AXA PPP Healthcare have come up with a novel twist on the idea of staff consultation. The company is polling workers to let them choose how they want to be worse off. Options include chopping 300 jobs, a 10% pay cut and no more bonuses for two or three years. Once they have made their minds up on that they then have to decide if they want to scrap a scheme which gives them free fruit every two weeks – it is a healthcare company – switch off the air conditioning, cut maternity benefits, scrub the Christmas party or get rid of car parking allowances

The firm’s view is that it’s a way workers can help “getting us through the recession” and reduce operating costs in the “challenging economic climate”.

The scary thing about this is that it is much more typical of what is happening in workplaces than Visteon was. British Airways, a highly unionised employer is in discussions with its unions about pay freezes and cutting 10% of the workforce and this is the pattern right across the private sector.

Workers at AXA will probably go along with this sham consultation because they are too intimidated to do anything else and because those who would be inclined to oppose these attacks of their living conditions will not be able to point to any successful resistance to these sorts of measures anywhere else.

Any judgement on British politics at the moment has to take into account this level of passivity and demoralisation. Just because there is a big recession which shows no meaningful signs of ending does not guarantee that people will draw anti-capitalist political conclusions. The votes UKIP and the BNP won from Labour prove that. If there’s a moral to this tale it’s that for every Visteon there are a hundred AXAs.