Labour Brokers or Slave Traders?

It would seem to me as if a discussion like this has got to start with first principles.

In philosophy, a first principle is a basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.

For now let us assume that we all agree on Freedom and Equality as a foundation of our contract with the state.
Let's all also agree that morality must supersede tyranny in any legitimate form of government. Otherwise, people are left with a societal system rooted in backwardness, disorder, and regression

So what is Freedom?
In a philosophical context freedom is:
1. Free will, the purported ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints.
2. Political freedom, the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression
3. Economic freedom, the freedom to produce, trade and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud or theft

And what is Equality?

Equality requires the lack of legally enforced social class or caste boundaries and the lack of unjustified discrimination motivated by an inalienable part of a person's identity. For example, gender, age, sexual orientation, origin, caste or class, income or property, language, religion, convictions, opinions, health or disability must not result in unequal treatment under the law and should not reduce opportunities unjustifiably.

If we then proceed from this point it could be argued that any structural policy of the government must reinforce this morality and constitutional ideals.

A friend of mine recently made the analogy, that forcing people to accept casual jobs at the expense of a more permanent contract is "Like offering the poor 'ou brood of niks brood'". He certainly makes a good point in highlighting the base immorality of a system that reduces it citizens to commodities that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. Or in this case the lowest bidder.
A system which by its very nature relies on surplus labour to extract a profit for a few instead of a decent living for many.

This is neither Freedom, nor does it meet the basic criteria of Equality.
Instead what it does is configure the system in such a way as to force the desperate to accept conditions which are short term in nature and offers the individual, community, or society no longer term benefit and can best be described as creating a survivalist culture in which "ou Brood is better than niks brood"

As someone who has experience in both a corporate and sme environments, I can also sympathise with those who suggest that small business needs this type of flexibility.
As an agent of a corporate organisation I was able to witness firsthand the callous manner in which corporates are able to hire and fire at will.
For corporates there is no guiding philosophy of job creation, In fact the opposite is true. Corporates actively seek to reduce their reliance on the "human factor" and every board meeting and management meeting has a standard item on the agenda. "Overheads"

People are no more than overheads that must continually be reduced in number and cost.

As a SME owner and manager I was also exposed to the harsh reality of making ends meet in a very competitive environment where the Asian Tigers, more specifically China, has flooded our markets with cheap goods from cheap labour and which has decimated manufacturing both big and small in this country.
SME business are very reliant on a flexible environment as they quite often do not have the resources that large corporates have and thus are much more vulnerable to legislation like this and certainly I would encourage a degree of flexibility around this sector.

This does not by any means suggest that labour brokers, like modern day slave traders should be allowed to flourish and propagate.

The reality for Government, and this is a point I have made previously, is that Radical interventions are called for. The ANC is caught between business and its founding ideals. The DA does not have the same dilemma by the way. Its ideological bias is well known.
The challenge before us is to somehow go beyond the immorality of seeing our brothers and sisters and indeed ourselves, as commodities that can be bought and sold as modern day slaves. To a society that sees that all the wealth we create should not be allowed to sit in a few bank accounts drawing immoral amounts of interest, but is used to uplift our communities and societies
I agree that the bigger the business the more responsibility they must bear to transform our society from one in which labour is exploited and discarded at will to one where labour is valued as a contribution towards building and uplifting our society.

Capital cannot be given a blank cheque. After all, it is precisely because of their greed that we find ourselves in this predicament.
Was it not during the period of this country’s greatest growth that the unemployment rate rose to unprecedented proportions?

Was it not Capital who year after year, Pre 2008 and even subsequently, gushed about their record profits?

Was it not during this period that we were told that our country has become more prosperous?

Indeed it was.
It is in the very nature of the beast to accumulate vast amounts of profits while the labour on whose blood and sweat this profit was made, go home with no pension, no savings, no annual leave, and no security, to empty stomachs and squalid homes.

It is time for all of us to reject the lie that has been fed to us for so long. To reject the unholy and immoral world view that would have us treat our brothers and sisters as slaves.

I leave you with the immortal words of George Bernard Shaw:
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

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