Тег: Trade unions

Betrayal where it wasn’t expected: why conservatives are the main sponsors of labor inspection

We’ve come to believe that in the battle between “Market vs State,” our allies are conservatives. Like, they may not be against the state, but they’re still for business, for tradition, and for limited intervention in personal lives. One word: “right-wingers.” And “left-liberals,” including Western left-liberals, are those who constantly whine and call a paternalistic police officer to regulate everyone. Only the fresh study tells us that this logic doesn’t always make sense.

What did the scientists unearth? They conducted a series of experiments with a total of 2800 participants from the US to understand how political views affect purchases. The essence of the experiment is simple: imagine a coffee shop where baristas are forbidden to smile and express emotions according to a script, can only wear strict uniforms and always behave formally, and there’s an atmosphere like a North Korean concentration camp, except with lattes made with almond milk. How will representatives of different political views act?

Liberals see this and say: “I won’t buy here. It’s disrespectful to the person.” They vote with their rubles (dollars) against the tyranny of the manager. Meanwhile, conservatives don’t care. “Is the coffee tasty? Is the service fast? So what, beat them with a broom?” The study showed that conservatives are indifferent to internal restrictions and social domination over employees; for them, this is often a normal phenomenon.

And now watch closely. Where is libertarianism here? As libertarians, we advocate that “the market will solve everything.” We believe: if a company behaves like a jerk, consumers will see it, be offended, and go to a competitor. This is the very market mechanism that makes the Labor Code, minimum wage, and state inspectors with folders unnecessary.

And what do we see? It’s the “cursed liberals” who are behaving as ideal market agents in this case! They use market pressure to make businesses more humane. Without the state, but simply by their choice: “We won’t give you money until you start respecting people.” What do conservatives do? They continue to put money into the coffers of rogue companies. They create demand for animal treatment. They don’t care about violating human autonomy as long as it doesn’t concern them personally.

It’s important to understand: when a conservative consumer ignores the fact that workers are squeezed like lemons, he leaves these workers with zero market chances for protection. Imagine yourself in the place of an employee of such a company. They oppress you, don’t let you breathe. You hope that customers will see this trash, be outraged, and exert reputational pressure on the company. But a conservative customer doesn’t care. The company’s profit only grows.

What’s left to do for a worker? Go to the labor market? But if such a model is encouraged by demand, it becomes the norm everywhere. And then the worker has only one outlet: he goes not to a competitor, but to a “stationary bandit.” He goes in hopes of protection from the state-privileged union, he goes to leftist politicians and shouts: “Protect me with law!” And the government gladly responds: “Of course, we will now introduce ten thousand new regulations, suffocate small business with inspections, but ‘we’ll protect’ you.”

It’s a bitter irony when leftliberals (specifically in this case) work for the goals of libertarianism, ethically “educating” the market with money and reducing the need for state brutality. Conservatives, on the other hand, provoke a social explosion with their thick-skinnedness and love of hierarchies (“I’m the boss – you’re the idiot”), which is only extinguished by an increase in state regulation.

Buying goods from companies with psychopathic management, conservatives literally invest in creating new laws limiting business freedom. Because if society doesn’t regulate itself (through consumer culture), Leviathan comes and regulates everyone with a stick. So, the next time you see a “SZH-boycott” of some toxic brand, don’t rush to roll your eyes. Maybe these people are now working for an invisible hand of the market while conservatives simply drink their coffee, closing their eyes to everything.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Laws exist, but protection does not: why Ubisoft is farting on the labor code

The recent loud scandal surrounding Ubisoft makes one wonder: why are all these massive codes and bureaucracy even necessary if people in the most progressive countries are still not protected from sadistic bosses? As we recently learned, bosses in Ubisoft’s French office abused employees for years: they made crude advances, drew obscenities on their desks, and sometimes literally released intestinal gas right in their faces. And this isn’t some trashy office in a basement on the outskirts of Voronezh—this is “enlightened France”!

The French state has long prided itself on laws and rights. But something went wrong. Ubisoft employees complained to human resources, only to be told to go away and not make a fuss. Only after years of public pressure and the MeToo movement did the matter reach court. “Well, it reached court, so what?” you might say. The result: the accused face suspended sentences and fines, which are pocket change for them. Did justice prevail? Yeah, keep dreaming.

