Corvee Labor

There is an artifact of exploitation called corvee labor.  In short, peons owe their overlords a certain amount of labor each year, gratis, for things like tidying up walls, repairing roads, digging trenches, whatever.  In USA today, it is almost impossible to get out of a private high school without having done substantial corvee labor.  When these people become "leaders of tomorrow" they will think nothing of requiring "public service" of their inferiors.  Since they answered phones at a women's shelter in high school, they will see no problem demanding a father of three kids spend a week away from home digging ditches in the years to come.  And with so much debt USA accumulated under Bush and Obama, one part of the payback will be massive unpaid work by Americans.

Minimum wage laws force the vulnerable to work for free as well.  Major corporations, law firms, big business, and small companies like restaurants and other small businesses take on "interns" who work for free.  Restaurants would pay $5 an hour for their help, but $7.25 minimum wage, plus massive exposure to liability for having an employee, makes restaurants and other small businesses do without a paid employee, and take on unpaid "interns."  I am regularly importuned by students in my classes who wish to come and work for free for me.

It is a crime that cries out to the heavens for vengeance to withhold wages from workers.  According to the Bible God himself deals with wage withholders, while life goes on.  None of this waiting for the last judgment.  But, but you say, both sides agree that one side will work for free.  No, a third party made rules that allow a second party, the employer, to abuse the first party, the unemployed.  In natural law, we cannot agree to anything that violates of inalienable rights to like and property.  It is bad enough employees lend money to their employers for up to a month (employees get paid after they do the work, so in essence employees lend employers money), in no circumstances can we make an agreement to work for free.  And extreme example would be we can neither agree to become slaves, no can anyone agree to enslave us.

Washington State department of labor makes sure no one is abused, or not.  They have a set of guidelines to determine if someone is an illegally unpaid employee or a legal unpaid intern or trainee.  Let's listen in:

1. The training is similar to what a trainee would get at a vocational school.

2. The training benefits the trainee.

3. Trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their supervision.

4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the trainee; indeed, the employers operations may be disrupted by the program.

5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of the training.

6. Employer and trainee both understand trainee is not entitled to a job at the end of the training.

(Thanks to karen Sutherland writing for the Bar Bulletin, Seattle).

You will note, like all government regulations, they crush small business while allowing big business to dance lightly over the life of citizens.  One of the six rules is pointless, the other five are carefully crafted to  benefit only big business/ big government.

Let's critique:

1. The training is similar to what a trainee would get at a vocational school.

A small business necessarily competes on differentiation, so a training program would necessarily offer what cannot be learned at a voc tech.  Voc tech schools are designed to feed big biz/big govt, so their skillsets training are normally what they would teach and intern at a big biz.

2. The training benefits the trainee.

This sounds good, but it is vague, and probably related to #4 below.  In a small business, the trainee, no matter what, will benefit the trainers, overwhelmingly, just as a matter of gravity.  A trainee is a factor in a small business, not a factor in a big business.

3. Trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their supervision.

In a small business, a trainee will be doing work a paid person otherwise would be doing.  The small business would be relying on what the trainee brought to the gig in terms of intelligence, problem solving, etc.  The less supervision, the more likely the trainee would be successful.

4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the trainee; indeed, the employers operations may be disrupted by the program.

Of course a small businessperson's first question in every employment meeting is how will this person make me money?  Big business and big govt, since its losses are bailed out by taxpayers anyway can afford to have limitless people laying about doing nothing, and occasionally "supervising" the occasional buxom intern.

5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of the training.

Since this statement can be true and false at once, it is pointless rule.

6. Employer and trainee both understand trainee is not entitled to a job at the end of the training.

This is not much better, but anyone volunteering at a small biz wants a job at the end.  Someone at big biz/big govt may indeed not get a job at the dept of interesting whatever, but certainly expects to get hired over at the dept of surfing the web all day.

One tiny aspect of life in USA, with a pattern that replays over and over in all of USA.  It is why we are fast becoming third world in law and culture.  The solution is freedom, free markets and freedom to contract.

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