I was one of more than 3,000 signatories to this article in the Guardian and elsewhere this morning, originally published by Democratising Work:
Working humans are so much more than “resources.” This is one of the central lessons of the current crisis. Caring for the sick; delivering food, medication, and other essentials; clearing away our waste; stocking the shelves and running the registers in our grocery stores — the people who have kept life going through the COVID-19 pandemic are living proof that work cannot be reduced to a mere commodity. Human health and the care of the most vulnerable cannot be governed by market forces alone. If we leave these things solely to the market, we run the risk of exacerbating inequalities to the point of forfeiting the very lives of the least advantaged. How to avoid this unacceptable situation? By involving employees in decisions relating to their lives and futures in the workplace — by democratizing firms. By decommodifying work — by collectively guaranteeing useful employment to all. As we face the monstrous risk of pandemic and environmental collapse, making these strategic changes would allow us to ensure the dignity of all citizens while marshalling the collective strength and effort we need to preserve our life together on this planet.
Why democratize? Every morning, men and women, especially members of racialized communities, migrants and informal economy workers, rise to serve those among us who are able to remain under quarantine. They keep watch through the night. The dignity of their jobs needs no other explanation than that eloquently simple term, ‘essential worker.' That term also reveals a key fact that capitalism has always sought to render invisible with another term, ‘human resource.' Human beings are not one resource among many. Without labor investors, there would be no production, no services, no businesses at all.
Every morning, quarantined men and women rise in their homes to fulfil from afar the missions of the organizations for which they work. They work into the night. To those who believe that employees cannot be trusted to do their jobs without supervision, that workers require surveillance and external discipline, these men and women are proving the contrary. They are demonstrating, day and night, that workers are not one type of stakeholder among many: they hold the keys to their employers' success. They are the core constituency of the firm, but are, nonetheless, mostly excluded from participating in the government of their workplaces — a right monopolized by capital investors.
To the question of how firms and how society as a whole might recognize the contributions of their employees in times of crisis, democracy is the answer. Certainly, we must close the yawning chasm of income inequality and raise the income floor — but that alone is not enough. After the two World Wars, women's undeniable contribution to society helped win them the right to vote. By the same token, it is time to enfranchise workers.
Representation of labor investors in the workplace has existed in Europe since the close of WWII, through institutions known as Work Councils. Yet, these representative bodies have a weak voice at best in the government of firms, and are subordinate to the choices of the executive management teams appointed by shareholders. They have been unable to stop or even slow the relentless momentum of self-serving capital accumulation, ever more powerful in its destruction of our environment. These bodies should now be granted similar rights to those exercised by boards. To do so, firm governments (that is, top management) could be required to obtain double majority approval, from chambers representing workers as well as shareholders. In Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, different forms of codetermination (mitbestimmung) put in place progressively after WWII were a crucial step toward giving a voice to workers — but they are still insufficient to create actual citizenship in firms. Even in the United States, where worker organizing and union rights have been considerably suppressed, there is now a growing call to give labor investors the right to elect representatives with a supermajority within boards. Issues such as the choice of a CEO, setting major strategies, and profit distribution are too important to be left to shareholders alone. A personal investment of labor; that is, of one's mind and body, one's health — one's very life — ought to come with the collective right to validate or veto these decisions.
Why decommodify? This crisis also shows that work must not be treated as a commodity, that market mechanisms alone cannot be left in charge of the choices that affect our communities most deeply. For years now, jobs and supplies in the health sector have been subject to the guiding principle of profitability; today, the pandemic is revealing the extent to which this principle has led us astray. Certain strategic and collective needs must simply be made immune to such considerations. The rising body count across the globe is a terrible reminder that some things must never be treated as commodities. Those who continue arguing to the contrary are imperilling us with their dangerous ideology. Profitability is an intolerable yardstick when it comes to our health and our life on this planet.
Decommodifying work means preserving certain sectors from the laws of the so-called “free market;” it also means ensuring that all people have access to work and the dignity it brings. One way to do this is with the creation of a Job Guarantee. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reminds us that everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. A Job Guarantee would not only offer each person access to work that allows them to live with dignity, it would also provide a crucial boost to our collective capability to meet the many pressing social and environmental challenges we currently face. Guaranteed employment would allow governments, working through local communities, to provide dignified work while contributing to the immense effort of fighting environmental collapse. Across the globe, as unemployment skyrockets, job guarantee programs can play a crucial role in assuring the social, economic, and environmental stability of our democratic societies. (VAR. EUROP) The European Union must include such a project in its Green Deal. A review of the mission of the European Central Bank so that it could finance this program, which is necessary to our survival, would give it a legitimate place in the life of each and every citizen of the EU. A countercyclical solution to the explosive unemployment on the way, this program will prove a key contribution to the EU's prosperity.
Environmental remediation. We should not react now with the same innocence as in 2008, when we responded to the economic crisis with an unconditional bailout that swelled public debt while demanding nothing in return. If our governments step in to save businesses in the current crisis, then businesses must step in as well, and meet the general basic conditions of democracy. In the name of the democratic societies they serve, and which constitute them, in the name of their responsibility to ensure our survival on this planet, our governments must make their aid to firms conditional on certain changes to their behaviors. In addition to hewing to strict environmental standards, firms must be required to fulfil certain conditions of democratic internal government. A successful transition from environmental destruction to environmental recovery and regeneration will be best led by democratically governed firms, in which the voices of those who invest their labor carry the same weight as those who invest their capital when it comes to strategic decisions. We have had more than enough time to see what happens when labor, the planet, and capital gains are placed in the balance under the current system: labor and the planet always lose.