If you think France is an exception, welcome to the USA! There, justice is sold at wholesale prices. Activision Blizzard, Fox News, Starbucks, and others—each high-profile case ended the same way: large corporations paid their way out with “fines” amounting to a couple of percent of annual profits and calmly moved on. For employees who dared to speak openly about the problems, life turned into hell. They were fired, harassed, and quietly silenced with money. The law seemingly exists, but it’s useless.

And how are things in Russia? Formally, the labor code guards your rights, but in reality, an employee before a boss is like a bunny before a wolf: if he doesn’t eat you, he’ll at least take a bite. And as for sexual harassment at work? One might recall Deputy Slutsky, regarding whom the “Ethics Commission” decided that grabbing women’s buttocks is somehow normal. The girls were even advised to go to the police, though going there is pointless because there is still no law against harassment in Russia. A classic vicious circle!

So what should you do if the state cannot protect you? Here, libertarians shrug and say: friends, maybe it’s time to stop believing in the mythical power of papers and bureaucrats? Maybe it’s time to take control of your own life? Because while hundreds of inspectors allegedly protect you on paper, in practice, only publicity, competition, and the right to leave freely save you.

Libertarian prescriptions are simple and sound. First of all, one must understand that reputation is a serious matter, and the Ubisoft scandal would have happened much sooner if the victims had not been afraid to speak openly. Also, workers must have the freedom to leave at any moment, because nothing sobers up a boss better than a mass exodus of talent to competitors—this will force him to use his head, and not other parts of his body. Independent employer ratings are also needed—things like Glassdoor clearly show where it is better not to go to work. If employees know the truth in advance, bad employers will quickly be left without people or money. And finally, attention should not only be paid to companies as a whole. Specific people who created the chaos and violence must be judged and punished, and their behavior should be widely publicized. Then others will be deterred!

No one wants to live in a society where a boss can afford to release gas in your face. But the state has already proven a hundred times: it is either blind, corrupt, or simply does not want to actually protect us. This means we need to trust bureaucrats less and trust ourselves and the people around us more. A free person is better protected than a subjugated one, and if people are given freedom and tools for self-defense, it will work more effectively than any cumbersome laws. And remember: changes do not come from the offices of officials—they start with each of us. If we do not respect our own dignity, no one else will. Therefore, it is worth befriending common sense rather than waiting for protection from a paper law!

Trade unions can be cool – if they are voluntary

Trade unions are usually associated with dreary offices, imposed dues, and dubious characters who are more likely to walk the corridors of power than the shop floors and warehouses. But originally, the idea was completely different! Real trade unions are not a club for bureaucrats, but associations of free people who voluntarily protect one another. Without the state, without violence, without “you owe me, or we’ll get you fired.”

Think this is a utopia? Not at all! History knows many cases where voluntary unions, without any state privileges or coercion, achieved real success. Take, for example, the London Dock Strike of 1889. One hundred thousand people calmly and peacefully stopped working, demanding a pay raise. The authorities, of course, did not help: the workers simply marched through the city with rotten fish on sticks, vividly showing the bosses how they lived. And, unexpectedly, they achieved a pay raise. Without violence, without lobbying for laws, simply based on solidarity and a sense of justice.

Or consider the American grape pickers in the 1960s, led by the legendary Cesar Chavez. Instead of burning or smashing things, the guys simply organized a grape boycott across all of America. Imagine: millions of Americans stopped buying grapes in solidarity with the farmworkers! After a few years, the plantation owners simply could not take it and signed the first collective bargaining agreements in history with the workers. Again—without state aid and violence, through pure voluntary mutual aid.

And what about the Polish “Solidarity” in the 1980s? Workers independently dismantled the communist regime simply by uniting into a giant independent trade union. The state arrested them, banned them, crushed them with tanks, but they went ahead and won—peacefully, persistently, and voluntarily.

