The 'Private Governments' That Subjugate U.S. Workers
Truthdig
Corporate dictatorships-which strip employees of fundamental constitutional
rights, including free speech, and which increasingly rely on temp or
contract employees who receive no benefits and have no job security-rule the
lives of perhaps 80 percent of working Americans. These corporations, with
little or no oversight, surveil and monitor their workforces. They conduct
random drug testing, impose punishing quotas and targets, routinely engage
in wage theft, injure workers and then refuse to make compensation, and
ignore reports of sexual harassment, assault and rape. They use managerial
harassment, psychological manipulation-including the pseudo-science of
positive psychology-and intimidation to ensure obedience. They fire workers
for expressing leftist political opinions on social media or at public
events during their off-hours. They terminate those who file complaints or
publicly voice criticism about working conditions. They thwart attempts to
organize unions, callously dismiss older workers and impose "non-compete"
contract clauses, meaning that if workers leave they are unable to use their
skills and human capital to work for other employers in the same industry.
Nearly half of all technical professions now require workers to sign
non-compete clauses, and this practice has spread to low-wage jobs including
those in hair salons and restaurants.
The lower the wages the more abusive the conditions. Workers in the food and
hotel industries, agriculture, construction, domestic service, call centers,
the garment industry, warehouses, retail sales, lawn service, prisons, and
health and elder care suffer the most. Walmart, for example, which employs
nearly 1 percent of the U.S. labor force (1.4 million workers), prohibits
casual conversation, which it describes as "time theft." The food industry
giant Tyson prevents its workers from taking toilet breaks, causing many to
urinate on themselves; as a result, some workers must wear diapers. The
older, itinerant workers that Amazon often employs are subjected to grueling
12-hour shifts in which the company electronically monitors every action to
make sure hourly quotas are met. Some Amazon workers walk for miles on
concrete floors each shift and repeatedly get down on their hands and knees
to perform their jobs. They frequently suffer crippling injuries. The
company makes injured employees, whom it fires, sign releases saying the
injuries are not work-related. Two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries
are victims of wage theft, losing an amount estimated to be as high as $50
billion a year. From 4 million to 14 million American workers, under threat
of wage cuts, plant shutdowns or dismissal, have been pressured by their
employers to support pro-corporate political candidates and causes.
The corporations that in effect rule the lives of American workers
constitute what University of Michigan philosophy professor Elizabeth
Anderson refers to as "private governments." These "workplace governments,"
she writes, are "dictatorships, in which bosses govern in ways that are
largely unaccountable to those who are governed. They don't merely govern
workers: they dominate them." These corporations have the legal authority,
she writes, "to regulate workers' off-hour lives as well-their political
activities, speech, choice of sexual partner, use of recreational drugs,
alcohol, smoking, and exercise. Because most employers exercise this
off-hours authority irregularly, and without warning, most workers are
unaware of how sweeping it is."
"If the U.S. government imposed such regulations on us, we would rightly
protest that our constitutional rights were being violated," Anderson writes
in her book "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We
Don't Talk About It)." "But American workers have no such rights against
their bosses. Even speaking out against such constraints can get them fired.
So most keep silent."
Once workers sign contracts they essentially cede their rights as citizens
to the corporations, except the few rights guaranteed by law, for the
duration of the contracts. "Employers' authority over workers," Anderson
writes, "outside of collective bargaining and a few other contexts, such as
university professors' tenure, is sweeping, arbitrary, and unaccountable-not
subject to notice, process, or appeal. The state has established the
constitution of the government of the workplace; it is a form of private
government." These corporations, by law, can "impose a far more minute,
exacting, and sweeping regulation of employees than democratic states do in
any domain outside of prisons and the military."
These myriad corporate dictatorships, or private governments, ensure
American workers are docile and compliant as the superstructure of the
corporate state cements into place a species of corporate totalitarianism.
The ruling ideology of neoliberalism and libertarianism, used to justify the
corporate domination and social inequality that afflict us, sells itself as
the protector of freedom and liberty. It does this by subterfuge. It claims
workers have the freedom to enter into employment contracts and terminate
them, while ignoring the near-total suspension of rights during the period
of employment. It pretends that workers and corporations function as
independent and autonomous sellers and buyers, with workers selling their
labor freely and corporate owners buying this labor.
