Is a Job a right or a privilege?

[Teresa]

I personally believe that a Job is the MOST BASIC of all human rights, as the other rights DO NOT matter if you and your family are starving, homeless on the streets.  All rights come after the guaranteed right to a job.  I believe it is a solemn pack every single government should make with every single citizen.  To do less is barbaric.  Just witness the homeless in every single city in the United States begging in the street, it is a disgrace.  There should be Zero unemployment and Zero homelessness.

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 23:

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

For many, many months Franco's response in the Discrimination against progressives? thread has bothered me terribly (Reply #83 on: January 15, 2010)

He said "No one has the right to a job - a job is a privilege only given to someone who can demonstrate that they are of value to the job-creater (ideally a business owner)."

This response by Franco is not only cruel and mean in essence he is saying it if one cannot sell themselves to a "job-creater" they deserve to starve.  That is what I call hate speech, you might as will line the jobless up and shoot them.  A job is the very basic of the basic necessities of life. 

I believe it should be the other way around, that we workers should be allowed to CHOOSE a job that we are qualified for the same way we choose a dress or a new recording.  New positions should be first come, first served as long as the worker is qualified and wants to work for the company.  No interviews or other monkey business.  All that a personal director would do is accept the worker's resumé and assign the new employee a trainer and then fact check the resumé at his/her leisure.  The trainer will know how well the new employee is doing, and if there is a error on the resumé can call the worker in to discuss it. 

I firmly believe everyone has something to contribute to society no matter how poor their interview skills are, how low their IQ is, or how uncoordinated they are. 

Everyone has a right to a job, housing and medical care, then and only then can they exercise their other rights.   

In short there is no way in hell that something as important as a Job can be reduced to only a privilege.  Driving is a privilege, a Job is a BONA-FIDE NECESSITY AND THE SUPREME RIGHT ABOVE ALL OTHER RIGHTS!

[False_Dmitry]

If you want to have employment on your own terms - then start your own business, become a freelance, work for yourself.  You will only have yourself to blame if it bombs, you can reward yourself if it succeeds.

If all of that is too much hassle, then in accepting employment for others you also accept the nature of such employment.

[knight66]

The fundamental human rights are to food and shelter; but of course to work is also important.

The right to work is not the same as an opportunity to work. This is not just splitting hairs, it goes to the understanding of the concept. As FD points out, people can work for themselves. I am not sure that it is the 'right' of all individuals to be handed a job.

That has been tried with results that involved people being paid for in bicycle tyres when the heavily engineered economy in which they worked collapsed.

You always claim that life can be made simple; but it cannot. It is complex and it is messy.

Mike

[False_Dmitry]

FROM OUR OLD SOVIET JOKE DEPARTMENT:

"Do you know the difference between capitalism and socialism?  It's very simple, Comrade!  In capitalism, one man is exploited by another man.  Whereas in socialism, the position of those two men is entirely reversed."

[jhar26]

It should be the aim of a society to give, or create the circumstances where everyone who wants a job can find one - preferably one they actually enjoy doing. If despite of all that a person fails to find a job there should be social protection for him or her. It's too silly for words that we are still discussing these things in the 21st century.

[knight66]

I agree with all of that and I don't think it contradicts what I wrote earlier. But the mechanisms enabling these things are imperfect and the attempts to create a commonwealth often have unexpected and unpleasant consequences.

For a start; the idea stated starkly omits that key issue; human nature.

Mike

[karlhenning]

I find the idea of a "right to a job" tendentiously fuzzy.  "A job" is a contract whereby one party (A.) agrees to perform certain work for another party (B.), and B. contracts to compensate A. for that work. With a certain degree of variability, the contract ought to be to the satisfaction of both parties;  otherwise, there are terms by which either A. or B. might renegotiate or terminate the contract.

A. has the right to seek work to his liking, to seek a situation to his liking, and the right to enter into such a contract.  Does A. have "a right" to a certain goal according to that social arrangement?  Does A. have "a right" to be employed, independent of the myriad variables (type of work, questions of compensation)?  I am not sanguine.

Thus the two options in the poll seem to me a bit cartoonish, and to miss many of the most practical points.

[Saul]

I personally believe that a Job is the MOST BASIC of all human rights, as the other rights DO NOT matter if you and your family are starving, homeless on the streets.  All rights come after the guaranteed right to a job.  I believe it is a solemn pack every single government should make with every single citizen.  To do less is barbaric.  Just witness the homeless in every single city in the United States begging in the street, it is a disgrace.  There should be Zero unemployment and Zero homelessness.

