Locked in a Time-Warp
When union organizers staged a protest at the National Party's annual conference, storming police lines, pushing, shoving, panting, spitting, and chanting, everyone over fifteen years old in the country experienced deja vu all over again. The same old faces, considerably older now: Bradford, Minto, McCarten leading the charge, acting like twenty-one year olds. It was a "we're here to protest. What's the cause again?" moment.
Apparently, the overriding objective was to demonstrate militancy. It was a strange anachronistic display, as if the aging activists wanted to convince themselves they "still had it in them" and they yearned for the good old days when zealotry trumped reasonableness. Maybe they had been stirred to action by the Club Med riots in Greece. All in all, it was a strange moment.
To their credit they demonstrated they still had the rat trap mind of the activist zealot. Employers were evil, collectively and individually. Workers were righteous, collectively and individually. The National Party was confabulating with the wicked. Bradford, Minto, and McCarten were taking their stand with the defenceless righteous on the front lines of the war.
Unfortunately, evil is not materialistically determined. Consider, for a moment, the absurd folly of the notion. The poor are sinlessly perfect, righteous altogether. We must stand with them to defend them and make them--well--richer, better off, more materially endowed. So that they can become wicked too, for, remember evil is determined by material wealth. What a travesty of an idea. Yet, nations have been racked by this idiotic notion for centuries. How could people be so stupid?
On the other hand it is easy enough to understand. All people, descending from Adam by ordinary generation, are sinful. Being sinful they would believe anything but the truth. There are a myriad of fantastical schemes to avoid the obvious--and Bradford et al have been captured by one of the more asinine. The truth is that employers and the wealthy are indeed evil; are conceived and born in iniquity. Employees likewise. The Fall was not a respecter of economic persons: it has been and is universal in its impact and effect.
Therefore, unless checked and disciplined, employers will naturally exploit their workers for their own gain. Employees, likewise, unless checked and disciplined, will naturally defraud and exploit their employers. Now the law clearly has an important role to play in checking and disciplining every economic actor: both employers and workers. The law of contract is particularly relevant. Both employer and employee have entered into a contract: both are obligated to keep the terms of contract. If either fails to do so, then theft and fraud have occurred. Critical here is an emphasis upon integrity, good faith, and keeping one's word. Enlightened and biblical employment law will focus reflect a very high view of contract law.
The second check-and-balance is the discipline of the free market place. It is both ironic and sad that Bradford et al appear to have very little understanding of how open and free competition for goods and services can be a wonderful protection for employees. By trying to protect employees by means of controls, regulations, laws, and "balancing the scales of power" they end up ignoring the fundamental market power which employees actually have. Businesses need labour. Without work being done by workers, businesses simply cannot survive. Therefore the ability to find, recruit, and retain an effective staff is critical for every business. Moreover, in a competitive marketplace, the more productive and effective the staff of a particular business, the more subject they become to competitors recruiting them away. It is a virtuous circle. This places all business owners under a competitive discipline which protects and enhances the prospects of employees.
But it also serves as a significant discipline upon employees. They have to make themselves more and more valuable to their employers, in order to advance their prospects not only with their particular employer, but potentially amongst the competitors (or suppliers or customers) of their employer. In a free labour market, every employer knows that in order to progress and develop they have to create leverage from their industriousness, effectiveness, and productivity. Just like their employer, they will do far better if they learn to function effectively in a competitive marketplace, making it work for them.
An open and free marketplace for labour and employment places both employers and employees under a significant discipline which acts as a restraint upon sinful, selfish, and exploitative behaviour. Attempts to short circuit this discipline by creating a protective cocoon around employees, such as minimum wage rates, only serves to damage the opportunities and prospects of employees over the medium term.
A third discipline that needs to be maximised in order to control the worst instincts of both employers and employees is open information and disclosure. With the dawning of the "information age" and the technology which drives it, we now have the potential to discipline both employers and employees in more effective ways than ever before. For example, we have websites which allow students in schools and universities to rate their teachers. Whilst these can be abused, generally they are effective. The more widespread their use, the more effective they become. If unions, for example, wanted to exert maximal market discipline upon employers they would create and promote websites encouraging and enabling all their members to rate their respective employers under a number of categories and headings. Employers exposed as scurrilous or sub-standard by such means would have the discipline of the marketplace visited upon them exponentially.
Andrew Little, unionist leader, recently cited a case where an employee was allegedly hired under the 90 day "free-trial" period and sacked on the 89th day without warning or word of explanation. Whilst there may be mitigating circumstances, on the surface this would appear to be an evil and exploitative act on the part of the employer. Name and shame, like sunlight, is the best antidote. Go to it. We recall that when the 90 day "free trial" period was introduced both unions and the labour party threatened a "name and shame" campaign. Excellent. Why have we not seen it? This is precisely the right kind of intelligent market based discipline and self-regulation that we need. It is sad that Mr Little neither named, nor shamed. He simply cited an undocumented case as a justification for more class warfare.
But constructive name and shame disclosures generate light rather than heat. They also deal far more surgically with fallen human nature, unlike the approach of Bradford et al. Her naive and blunt tactics surely generate heat. But they are positively ante-diluvian, belonging to an ignorant age of class warfare, long since discredited. It is only a narrow minded, vapid mentality that can cling to such empty shibboleths.
In the long run it is this which is the actual enemy of workers.
No comments:
Post a Comment