Myths of Socialism #6
The Myth of the Evil Employer
Last Sunday Helen Kelly launched into a revealing diatribe about employee/employer relationships:
“Council of Trade Unions head Helen Kelly has accused the National government of trying to instil an attitude in which employers should be treated with deference and workers simply grateful to have jobs.
“Speaking to the Labour Party Congress this morning, she cited the Pike River mine disaster as the most stark example of this.
“Ms Kelly said in the immediate aftermath of the blast in the mine, anybody who dared to challenge the mining company was accused of insensitivity.”
This is the typical socialist frame of reference for employee/employer relations: the idea that employers are evil feudal lords who treat their employees as vassals and slaves. It dispenses entirely with the amount of effort and risk that the employer has taken in creating his/her business. It completely ignores the fact that these businesses are usually developed with other people’s money – money that those people have put at risk and who are entitled to a reasonable recompense for that risk. It brushes over the fact that a business is unlikely to survive if it treats its workers badly.
In the case of Pike River, it conveniently ignores the fact that the explosion not only cost the lives of twenty nine men but effectively destroyed the business, costing everyone their jobs and the shareholders their investment. While it is certainly possible that someone at Pike River was taking foolhardy and dangerous short cuts, it does not follow that this was so just because government oversight of mining may have been somewhat scanty. Most mine managers and operators would have been only too aware of how stupid such alleged short cuts were. It is, in fact, quite unlikely that the CEO or the mine manager would have been taking such risks with men’s lives and millions of dollars in assets. Despite this, Ms Kelly would have liked to ask “hard questions”, which is clearly her code for “make unsupported accusations and innuendoes”. Considering the dearth of real facts available at the time (and still unforthcoming), the only result of such a line of questioning would be the media equivalent of a lynch mob. Even Andrew Little was more circumspect with his words.
So while Ms. Kelly might think that Pike River shows an “anti-worker” attitude, it is clear to me that her words reveal a deep antipathy towards employers. One that has no rational basis in reality.
Let us be clear here. There are many employers that are no angels. Small businesses rely on just a few individuals or a single person who is as human as anyone else. There will be episodes that revolve around issues of personality rather than employment. But, by and large, most small-business employers want their workers to be happy. This is not necessarily altruism. A happy worker is productive and stays with the firm. Training new employees is a pain for most business owners. Small businesses do best when they have a stable group of long-term employees who know the business well.
Ms. Kelly’s antipathy towards employers is exacerbated towards big business. Admittedly, many big businesses tend to treat employees as expendable accounting units, rather than as people. This trend can also be seen in government departments, and, yes, even in unions. Having said that, even big business would recognise that there is an increased cost to high employee turnover and would much prefer a stable workforce to a fluid one. Although the board of a business has an obligation to make as high a return as possible for its shareholders, any prudent board would also be mindful of the sustainability of the business – and sustainability is heavily dependent on the human capital of an organisation. Self-interest rules here, just as much as it does in small businesses.
Bizarrely, Helen Kelly also lays into the shareholders of Pike River, saying that “shareholders would walk away “scot-free” without having to account for the deaths and debt”. All this shows is that the woman has no understanding at all of the business world. Shareholders risk their money. That is all. This is the meaning of the words “limited liability”. Only a complete fool would sign up for a company’s debt while having no direct control over the company. And as to shareholders being culpable for the deaths of those miners – one has to wonder what she has been smoking recently.
Actually, the rant against shareholders merely exemplifies the unreasoning hatred that socialists have towards capitalism. No amount of job creation by business owners would satisfy them, because they would always assume that this was somehow exploitative. It seems hard to believe that anyone in this day and age could find fault with a simple transaction between grown adults – the swapping of labour for money, but it appears that ardent socialists such as Ms. Kelly believe that workers are too stupid to know their value or too cowardly to insist upon it.
And yet collective bargaining predates the union movement by thousands of years.
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May 25 11 1:42 am
If she wants to point the finger of blame then she needs to remember that 3 fingers point back at the accuser, those 3 fingers in this case representing the Labour party, the greens and the other socialists who forced the mine into tunnelling instead of open cast mining, which would have allowed the flammable gases to dissipate harmlessly away. The Socialists murdered those men. The story ends there.
Hang your head in shame you murdering cow
May 25 11 9:04 am
I agree with the general thrust of your argument, but take issue on a couple of points. Firstly, the interest taken in worker safety in this country is not the best, and larger companies are among the worst, because no single person wants to take responsibility. Case in point: there was recently a major phone outage in my neighbourhood, requiring several excavations on the grass berm. I noticed several issues relating to worker and public safety and made a phone call to the company concerned. No result. It took a phone call to the Department of Labour to produce a flurry of activity to rectify blatant inadequacies in safety procedures. Draw your own conclusion.
