Worse than slavery

Karl Marx was correct in his observation that ownership is indivisible to one’s interest. Thus, if the capitalists have their interest on their capital to freely use it to create wealth, the same is true to the workers on their right to sell their labor to determine how much their services would cost in the open market. This fact about the right of the workers to their labor has since then been enshrined in all charters formally recognizing labor as a property right; that workers cannot be compelled to work without paying them compensation.

We have to explain this because of the proliferation of labor-only contracting, and our acquiescence to this new mode in harnessing labor as though it is perfectly legal. This dangerous trend does happen because we have forgotten the crucial aspect of ownership as giving rise to property rights, which in the capitalist system or free market economy is most sacred. So, if the sellers have their right to a fair price for the goods they sell, the lenders to an interest for their credit, the capitalists to a profit for their investment, the landlords and lessors for the rent and use of their property, so are the workers for their services.

Nonetheless, it is not just ownership that gives them the incentive to make use of what they own, viz. provide themselves an income, but most important, the compelling reason to protect their rights as owners. Invariably, to deprive them of the ownership, whether tangible or intangible, would result in their losing of interest over the thing transacted much that the derivative right to enjoy the fruit stems from one’s ownership of the thing.

We emphasize the correlation between ownership and interest to highlight that before mankind decided to abolish slavery, we thought of the practice as the worse thing a man could do to a fellow man. The slave-owners deprived the slaves not only of the fruits of their labor, but reduced them and their family for generations as chattels to be owned and sold just as all the fruits of their labor were logically owned by their master by virtue of their property rights over them.

But that is only one side of the picture about the nature of slavery. Interest in ownership goes beyond the use-value of the thing owned. For instance, slave-owners are obligated by customs and practices to take care of their slaves; to feed, clothe and provide them shelter, basic medication, rest so they will remain healthy to carry on their work, and protect them from being harmed by others. They are even duty-bound to bury their dead slaves. In other words, owners are guided by the ethical practice of properly protecting and disposing their properties; that they cannot just raze to the ground their old house, ditch their old car in a ravine, or shoot their farm animals the way they shoot at wild boars, or start a prairie fire on their farmland should they feel the price of sugar falls below production cost.

Unfortunately, that correlation of overseeing the welfare of the slaves by their masters does not exist in the relations between the contracted-out workers and their labor-only contracting agencies. While labor-only contractors purport themselves as employers, they are not in that real sense lessors because one essential element of a lessor is ownership, ergo, they have no right to share in the fruits of the labor of their contracted-out workers.

Yet, as self-styled lessors, they earn out of the services rendered by their leased-out workers like that of modern-day slave-traders because they determine where they will work, earn a fee for their placement, a monthly premium and absorption fees, but without acknowledging ownership over them. In effect, labor-only contractors pose themselves as master-owners when it comes to their contracted-out workers’ earnings, but deny themselves of that status when it comes to liability.

To make ourselves clear, when one sells his product, he guarantees the buyer of any hidden defect and is bound to replace the defective item. Eventually it is the seller that bears the cost, and must do something to improve his products. In the case of the labor-only contractors, should the employer-beneficiaries demand a replacement, they are bound to replace them with new ones for an added fee, but without guaranteeing to the displaced contracted-out workers anything precisely because they are not the owners, but a misplaced kind of lessors. As labor parasites engaged in the leasing of human services, they unnecessarily add up to the cost of labor. In effect, contractual workers are in worse situation than the slaves.

Unlike the slaves, the obligation of their master for their well being continues up to their death. In the case of the contracted-out workers that obligation automatically ceases upon the cancellation of the contract to hire by the employer-beneficiary. Aside from the rampant underpayment of wages, contracted-out workers are hired intermittently for that their earnings always fall below the minimum if computed by the number of days in a year. Just the same they remain “minimum wage earners” even if they reached the retirement age of 65 or rendered service for 25 years.

Of course, some of the so-called “legitimate” manpower service suppliers would argue the workers they sought to find job receive the right amount of wage and social security benefits. But they forget these are imposed by the government. Without them being mandated by law, chances are contracted-out workers would be getting much less, while their agency continues to rake in profit out of the meager wage they earn.

Once the employer-beneficiaries send them back to their contracting manpower agency, the only thing the latter loses is their monthly premium fee for that most abominable business of leasing out human services, while the poor contracted-out workers are left to fend for their most rudimentary needs, although in the olden days they were considered unwritten obligations to be carried out by the slave-owners though in their less-modern equivalents. –Rod P. Kapunan, Manila Standard Today

rodkap@yahoo.com.ph