When there is one thing that the neo-liberal/conservative
politicians of the last three decades have advocated, it is of course the free market. That has
proven to be a genuine panacea for all economical and political diseases.
There is not even the faintest doubt among most national
governments in Europe, or among the European Union leadership, that ‘the free
market’ is the solution to all problems:
- When the free market indeed succeeds to improve things in certain economic or social situations or in certain industries, it was obvious, as the 'free market' is THE answer to every economic question.
- And when the free market fails(!) in certain situations or in certain industries, it was always a question of bad luck, mismanagement or unforeseen circumstances. Or... simply because the market was not free enough and the competition did not play a fair, competitive game.
Well, you know the drill!
The answer to a failing free
market... is administering more free market. Then the symptoms of pending economic and social problems will disappear
like snow in the hot sun. It is the 21st Century version of the medieval habit of 'leeching', in case of dangerous illnesses, and
virtually everybody believes in its healing force.
There is not the slighest clue among the ‘believers’ that
the gospel of the free market could lead to undesirable, totally unfair or
straight away absurd situations in the global economy. That’s simply impossible.
There is nothing outside the free market and the euro and dollar are its
prophets. Amen!
The apostles of the free market believe and defend their
gospel with an exasperated energy and an intolerance for contradiction that
reminds of the socialist/communist revolutionaries in their finest hours during
the early Twentieth Century. Everything that stops, hampers or questions the free market must
burn on the holy stakes of the free market evangelists.
The result is that most people ignore the negative
side-effects of the free market by simply looking the other way, or consider them as ‘a small price to pay’ for the best economic system there has ever been in
the world.
On the electronic highway, a few companies – you definitely
know which ones – call nearly all the shots by monopolizing their whole, global
line of business and by dredging up nearly all the global advertisement sales
with their ubiquitous dragnets, from which nothing and nobody can escape.
Or by
milking their hundreds of millions of customers as ‘information cows’ and by infringing
every privacy law in the book, through the application of never-ending and unreadable
terms and conditions for usage that – understandably – nobody reads, because
normal people don’t even bother to chew through those.
And last, but not least, by hampering their new competitors with takeover threats, useless lawsuits for copyright and patent infringements “because
they can”or by hindering their business with useless and complicated conditions
for software usage, user certificates and services.
But that’s not all...
Instead of companies paying the
lion share of their taxes in the countries, where most of their customers live
and where they earned the majority of their sales revenues, tax avoidance (or evasion) became a global
sport for sanctimoneous multinationals with unctuously recorded commercials on
TV and the internet.
Fair tax payment for all (multinational ) companies is replaced by lackluster philantropy
and a few odd charity foundations, that seem more in the interest of the executives than in the interest of the people living in the countries were they earn their revenues.
Perhaps the worst thing is that “the free market as we
know it today” could turn lower-qualified or even (former) middle-class workers
with dignity and a decent future before them, into vassals and serfs-out-of-choice, as there is really
no choice for them.
Most well-to-do people are clueless that fair jobs against
fair payment could turn into a mirage for people without a fixed contract and with
virtually no possibilities to organize themselves, when the free market does
its demolishing work.
This weekend I read on two different occasions about
the negative side-effects of the free market, with respect to the labour situation.
One ‘letter to the editor’, written by
Tamara Ronteltap – an Organizational Purpose Coach – and published by Het Financieele Dagblad, complained about the now quite common disdain for workers, by seeing them solely as a ‘sustainable
means of production’, aka a profit machine:
In
the article about the Brexit, Simon Wolfson writes – triggered by the
immigration conundrum – that the question at hand is: “Do we see people as an
economic asset or as a liability?”
In
this vision, the worker is seen as nothing more than an asset for the profit and loss account,
irrespective of his alleged positive or negative value.
Also
in the article ‘Still ill’, regarding research into continued payment during
periods of sickness, the image pops up that the (sick) worker is solely seen as
a financial entry in the company’s general ledger, who is – on top of that –
incapable of taking his responsibilities in his own hands. The latter is emphasized
by the sentence that the ‘ill worker must be actively spurred to resume his
work asap’
I definitely get Tamara’s point, as Theory X is having
its finest hour in many companies these days, with the mounting distrust of
employers in their workers and the resulting urge to control them 24-7.
Nevertheless, Tamara’s letter was a relatively innocent plea to take better
care of companies’ and government workers and don’t treat them as a piece of
machinery. Important, but not really shocking or mindboggling.
However, the following must-read article was a shocking
example of top-notch investigative journalism by Belgian journalist Michael
Dilissen of De
Redactie.be, in the best tradition of Günter
Wallraf, the famous German writer of ‘Lowest of the Low’:
Dilissen volunteered to work as a day labourer – with one
day contracts alone – at what turned out to be international courier DHL, at the Belgian airport Zaventem. He describes how people are treated as vassals (or even serfs) through the usage
of an imaginary carrot (i.e. 'a fixed contract) and a very real stick.
