Tuesday, 7 April 2020

On the Threat of Complicity between Management and the State

Comrade - allow me to depict to you a scenario which is imminently possible in today's world, so much so that I would be surprised if it has not been exercised already. Let us say that you run a company which sells a product ( or many). For example let us say that you are involved in information broadcasting, a sector which is high in visibility to the public, and which private enterprises do depend on. As is not uncommon is such arrangements, the state will often purchase advertisements in the given media. Railway tenders, advertisements for government jobs of all kinds etc - are often found in newspapers.


A company, as is expected, is required to pay its employees for the service they render to it, a service which enables the establishment to place a product in the market. A product often bearing contractual offers by the state for employment opportunities that the public may avail of.

Let us say that for whatever reason the state has not been able to pay the company in question for the advertisements it carries diligently. A state has deep coffers, but a company - unless its a monolith like Google or Microsoft - has less so, and the employees even lesser. The first to feel the pinch would be the employees. What may they do?

Within the ambit of the law they may appeal to a court for justice. And where would this lead? The best imaginable scenario depicts the judge ordering the company in question to pay its workers their dues (along with any interest that they may have lost from banks, damages for the troubles of fighting a case etc.) Now the company in turn, having received such an order would require to procure the funds necessary to pay these workers - funds if you remember (for the purposes of our example) - the state has defaulted on, despite using the marketed medium in question to hire contractual workers in its own stead.

The company would then, within the ambit of the law, have to file another case against the state in question, in a court - to avail of the funds which it is due, which the court itself orders it to pay its workers. Bear in mind that the court itself is financed from the coffers of the state, garnered from taxes paid by citizens. I have been informed that a registrar may, in certain conditions, decide to intervene in such matters and club a couple of cases together. I do not know how often this actually happens.

In any case, we can see how the state provides courts, in such an arrangement, with a steady supply of disputed cases, which creates work for judges, lawyers and firms etc. What happens to the companies? Well the workers are often let off by companies when they can no longer be paid. And by the time the state and the courts provides the company with the dues they are owed the length of the 'business cycle' in question leaves only the top bracket in a position to take advantage of the situation. If such individuals were to have shares in the company the production and reproduction of such situations would even be incentivised.

As a democracy, can we afford to leave such an arrangement unchanged? I think not.

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