused of underpaying £550 million in tax. The company’s defence appeared to be that it had been underpaying tax in the UK for years, and so expected to get away with it this year as ever. But tax-dodging is not the only sin of which Unilever could be accused.

One of this woke, ‘anti-racist’ corporation’s big-sellers across Asia is their recently renamed ‘fair and lovely’ skin cream, a skin-lightening product, sold on the premise that whiter skin is more appealing than darker skin.How convenient that the Priti-attack wokescreen is distracting attention from the fact that Unilever won’t quit this multi-billion dollar industry.

The more you dig in to Ben & Jerry’s corporate practices, the more apparent this wokescreen seems. Only three years ago, Ben & Jerry’s — not the parent company, but the ice cream company itself — was taken to court in the US. Specifically, it was taken to court by migrant workers who complained that they were being exploited through underpayment. The migrant workers won their case. I wonder if the PR whizz-kid who rustled up the Priti thread, with Ben & Jerry’s now riding to the defence of illegal migrants, was aware of this case?

If I were a boss at Ben & Jerry’s or Unilever, I might suggest that the company stop mucking around on Twitter, and return to doing what it says it does best, making humanely produced and environmentally friendly puddings. Except that they’re not even very good at that: the ingredients are sourced from factory dairy farms and some of the products contain traces of glysophate, a weed killer. Although, to be fair, when this was exposed, Ben & Jerry’s did promise that they would try to weed out the weed-killer from their  ice-cream. So Ben & Jerry’s little wokescreen didn’t stay up for long. 

They tried to pose as a great protector of the poor and dispossessed. In fact, they showed themselves to be dim and patronising, and in the process reminded us that they are run by a corporation which is dishonest about its taxes, sells racist beauty products, has exploited migrant workers to maximise profits, and produces an icecream which contains an environmental poison. Don’t be fooled by these wokescreens. This week one company’s was well and truly rumbled. Let’s hope it’s the first of many.