What is it that employers in all forms and sizes, from tech giants, to large manufacturing and commercial companies, to government, to small enterprises, shops to a household employing just one domestic worker, fear in common? UNIONS
From the Rockefellers to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos in the world, to the Tatas to Mukesh Ambani or Gautam Adani in India, a miniscule few have amassed enormous wealth through exploitation of both human and natural resources in the most brazen way. The 3 day pre-wedding festivities of the youngest Ambani scion at their Jamnagar estate are estimated to have surpassed Rs.1250,00,00,000! On the other hand, the contract electricity workers of Reliance earn a monthly wage of Rs. 13,000, which means they earn Rs. 500 a day in the city of Mumbai to survive!
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From a poor bullied child to the Co-founder of Tesla
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. Musk grew up with his head stuck in books and computers. He was bullied by his classmates and often beaten up by class bullies as a little, timid youngster. He developed a video game at the age of 12 and sold it for ＄ 500. In 1988, Musk refused compulsory military duty in South Africa and left the country to study in Canada. Musk moved to the United States in 1992 to study business and physics. In the summer of 1995, Musk relocated to Silicon Valley with his brother and started a company called Zip2, an internet business directory with maps. Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for ＄307 million. He went on to make his wealth as a PayPal co-founder and the rise even since has been meteoric. e hear how the rich worked tirelessly to rise from rags to riches. These stories of struggle are almost mythical. The inspiring story of Elon Musk goes this way…
From a poor bullied child to the Co-founder of Tesla
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. Musk grew up with his head stuck in books and computers. He was bullied by his classmates and often beaten up by class bullies as a little, timid youngster. He developed a video game at the age of 12 and sold it for ＄ 500. In 1988, Musk refused compulsory military duty in South Africa and left the country to study in Canada. Musk moved to the United States in 1992 to study business and physics. In the summer of 1995, Musk relocated to Silicon Valley with his brother and started a company called Zip2, an internet business directory with maps. Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for ＄307 million. He went on to make his wealth as a PayPal co-founder and the rise even since has been meteoric.
What this story skillfully misses out is that Musk was born in apartheid South Africa to a Canadian mother and a white South African father who owned blood diamond mines in South Africa and an emerald mine in Zambia. Musk’s family wealth and power allowed him to evade the mandatory two year military service at the age of 17 for all white South Africans and he moved to Canada. The initial investment for his pet projects came from his deep-rooted family wealth and even if he had done nothing in life he could have still got a wedding party to which all the good and the great of the world would have flown in to a place not one of them had heard of before.
The rich only get richer by plundering collective resources but when they fail, governments come their rescue. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, 2008 in the US ensured corporations did not fold up despite being responsible for the economic crisis. The total cost of this bailout was US$ 498 billion. According to the RBI, the Government of India has made banks write off bad loans of companies worth Rs 209,144 crore in March 2023, Rs 174,966 crore in March 2022 and Rs 202,781 crore in March 2021.
Companies spend millions of dollars to sell these rag-to-riches stories to us through books, news features, films and of course advertising. We believe these stories as it puts the onus of success or failure on the individual and veils the systemic support received by the favoured few. We believe we are poor as we lack initiative and superhuman entrepreneurial skills like the rich do and we blame ourselves for our own misery, instead of blaming the rich who make money by exploiting us.
As long as employers can isolate their employees into self-seeking individuals aspiring to become rich one day, employers can sleep in peace. This peace and tranquillity shatters when workers start thinking about coming together as a collective to demand a fair living and working condition. The fear of Unions thus is a real fear of people’s power to change how things stand, to demand a more equitable world. It is the fear of losing the ill-gotten gains. It is the fear of law catching up. Employers thus try to pre-empt this risk by once again spending millions to discredit, control, corrupt and wipe out unions.
Then why do workers keep away from unions? Workers survive from one day to the other struggling to ensure their most basic needs. Rampant unemployment and low paying precarious jobs keep workers perpetually vulnerable and fearful of slipping into poverty and starvation. This too is not incidental. Employers are replacing secure good jobs by precarious jobs at low wages. Companies are investing in automation to reduce number of workers employed to create fear of job loss in those who have jobs, and pitch those who don’t against them. The first step towards tilting this balance is to come together and form a Union. Data shows that unionised workers on an average earn 28% better wages than non-unionised workers. They also receive better healthcare and insurance schemes and retirement benefits which is almost non-existent for workers who are not part of unions.
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