This neoliberal economic model, however, is defective. The relationship
between the corporation and the worker is not the same as the relationship
between a self-employed baker, for example, and his customers. The
self-employed baker and those who buy the bread appeal to mutual
self-interest in the exchange. "The buyer is not an inferior, begging for a
favor," Anderson writes. "Equally importantly, the buyer is not a superior
who is entitled to order the butcher, the brewer, or the baker to hand over
the fruits of his labor. Buyers must address themselves to the other's
interests. The parties each undertake the exchange with their dignity, their
standing, and their personal independence affirmed by the other. This is a
model of social relations between free and equal persons." (Emphasis by the
author.)
Once a worker is bonded to a corporation, however, he or she instantly loses
this dignity, standing and personal independence, especially if the job is
temporary, entry-level or menial. Relations are no longer free and equal.
"When workers sell their labor to an employer, they have to hand themselves
over to their boss, who then gets to order them around," Anderson writes.
"The labor contract, instead of leaving the seller free as before, puts the
seller under the authority of their boss." The worker either fulfills the
demands of management, which he or she has little ability to question or
formulate, or is reprimanded, demoted, sanctioned or fired. The corporate
manager wields total authority over the worker. "The performance of the
contract embodies a profound asymmetry in whose interests count," Anderson
writes, "henceforth, the worker will be required to toil under conditions
that pay no regard to his interests, and every regard for the capitalist's
profits."
Neoliberalism posits that the choice is between a free market and state
control, whereas, as Anderson writes, "most adults live their working lives
under a third thing entirely: private government." Neoliberalism argues that
the essence of freedom is free enterprise, while never addressing workers'
surrender of basic freedoms. Neoliberalism holds out the promise, which has
not been true since before the Industrial Revolution, that workers can
become self-employed if they are hardworking and innovative. We all have the
ability to achieve economic independence or become industry leaders if we
draw on our inner resources, according to the neoliberal mantra, one
popularized by mass culture. The neoliberal ideologues' solution to the
cannibalization of the economy is to call for fostering a nation of
entrepreneurs. This is a con. Corporations and their lobbyists write the
laws and the legislation, creating a two-tiered legal system in which
poverty is criminalized and we are controlled, taxed and punished. The
corporate oligarchs, however, live in a world where monopoly, fraud and
other financial wrongdoing are legal or rarely punished and taxes are
minimal or nonexistent. Among the population, only a tiny percentage-most of
whom come from inherited wealth and have been groomed in elitist,
plutocratic universities and institutions-dominate the corporate hierarchy.
Public discourse, controlled by corporate power, ignores this one-sided
power arrangement. It cannot address a problem it refuses to acknowledge.
Subjugation is freedom.
Anderson calls this corporate economic system communist-that's communist
with a small "c"-because these private governments "own all the nonlabor
means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by
means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship. In
some cases, the dictator is appointed by an oligarchy. In other cases, the
dictator is self-appointed." Private governments, their sanctioning powers
lacking the state's ability to imprison or execute (although they often have
internal security forces with the power to arrest), ensure compliance by
using wholesale surveillance and the threats of demotion and exile, plus the
potential rewards of salary raises and promotions. Also, there usually is a
steady barrage of company propaganda.
"We have the language of fairness and distributive justice to talk about low
wages and inadequate benefits, we know how to talk about the Fight for $15,
whatever side of this issue you are on," Anderson writes. "But we don't have
good ways to talk about the way bosses rule workers' lives."
American workers have never achieved the array of rights won by workers in
other industrialized countries. At the height of union representation in
1954, only 28.3 percent of American workers were union members. This number
has fallen to 11.1 percent, with only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers
belonging to unions. Wages have for decades declined or been stagnant. Half
of all U.S. workers make less than $29,000 a year, effectively putting their
families in poverty.
Workers, lacking unions and the ability to pressure management through
collective bargaining, have no say in their working conditions. If they
choose to leave abusive employment, where do they go? The inequalities and
the workers' loss of liberty and agency are embedded within the corporate
structure. It is impossible, as Anderson warns, to build a free, democratic
society dominated by private governments. As these private governments merge
into the superstructure of the corporate state we are cementing into place
an unassailable corporate tyranny. It is a race against time. Our remaining
freedoms are being rapidly extinguished. These omnipotent dictatorships must
be destroyed, and they will only be destroyed by sustained popular protest
such as we see in the streets of Paris. Otherwise, we will be shackled in
21st-century chains.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers.
