The Problem With "Human Resources"
I've always thought that the "begining of the end" with regards to labour rights, respect for labour and stemming overt expoitation/extorsion/domination of labour, occured when companies and corporations came up with the idea of considering their work force as "resources" - as in "human resources" - to be managed and used as any other kind of resources.
Thus conveniently putting aside the obvious verity that human beings are not things to be used and discarded when used up - in addition to the fundamental fact that our economies happen to be shouldered by ...those very same "human resources" ...
Thus conveniently putting aside the obvious verity that human beings are not things to be used and discarded when used up - in addition to the fundamental fact that our economies happen to be shouldered by ...those very same "human resources" ...
The falling stock of workers
By Rick Salutin
Blinding moments of insight often come in asides, parentheses or (among academics) footnotes; what seems overbold gets slipped past fast. This happened in a recent Globe and Mail column by Murray Campbell on the decline of Ontario's economy: "The long-term trend toward globalization" (here it comes, pay attention) "-- seeking out lower-cost jurisdictions --". And it's gone. But he said it. All the glam theory and rhetoric on globalization and free trade came down to one thing: businesses taking work from here and shipping it to where people will do it more cheaply.
Notice that he doesn't even specify what the lower costs apply to in those "jurisdictions." It must be an economic factor that dare not speak its name. So I'll name it: workers. Labour. When workers appear in news about the current crisis, it's mostly as victims, collateral damage to impersonal forces like the economy, credit freezes or globalization.
What a comedown from the heyday of classical economics. All the greats, from Adam Smith to Marx, called labour the source of wealth and value. Workers were the core of the economic process, not vulnerable bystanders.
This is why the sad hallmark of this week's federal budget is its failure to restore the wasted employment insurance system for those out of work. It's the hallmark because of what it says about our attitudes toward the economy.
When unemployment insurance began, during the Depression of the 1930s, it was built on the idea of a right to work, like other basic rights, and not just a need to survive. Also on the dignity of work. UI was meant to tide the jobless through bad patches so that they needn't grab any shabby job offer that came along for the sake of survival. It reflected a sense of work as the heart of social and economic life, in a society where left-wing parties, ideologies, writers and, above all, unions, voiced this sense.
(Keep reading ...)
By Rick Salutin
Blinding moments of insight often come in asides, parentheses or (among academics) footnotes; what seems overbold gets slipped past fast. This happened in a recent Globe and Mail column by Murray Campbell on the decline of Ontario's economy: "The long-term trend toward globalization" (here it comes, pay attention) "-- seeking out lower-cost jurisdictions --". And it's gone. But he said it. All the glam theory and rhetoric on globalization and free trade came down to one thing: businesses taking work from here and shipping it to where people will do it more cheaply.
Notice that he doesn't even specify what the lower costs apply to in those "jurisdictions." It must be an economic factor that dare not speak its name. So I'll name it: workers. Labour. When workers appear in news about the current crisis, it's mostly as victims, collateral damage to impersonal forces like the economy, credit freezes or globalization.
What a comedown from the heyday of classical economics. All the greats, from Adam Smith to Marx, called labour the source of wealth and value. Workers were the core of the economic process, not vulnerable bystanders.
This is why the sad hallmark of this week's federal budget is its failure to restore the wasted employment insurance system for those out of work. It's the hallmark because of what it says about our attitudes toward the economy.
When unemployment insurance began, during the Depression of the 1930s, it was built on the idea of a right to work, like other basic rights, and not just a need to survive. Also on the dignity of work. UI was meant to tide the jobless through bad patches so that they needn't grab any shabby job offer that came along for the sake of survival. It reflected a sense of work as the heart of social and economic life, in a society where left-wing parties, ideologies, writers and, above all, unions, voiced this sense.
(Keep reading ...)
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