Thanks to research from the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering (Cullen, Allwood, and Borgstein, Envir. Sci. & Tech. 2011 45, 1711—1718), we know that “achievable design changes” could reduce global energy consumption by 73%. But… those changes are labor intensive, and require choices that are often costlier over the short term. So long as firms are run in ways that seek to maximize profit for their capital investors alone, and in a world where energy is cheap, why make these changes? Despite the challenges of this transition, certain socially-minded or cooperatively run businesses — pursuing hybrid goals that take financial, social, and environmental considerations into account, and developing democratic internal governments — have already shown the potential of such positive impact.
Let us fool ourselves no longer: left to their own devices, most capital investors will not care for the dignity of labor investors; nor will they lead the fight against environmental catastrophe. Another option is available. Democratize firms; decommodify work; stop treating human beings as resources so that we can focus together on sustaining life on this planet.
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It seems to me that the people asks for such changes have a simple solution. Set up a company run along the lines they say. Such a company will be better, it would be quickly to grow and be success.
You always writing letters to papers telling other people how to run their companies, why don’t you set up and run your own? Take a risk with your own money other than demanding that other people take a risk with theirs.
You set up company, invest, let the workers say how the company is run. Sound good?
No answer will come, I know.
I have done it….many times
There may be some merit to this sort of argument but the fact that people are mostly treated horribly by employers is a systemic issue and not just a matter of doing something in the marketplace to compete with some other thing. I really like what’s being said in this letter (I’m surprised the Guardian printed it :_D). If the rules of society are unfair and lead to misery and abuse, then calling for changes in those rules is a virtuous thing.
As an active trade unionist and a student of Industrial Relations in the 1970’s (I attended Ruskin College on a trade union scholarship), I remember getting quite excited about the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy (1977). This recommended compulsory employee representation on unitary Company Boards for companies with over 2000 employees. Of course nothing ever became of it but it would be a good start for another Royal Commission.
We need it….
I remember Bullock …
Richard, I welcome your timely call for Democracy in the workplace.
We have an economic system that is becoming more dysfunctional each day. The Covid-19 pandemic has merely exposed its fatal shortcomings. Capitalism just serves the greed of the few, not the interests of the many. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. Lets preserve its good features, but replace its flaws.
If workers democratically controlled their enterprises, you wouldn’t find them awarding a few executives at the top with huge salaries, large payments of dividends to wealthy shareholders while most the workforce had to make do with the leftovers. Neither would the workers vote to shut up shop and export their jobs to a lower wage economy, leaving the economy under resourced, themselves unemployed, struggling to pay their bills and a burden on the social. Automation as a problem would not exist, nor would we need to have silly debates about Universal Basic income.
Economic democracy the cure for Capitalism as Richard Wolff (D@W) says. Only people not shares should have votes.
Indeed…
The last line which emphasises not to treat human beings as resources rather goes against Modern Monetary Theory. MMT says that it is possible to move human resources around using government hiring people to do this thing in a public project, compared to a different thing on a privately financed project, or to bring the untapped potential of the unemployed into the productive sphere. Both examples involve treating the talents and time of humans as resources.
Neil
That is nit what MMT says
MMT says a government should guarantee work to those who want it – there is no compulsion
It does not say that people are resources
It says money is not a constraint
Richard
“ I have done it many times”
What set companies up with your own capital and ran them exactly in line with the criteria outlined in this letter?
I have set up businesses with my own capital and sought to run them as equitably as possible
But unsurprisingly over 40 years my understanding on that issue has developed
It would be pretty odd if it had not
“Only people not shares should have votes.”
Indeed shareholders can take their money elsewhere easily enough (literally at a keystroke these days). Without a very different labour market the same emphatically does not apply to labour. Forty or fifty years ago people were able to vote with their feet if their employment was variously unsuitable with a reasonable expectation of getting another job ‘on Monday’.
And the relative stakes involved ? Your money or your life. Not a fair balance as you say.
The corollory of ‘profit sharing’ is of course ‘loss sharing’.
Do you propose that workers would be expected to invest some of their own money in a business before they can share in later profits (which of course may never arise).
No
They contribute their share by exposing themselves to the extraordinary risk of placing all their economic eggs in one basket from which it is very often hard to extricate themselves
The providers of financial capital can leave in seconds if they want
The price they pay for that opportunity to quit is loss bearing
“The providers of financial capital can leave in seconds if they want”
An investor in a start-up can “leave in seconds”? Are you crazy? I have advised many start-up and growing companies. I can only assume you have no experience of this or are deliberately misrepresenting the position.
Investors in start ups see the money they have invested spent by the company they have invested in, usually within a year. The shares are invariably illiquid. There are usually restrictions on the sale of shares in early years. The investor hopes that the company is a success but that might take years and in the meantime they have no exit at all.
You are conflating provision of financial capital – a direct investment in a company – with investing on the secondary stock market – which you yourself have pointed out is not an investment in the company itself.
Your misinformation is dangerous.
Actually, most small businesses are lifestyle entities and are left as easily as they start
For those that involve risk, that risk us entirely voluntary
But the employee shares it through insecurity, and lower pay
And the employee also brings their capital – human capital to the entity
You ignore all that
It us you who misinform, because you are blind to what is happening
Please don’t call again – at least until you show some comprehension of the balance of risks
“exposing themselves to the extraordinary risk of placing all their economic eggs in one basket”
How so? How are any savings, car, house or anything else purchased from wages paid as work is done put at risk by what they have been paid to do?
Are wages clawed back if a business fails? Of course not.
And hundreds of thousands of people every year change jobs. You think this is “very hard”? You think these hundreds of thousands of people had all their ‘economic eggs’ invested in the company they worked for? How then were they able to change jobs?
Losing a job is a hardship, but none of the reward paid for past service is ever at risk.
You clearly do not understand the risk the employee takes
Nor does it seem you are inclined to do so
Which makes debate meaningless