Secondly, I certainly don’t think most workers are too stupid to know their value, but many ARE too cowardly to insist on it. This certainly applies to safety issues, where many will go along with dubious practices because they do not have the courage to stand out from the herd and say “that’s too dangerous, I won’t do it that way”.
May 25 11 12:46 pm
Rod:
My observation is New Zealanders are not good at recognising safety issues in general. I therefore don’t think this is so much a “bad employer” problem (as Kelly would argue) but a generally poor attitude to safety. I note in your story, that none of the workers were concerned about the unsafe conditions – any of them could have phone the DoL and complained anonymously, or reported the problem to the union or to OSH.
I don’t have a problem with union involvement in safety issues, BTW, I only have a problem with the highly confrontational attitude of people like Ms. Kelly.
In non-unionised situations, the simplest thing is for all the workers on a particular site to agree that something is unsafe and then put it in writing to their boss. The act of recording it is very significant. Should there be an accident as outlined in the letter, the company would now become criminally negligent, since they knew of the risk but refused to mitigate it. The majority of companies would pay attention to a safety concern if it was presented by more than a single individual. The written method would tip the balance for some of the more recalcitrant ones.
In the end, workers still have the option to withdraw their labour. Admittedly this is difficult in the current job environment and is reserved for the occasional idiot boss who conforms to Ms. Kelly general opinion of boss. Fortunately these fools are actually rare.
May 25 11 5:34 pm
“My observation is New Zealanders are not good at recognising safety issues in general.”
I guess I would have to agree with that….just look at the current “planking” craze!
May 25 11 9:15 am
Spot on, MacDoctor.
May 25 11 11:28 am
employers should be treated with deference and workers simply grateful to have jobs
of course. After all, it’s the employers’ (or their backers’) money.
The best way to identify a conservative is that they understand the phrase “their betters” and don’t delude themselves into thinking everone is “equal” or deserves some kind of “equality” or “equity” of opportunity or outcome.
But this post is a great argument for banning all trades unions, “health and safety” inspectors and the rest, and get back to the simple basic facts: it’s the employers’ money – and a worker who doesn’t work will starve.
May 25 11 5:26 pm
So you would be happy to close down the ACC and let workers injured by being made to work under unsafe conditions starve, would you? Otherwise it would be taxpayers’ money subsidising unsafe employers. Make workers have their own private insurance, maybe? But wait a minute, private insurers normally require policy holders to take all due care to mitigate risk…
May 25 11 11:40 pm
Safety has always been paramount in my industry (electrical), and I’m sure the same could be said for the mining industry. The HSE Act has served to codify safety and usually works very well. I even have some industry clients who insist on safety measures that exceed the minimum requirements and fully expect to pay for them. Sometimes those measures are OTT in a given situation, but the principle is “no exceptions” which takes away all argument. I have also worked extensively with unions (on the opposite side of the table!) where spurious claims of unsafe conditions have magically disappeared upon upwards revision of monetary reward. Having said that, one person who sat opposite me on occasions has become a good friend – we both knew we were simply fulfilling our roles and both parties knew what was achievable and what wasn’t.
May 26 11 8:47 am
I’m in two minds as to whether the HSE works well or not. In my view safety in the workplace gets a lot of lip service but very little practical attention. I was recently required to attend a course at a training organistaion and probably an hour was spent belabouring the point that people must report unsafe situations, not just walk past them. We then took a coffee break, and I noticed that the wall mounted water heater was so high that users couldn’t see the level in their cup, resulting in hot water splashes and the potential for spilling hot liquid on themselves. I thought I would test the information I had just received, and you guessed it….I had great difficulty in getting anyone in the organisation to take my complaint seriously. Eventually I went to the administration office and insisted on completing a hazard report form. Most people will just mention the matter once, then give up.
May 26 11 6:15 pm
Agreed, a lot of that does go on – ironic considering where your experience took place. But I don’t see that as a fault of the Act. One area that took me a while to accept (but I do now) is “near miss” reporting, eg your knife slips while cutting cable insulation but without injury, or a digger bucket swings round and just misses another worker. If handled properly these reports can genuinely improve future safety (keep knives sharp; use safety observers etc) but the keys to success are (a) no blame, and (b) a management genuinely committed to safety.