Why, then, do trade unions often look so dreary now? The answer is simple: the state loves to “help.” And when bureaucrats “help,” it usually gets worse for everyone except the bureaucrats themselves. The state monopoly on trade unions strips them of competition and motivation, mandatory dues create “reluctant passengers,” and privileges turn union leaders into ordinary officials, far removed from the workers. The stationary bandit provides privileges to certain unions, including mandatory dues from all employees, monopoly representation of all enterprise workers (even those who do not wish to join the union), and exemption from liability for damage caused during strikes. As a result, trade unions begin to look more like bureaucratic organs than independent associations of workers. Paradoxically, it is a fact: the more the state tries to “protect” workers, the fewer real opportunities workers have to protect themselves.

By the way, remember the recent history of Amazon in the USA. Ordinary warehouse workers, who had grown tired of working in harsh conditions, decided to create an independent union. The Amazon company—huge, influential, and most importantly, unwilling to allow a union organization—spent millions of dollars to prevent its creation. But the people simply organized themselves and won the vote. In this way, simple employees without resources or connections were able to prove that the power of voluntary solidarity works today as well.

The solution here is simple and libertarian: return voluntariness and freedom of competition to trade unions. If people do not like a union, they should be able to calmly leave or create another one. If a union protects its members poorly, people will simply leave and choose one that does it better.

History shows that it is precisely voluntary associations of workers, without state-imposed rules, privileges, and bureaucracy, that achieve the most impressive successes. Solidarity and mutual aid do not need a state “roof”—they are always born naturally where there is freedom. And voluntariness and freedom of association are not some kind of luxury, but the only real way to protect the rights of those who work!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Ancap and trade unions — incompatible things or a strange love?

meta-anarchist

Let’s look at what the prerequisites for the creation and operation of trade unions might be under ancap conditions.

At the start, we have ancap, meaning anarchy (the absence of a generally recognized institution for producing norms and enforcing them, i.e., the state) plus capitalism (developed commodity-money relations, private ownership of the means of production, freedom of contract, and so on). At what point, for what purpose, with what restrictions, and how successfully can a trade union (an organization for coordinating the collective pressure of hired workers on employers) appear in such a society?

Hiring for a job is an ordinary service provision transaction on the part of the employee. Whether these are services for massaging heels, managing document flow, or maintaining a machine is a secondary matter. A service agreement usually specifies the nature and volume of services, as well as the amount and principles of payment. In any case, a contract cannot foresee all conceivable nuances, and therefore allows for a more or less loose interpretation of individual provisions, which is usually expressed in the form of informal traditions. Each party to the contract, naturally, prefers to shape traditions to their own advantage.

The main tool available to a worker in a situation of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs at work turns out to be the threat of quitting. Essentially, it does not matter whether the employer is complying with the contract. The worker may be dissatisfied with the current conditions, even if they are better than the situation that existed at the time the contract was concluded. For example, they may have managed to increase their qualifications and are confident that they are now worth more. Or they see a favorable change in market conditions that has led to an increase in the employer’s profit, and believe that it would be reasonable for the employer to share part of this profit with the worker.

Faced with the prospect of production losses, the employer may prefer to compromise or even satisfy the worker’s demands in full. Thus, the contract (or the informal practices that do not correspond to the contract) is revised, and the parties move forward in a new reality. Alternatively, the worker receives a refusal and either accepts it or carries out their threat, which logically leads to dismissal.

When there are many workers of this profession both at the enterprise and in the labor market, it is not difficult to replace the dismissed person. Hence a quite natural hint from the workers of a specific profession: to present coordinated demands, threatening a mass refusal to work. If such a practice becomes recurring, it makes sense to form permanent structures for coordination, i.e., a trade union.

Since we are in ancap, I fundamentally do not consider violent ways of raising the stakes in this conflict; we are talking only about peaceful pressure.

What happens next? The higher the direct and indirect costs to the entrepreneur from the workers’ breach of contractual obligations, the higher the probability of an entrepreneurial solution that radically eliminates the problem. This could be the automation of production, moving the business to a region with a more loyal workforce, or simply closing the enterprise and shifting capital into something more capital-intensive than that based on mass unified labor.

Thus, trade unions under ancap are possible, but they generate negative feedback, and the more successfully they operate, the sooner the unions are abolished along with the professional group that spawned them. Therefore, a more stable model seems to me to be one with spontaneous mass actions of discontent, which do not lead to the creation of permanent organizations for inventing new reasons to pressure the employer. Anger works convincingly as long as it is not institutionalized.