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“There is no doubt”, R replied, “when I make a new business plan and put things on paper, to see what I need more to increase my bottom line with X percent, and I don't do it, that is the cost I am paying. When it comes to cases like that, if may do what I did in 2008, that is fire to the minimum, but reduce some of the high level managers' salary. They did accept. Said, OK, do not give us 3 or 4 months, but let not go lower level employees go. In the upper echelons, it does not mean that much whether a one year salary is given fully or half, but at the lower level it does, it touches the bare livelihood. This we constantly negotiated, and we found a solution".
T was curious: "Would you say that there was more solidarity with their colleagues because they could see your solidarity with them? Could it work like this that when you apply principles of solidarity, that they also do this among themselves?”
“Yes”, R said "because at the end of the day everybody saw the human side of it, and felt that the reason I was doing it this way was not to make more profit for myself. See, I could cut everybody's salary to have more bottom line in my pocket as a company, but that was not the reason. That year was a very peculiar year, we simply had to survive, and the question was: how to survive"
"I am very curious now", T replied, "if ever the word religion or ethical principles was used in that period as means to represent or justify yourself, or that you kept everything low key and just said to yourself, that is me, and that is how I want to run my business, without giving it the name of high ethical principles. So, keep it off the record”.
“Yes, religion was never part of it, and it never came up in any discussion. What did come up was general morality, like that you do not want to see somebody suffer, or go through pain. A guy that gets fired goes through pain, and why in those bad days would you want people suffer more?"
"But what about this in a cluster business", T replied “in which there are employees from various places in the world, with different backgrounds and different ethical values. You might not be understood equally well in all those places, you already gave the example of China. What does it do, for example, for you here in Antwerp? In some places you might be understood easier, with less words, and in others you might have a double duty. How do you see this?”
"Let me first say", R replied that what you said, that people that from the same background as me will understand it better is right. For example, especially in Belgium, people, according to me, have not seen 10% of what real problems in the world are. And it is extremely fortunate for them to have seen so little. Young people here, I can see, think that there is a huge garden behind the Government, and that money is falling from trees, so that they can grab it without working. They believe that very strongly. And I don't blame them, because they were educated like that. They do not know the evenings when there is no food on the table, they have never seen that. So, for them to understand that, instead of putting hundred people out, it would be better to cut the salary for all of
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