# Work Indignities By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2024-07-26 Under capitalism, people do not have a recognized right to employment. Companies hire employees when they think they can extract surplus value from employment. They will terminate employment when they determine that the amount of surplus labor being extracted is insufficient. People will be hired, and people will be let go based on these determinations. This is an expected, if not accepted, part of the business cycle under capitalism. Because there is unemployment and poverty, employers can get people to subjugate themselves to this process. If there was an economic right to employment and people were entitled to a job, unemployment or fear would not exist. Workers would have a better option than to comply or die. Sometimes, losing one’s job is unexpected. Things seem to be going well, and one is let go out of nowhere. More typically, there are warning signs that things are not going well for the organization, so one’s employment is precarious. As economic considerations decline, workers are routinely subjected to indignities. Most people comply with these because they want to keep employment for as long as possible, and they harbor hope that, somehow, they will make it through the culling. Such indignities could be dismantling machinery, traveling to a foreign country, reassembling the equipment, and then training foreign, more extremely exploited workers on how to run the machinery. The worker knows that one is training one’s replacement, and one knows that one is training a person who will be exploited. Yet, most will do it to have two more months of employment. In an office setting, one might be directed to automate the thinking aspects of one’s work or to write procedures so that less-educated employees can execute simplified tasks. Again, most people understand that they are complicit in what is occurring. They are being paid to deskill their profession so that almost anybody could do it. Work indignities are everyday under capitalism. Under capitalism, responsibility falls to the individual. One is likely desperate if one has a student loan, car loan, home mortgage, and the socially cultivated desire for material consumption and excess. As an individual, one is trapped, precarious, powerless, and easily subjugated to any number of work indignities. There are not many distinct options available under capitalism between “fuck you” and “yes, sir.” This is by design. Capitalists can enact and sustain a system of indignities by enticing individual advancement. If there is a path for “the best” to make six figures, most will focus on that path rather than solidarity. Whether we recognize it or not, we are in this together for the vast majority. We are each navigating this narrow and precarious path. Worker solidarity is essential. With it, we can replace “employment at will” with a universal right to employment. Dignity at work necessitates that workers can say no. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Capitalism]] [[Solidarity]] [[Economics]] [[Layoffs]] [[Rights]] [[Dignity]]