Chapter 2 - Human Dignity of Workers and Competition

Summary

POINT OF DEPARTURE: THE WORKER TREATED AS AN OBJECT

In a market economy, labour is a commodity. The economic existence of the worker depends on the development of the markets. This is obvious for selfemployed workers, but employees are in a comparable situation: if the employer gets into economic difficulties, the wage earner becomes redundant and can be dismissed. As an unemployed person, he can find a new job only under the conditions determined by the market. Despite the fact that the employee is a bearer of rights vis-à-vis the employer during the employment relationship, it is misleading to call him a “citizen” of the enterprise. An individual who can be “expatriated” at any moment is no “citizen” – and the employer can always take economic decisions that make the employee redundant. In reality, the worker is treated as an object. This is in contradiction to human dignity.

MITIGATING THE SITUATION

The fact of a person being a commodity can be more obvious or less obvious, more felt or less felt. Four factors play a role in this field.

THE INDISPENSABLE WORKER

It may happen that the worker cannot be replaced because of his special qualifications or his experience in the enterprise. To dismiss such a worker would create considerable problems in the working process. There is a good chance that such workers will remain in the position they desire and that their dignity is respected, especially in cases of highly qualified persons. This is a market-created protection against dismissal. Protection against dismissal is not just one element of an employee's situation: it is the fundamental condition for the exercise of all other labour law rights.

PROTECTION BY LABOUR LAW

There are a lot of legal rules protecting the worker: health and safety, fundamental rights in the workplace, minimum wages, stability of real earnings, protection against dismissal. A large part consists of judge-made law, the content of which varies from country to country. These legal rules reduce the degree to which a worker is treated as a commodity. In some legal orders the employer is not allowed to examine the private life of an applicant and genetic screening is forbidden as well; the “commodity” must not be inspected in an “exaggerated” way.