I can’t print much more than a few of the most important snippets, but strongly advice
you to read the whole article, as it will be worth your while:
They
have a lot in common, my new colleagues: an infectuous enthusiasm and an absolute belief in the promised fixed contract, as could be read in the vacancy
add.
Before
we can walk to our working place, there is a word of the big boss. About the payment and the
security rules for temporary workers of DHL.
And
then reality bites:
“I
want to let you know that what the consultants at the temp agency promised
you, is not true. Not everybody will get a fixed contract; this is only for the
best of the best. The happy few of the temp workers... So make sure that you get
among them by never getting ill, working hard, never complaining, doing extra
hours and never being too late!”.
And
as if that was not enough: “For the people who are late, we have an efficient method:
when you are late once, we’ll keep you at home for one week. This means one
week having no job and no income, but all the time in the world for thinking how to get here in time, next time. That is a way of learning a new attitude.”.
[...]
It
is cold at night in the warehouse. The boxes become heavier by the day. My temporary
co-workers don’t seem to care. They think about their fixed contract. Ahmed and
Guido have worked with day contracts for several months, while Abdul and Najib
received a week contract after four weeks only. Some have high hopes, while
others get more frustrated by the day.
[...]
Friday
is D-day. On Friday all interim workers receive an SMS with the planning for
next week. It is a token of prove that you survived yet another week and are part of the
game for one more week.
Last
week there was a lot of panic. There had been three tours with new loads of
candidate-temp workers. New candidates mean undoubtedly that others must take a hike. The
effect is unmistakenable. Everybody is working even quicker.
[...]
The
payments of my interim job are impossible to check. Every time a different
amount. Also the others complain of faulty payments. Abdul never received one hour
of overtime. Every week Richard and Omar received up to €60 too little in
payments. Complaining at the temporary labour agency is virtually impossible. Startpeople
calls you with an undisclosed phone number, which makes it impossible to call
back.
The writer Michael Dilissen stated that DHL was just a coincidental
example of these opaque and intolerable practices and that probably many more
companies use the same tactics of keeping their unorganized, temporary (day)workers
on a tight leash, with empty promises and hardly disguised threats.
The sick thing with these kinds of ‘near-slave’ labour is
that nobody is really doing something about it, which leaves such a situation
festering for years and years. This is the inevitable consequence of the ubiquitously
growing disdain and distrust of employers for (fixed contract) workers and the
diminishing influence of labour unions, as well as a result of the relentless cutbacks
on labour inspection services throughout Europe during the last decades.
One has to realize that in most cases an investigation is only
started when one or more people file an official complaint against their temporary employer. However, filing a
complaint is the surest way to lose one’s day job and source of income and also
the (faint) outlook for a steady job at DHL – or other companies with the same
attitude against temporary workers.
This is a Catch-22 situation, in which
abuse of powerless workers by the employers is almost guaranteed.
Things were so different when I was 25 years old and
worked at the local ‘Melkunie’ milk factory as a temp worker: payment was
great, the atmosphere at the job was great and foremen, bosses and managers were
friendly and understanding towards their workers. Some of my fondest memories
were created during my working hours at the milk factory.
Workers even enjoyed one paid(!) break during working
hours and good meals could be acquired at very reasonable prices. And last, but not least: there was always a warm welcome for temporary workers, who wanted to
return to the job after some time away.
Even physically or mentally handicapped
workers with sufficient working capabilities got the ‘Melkunie’ treatment, thus freeing them from a life living on
subsidies and welfare payments.
How different are things nowadays in situations,
like the one described above.
Workers are treated like immediately replaceable resources,
with virtually no rights and countless obligations, of which infringements are
severely punished.
I can only hope that the future government of The
Netherlands and the current Belgian goverment – and as a matter of fact all
governments and supranational governing bodies within the EU - take such excrescences
in today’s labour markets finally serious.
Companies and governments must understand that labour
unions, as well as extremely brave individual workers and cautiously united worker groups gave their
blood, sweat and tears for a fair treatment of lower and middle class workers
by their employers. It would be a disaster when the clock was turned back
to the appaling situation of the Middle Ages, in which workers were literally owned by
somebody and had no rights at all.
And so: when the free market blatantly fails, administering more
market is amplifying the problem, instead of bringing the solution.
Strong
governments must act on behalf of the people who don’t have the power to do so.
Protecting the poor and powerless, instead of helping the ones who have it all. It is their one of their most important obligations and
a large part of their raison d’etre.
Yet, there are still few signs that the European national governments and the EU all understand that important message.
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