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 23:

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

For many, many months Franco's response in the Discrimination against progressives? thread has bothered me terribly (Reply #83 on: January 15, 2010)

He said "No one has the right to a job - a job is a privilege only given to someone who can demonstrate that they are of value to the job-creater (ideally a business owner)."

This response by Franco is not only cruel and mean in essence he is saying it if one cannot sell themselves to a "job-creater" they deserve to starve.  That is what I call hate speech, you might as will line the jobless up and shoot them.  A job is the very basic of the basic necessities of life. 

I believe it should be the other way around, that we workers should be allowed to CHOOSE a job that we are qualified for the same way we choose a dress or a new recording.  New positions should be first come, first served as long as the worker is qualified and wants to work for the company.  No interviews or other monkey business.  All that a personal director would do is accept the worker's resumé and assign the new employee a trainer and then fact check the resumé at his/her leisure.  The trainer will know how well the new employee is doing, and if there is a error on the resumé can call the worker in to discuss it. 

I firmly believe everyone has something to contribute to society no matter how poor their interview skills are, how low their IQ is, or how uncoordinated they are. 

Everyone has a right to a job, housing and medical care, then and only then can they exercise their other rights.   

In short there is no way in hell that something as important as a Job can be reduced to only a privilege.  Driving is a privilege, a Job is a BONA-FIDE NECESSITY AND THE SUPREME RIGHT ABOVE ALL OTHER RIGHTS!

This is just about the most foolish and ignorant piece of mambo jumbo I came across in a very long time.

Teresa, I'm telling you, you are hurting yourself here by broadcasting your nonsense.

In the business world there is a thing called 'competition', drop that, and you'll have people working in positions they are not qualified for, and that will end the companies, and when that happens you can kiss the country goodbye.

[DavidRoss]

The idea of a "right" to a job is, of course, ludicrous.  However, in a free society, people have the right to seek work or to seek employees and to contract with one another as they choose...just as they have a right to hold and even to express whatever opinions they like, no matter how nutty, discredited, or in full flight from reality they may be. 

Hmmm...is sanity a right or a privilege?

[oabmarcus]

It's not a right. There is no reason to give jobs to people who aren't qualified or can do them well. On the other hand, I also believe in some sort of support for people who couldn't get jobs. E.g. unemployed, homeless, drug addicts, ex-convicts. You don't want them to rot further, because they will damage society more. It's good to extend a helping hand to those people, I'm not saying give them government jobs. But, offering career advice, maybe some sort of career training, food/sheltering assistance, etc...

I also find the poll to be very one sided. Clearly, she is for "jobs for everyone". But, there should be a third option somewhere in between giving jobs away and watching people die.

[DavidRoss]

I also believe in some sort of support for people who couldn't get jobs. E.g. unemployed, homeless, drug addicts, ex-convicts. You don't want them to rot further, because they will damage society more. It's good to extend a helping hand to those people, I'm not saying give them government jobs.

Why not?  Surely they could do no worse than most of our elected officials, and chances are good that even the drug addicts and felons would be more honest and trustworthy than most politicians.

[jowcol]

Just in terms of responses, this has to be the most amusing poll that has not had "banana" as an option.

Seriously, I see a job as a contract, with responsibilities-- I think an employer has a responsibility to deal honestly with an employee, and and employee has a responsibility to demonstrate they can contribute to the needs of an employer.  It is the responsibility of the govt to provide the most even playing field possible, and equal "access" to employment, and protect the workforce from any abridgments to equal access.     Beyond that, however, I don't see how a govt can possibly give everybody whatever they want and remain fiscally viable.  And once it melts down, it doesn't do any of us any good.   

If I'm an interpretive artist, and want 100,000 a year for my armpit farting performances, should I be paid? Will all of you on the forum pitch in to help me with my career?  Or is it my responsibility to find an audience who wants to pay for the honor of watching me perform?  I say the latter.  It's great to do what you want, but you need to convince someone that you are worthy of it.   It may be the case that I need to make my art a hobby, and do something else to support my family. 

Which it why I'm an Health IT architect, and not a professional novelist or hammered dulcimer player...

