This post is part three in the Great Paycheque Killers series.
In the previous posts, we covered two key tactics monopolists use to keep wages down, forcing employees to sign a non-compete clause and using anti-poaching policies. In this post, we look at another tactic:
#2 Destroy the ability of workers to get their rights
Part of the reason that wages went down was due to how Capitalists crushed the labour movement. Islam has a different approach to defending the right of workers (discussed below).
That being said, Capitalists don’t play fair.
And why should they, when billions are to be made?
The less the worker makes, the more the shareholder makes. Those who disagree with that, have an issue with math: revenue-expense=profit. Either you increase the revenues or decrease costs. Wages fall under the latter.
Can workers band together and get their rights through the courts?
No, they can’t.
In the US the Supreme Court ruled in Epic Systems v. Lewis that “employers may use mandatory arbitration clauses to prevent workers from banding together to pursue their legal rights in a class-action suit against the company. The message was clear: Workers of the United States, don’t try to unite. You’re on your own.”
How prevalent are such clauses?
Quite prevalent: “56% of private sector nonunionized workers are forced into mandatory arbitration and of those, 23% are also denied any access to class action lawsuits…. Another study found that 80% of America's 100 largest companies use mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contract.”
What about unions?
They’ve been systemically destroyed by business.
So, why did Capitalists legalize unions in the first place?
Marcus A. Hanna, a Republican Senator (yes, Republican) from Ohio, who supported unions said: “The large aggregations of capital, feared at first by labor, may prove to labor's best friend… Organized labor and organized capital are but forward steps in the great industrial evolution that is taking place.”
Hanna wanted use unions “secure… industrial peace”, but more importantly to fight socialism:
“You are well aware that there has been a tendency in this country, from the very nature of things, to what is called socialism. Everything that is American is primarily opposed to socialism. We talk about it and regret that these conditions exist, regret that there are extremists who are teaching the semi-ignorant classes labor theories… There is nothing in the organization of society in this country that can afford to permit the growth of socialistic ideas. They are un-American and unnatural to us as a people.”
With socialism gone, Capitalists no longer need unions. As Hanna indicated, it was a bribe for workers in abandoning Communism, anarchism or other ideologies that didn’t believe in the ‘divine right of capital’.
So the corporations, via globalization, outsourced it all to Mexico, China, Bangladesh and beyond. There were other factors as well. In the 1980s interest rates went from 8% to 16%, forcing “wage freezes or outright wage givebacks”.
The combination of these and other moves (e.g. Reagan firing all the air traffic controllers) broke the backs of unions. Regardless, it goes back to profit and loss. Capitalists would curtail their influence one way or another. Less money for workers, more money for the monopolists.
How could Islam address this?
Freedom has an important footnote: if a worker consents to being exploited there is no encroachment on that person’s freedom. Therefore, the State can’t interfere in this relationship because the State is only there to protect freedoms.
Islam, in contrast, has rights that a worker can’t give away.
For example, the Prophet (saw) said:
“Give the worker his wages before his sweat dries.” [Ibn Majah].
“Allah said: I am the opponent of three on the Day of Resurrection” until he said: and a man who hires a worker, makes use to him, then does not give him his wages.” [Al-Bukhari]
“Whosoever hired a person he has to inform him about his wage.” [Ad-Darqitni]
The employer must abide by these and other requirements, it’s not something that can just be ignored. In Islam, a worker can’t give up his or her rights.
One such right is the ability to take their employer to court. In Islam, the judge is not merely a referee. He or she must investigate the reality of the case carefully and judge upon it using the laws derived from the Quran and Sunnah. So, he or she will take care to understand the points of view of all the disputing parties, rather than advocating for the wealthy.
This is a real problem in America. During the confirmation hearings in 2020, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse exposed how lobby groups, like the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, raised millions to put their judges in place.
For example, the Senator pointed out that “anonymous funders running through something called the Judicial Crisis Network, which is run by Carrie Severino, and it is doing PR and campaign ads for Republican judicial nominees. It got $17 million – a single $17 million donation in the Garland-Gorsuch contest. It got another single $17 million donation to support Kavanaugh. Somebody, perhaps the same person, spent $35 million to influence the United States Supreme Court.” In the Islamic System, the ruler appoints judges. There is no money involved in the process to allow this type of corruption.
In contrast, in an Islamic court, the wage is determined by looking at experts to understand what the proper wage would be. The wage is solely determined by the benefit of the work and not the standard of living. When the court is judging the dispute on the wage, the judge must not look at the evidence brought by the two parties. Instead, they must get the testimony of an expert in estimating the wage. The employer and employee can choose this expert, but if they can’t agree then the judge will choose that expert.
Consequently, when it comes to wages the society must ensure that the worker is being paid the value of their work. In Islam, the employee can take the employer to court. The court can retain experts to assess the benefit of the work and then force the employer to pay the right amount.
But how will the experts determine the wage, given that wealthy have more power?
The challenge here is not letting reality define our thinking. We have only seen Capitalist markets where the rich exploit the 99%. But what a world where the market actually works to discipline the elites?
We will explore this in the next post, in sha Allah, where we look at how King Capital consolidated markets work to depress wages