The idea of a "right" to a job is, of course, ludicrous.  However, in a free society, people have the right to seek work or to seek employees and to contract with one another as they choose...just as they have a right to hold and even to express whatever opinions they like, no matter how nutty, discredited, or in full flight from reality they may be. 

Hmmm...is sanity a right or a privilege?

[knight66]

Hmmm...is sanity a right or a privilege?

After five years on GMG I have discovered it is a gift; quite a rare one.

Mike

[DavidRoss]

Just in terms of responses, this has to be the most amusing poll that has not had "banana" as an option.

Both options = banana..with tutti frutti ice cream!

I don't see how a govt can possibly give everybody whatever they want and remain fiscally viable.  And once it melts down, it doesn't do any of us any good.   

Ahhh...but you're sane.  Wish there were more like you in California.  Greece, of course, is even ahead of the (badly tarnished) Golden State in caving to special interest groups demanding taxpayer-funded pie in the sky.  Now that their economic system is imploding, it's too painfully tragic to be funny to see workers so out of touch with reality that they're blaming the government for "violating their rights" rather than recognizing that their idiotic house of cards is collapsing under its own weight.

After five years on GMG I have discovered [sanity] is a gift; quite a rare one.

You and me both, brother.  It has expanded my understanding of the species and the real nature of our difficulties in ways I never imagined when we arrived to swap tales about our experiences with the music we love.  And in a curious way it has strengthened my faith and my resolve to live as much as possible in God's world and not to take man's vanities too seriously or too much to heart. 

[Todd]

It's a profoundly stupid question, with ridiculous poll questions.  It also begs a much more basic question: What is a right?  Now this might yield some, um, interesting responses.

[jhar26]

If I'm an interpretive artist, and want 100,000 a year for my armpit farting performances, should I be paid?

You can always present them as your own avant-garde compositions. If you can come up with a nonsensical but pseudo-highbrow sounding explanation of why you're doing it chances are that some will take you seriously and that you'd do better than many a talented composer. 

[drogulus]

     I don't think a job can be made a right without obligating the government to provide jobs to individuals. When we have an emergency like the recent one the government does treat providing employment as a legitimate responsibility. It has to, because you can't stimulate an economy while jobs are shed simultaneously by private business and state/local governments. As always the practical difficulties condition the response more than ideology does. That is, in order to see it as the governments responsibility to balance the budget as in 1932 you would have to not only accept a catastrophic collapse as inevitable but as desirable compared with the creeping socialism that all successful economies have engaged in since. Conservative no longer do this but they still talk like this. They offer change you can't believe in. They aren't liars so much as bullshitters, hence clowns.

     A job isn't a right at the individual level and probably shouldn't be. Private markets will continue to be the source of most employment with the government acting as governor/flywheel, cutting and boosting where needed. So, no right to a job but a practical obligation to see that jobs are made available as circumstances dictate. This covers all non-Paullist government, conserval or liberative.

[DavidRoss]

It's a profoundly stupid question, with ridiculous poll questions.  It also begs a much more basic question: What is a right?  Now this might yield some, um, interesting responses.

There you go again, injecting common sense into our antics here.    And I'll wager you're right about this, too, that the efforts to define "rights" would yield some "interesting" responses, indeed!

[Gurn Blanston]

If I'm an interpretive artist, and want 100,000 a year for my armpit farting performances, should I be paid? Will all of you on the forum pitch in to help me with my career?  Or is it my responsibility to find an audience who wants to pay for the honor of watching me perform?  I say the latter.  It's great to do what you want, but you need to convince someone that you are worthy of it.   It may be the case that I need to make my art a hobby, and do something else to support my family. 

Well, MY interpretation of the artificial fart under the arm is unquestionably  superior to your puny effort, and I am willing to do 2 performances a day for $75,000. So why should they pay you?  Competition, baby!   

As an employer, if I had to take in any boob off the street that wanted to work for me and I had no choice, then I would simply shut down my business and go to work for whatever company was left that hadn't already shut down. Not rocket science there; I just wouldn't do it.



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[knight66]

Something rather like this happens now. In the UK lots of 'small employers' reclassify the worker as self employed. They don't want all the responsibilities imposed on the role of the employer. So the basic rights of the employee are lost.

In Spain, restrictions on getting rid of employers mean that many take people in on a temporary basis so they can get rid of them easily and replace them without again having to comply with what they see as restrictions to their trading arrangements. Youth unemployment has increased. In each instance, what was socially well meaning has caused lots of problems.

Mike