Monopsony Power Crushes the First Amendment
“I was fired from my job because my employer feared
unconstitutional retaliation,” Ms. Briskman said Thursday afternoon. “But on a
larger scale, I feel that our democracy is being threatened.”
Her lawyers assert that Ms. Briskman’s gesture was “core political
speech” protected by Virginia law and the Constitution. She is seeking $2,692
for two weeks of severance she said she was promised but never received, as
well as compensation for legal fees.
Apple’s
Global Security team employs investigators who have previously worked in the
U.S. military, U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency,
and law enforcement agencies like the Secret Service and the F.B.I.
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APPLE MEMO URGING EMPLOYEES NOT TO LEAK . . . LEAKS – VF HIVE
By J.M. Hamilton (4-15-18)
Monopolies exert ruinous power over the American economy,
politics, and the nation’s fiscal & monetary health. Indeed, many
American monopolies & cartels have market caps, and generate revenue, that
exceeds many nation states’ GDP. And their unbridled power only seems to
grow.
Beyond the macro concussion is the equally troublesome impact monopolies
hold over everyday Americans, and their Constitutional freedoms. As
noted in my last piece, monopolies and cartels fuel: wage & wealth
inequality, political instability, crony government, economic stagnation, and a
lack of innovation & growth.
In Wage & Price Controls, written last year, it was noted that
monopolies not only exert extraordinary power over the consumer, the economy,
and our government…. But they also exert exceptional power over labor and third-party contractors/suppliers (aka monopsony power).
Federal Reserve Chairs - rubbing their temples - have been left,
allegedly, wondering why the trillions in free money pumped into the economy
(mainly as a form of Wall Street bank welfare) has not “trickled down,” and has
not led to a pick up in wage growth. The fact that many multinationals
force their employees to sign non-competes, and in some instances collude - not to compete for labor - within a given industry, never seems to have dawned on
Fed eminentos, as to the reason for the lack of wage growth. And then
there’s the obvious: w/ fewer corps or multinationals w/in a given industry, or fewer publicly traded companies, an
employee can be blackballed, and basically excluded from all future
opportunity. See the NFL and the black lives matter protests.
In short, given that our government is owned and refuses to
enforce antitrust laws (and said laws are completely out of date), the private
sector exerts tremendous leverage over the American worker. In
essence, multinationals may, and sometimes do, demand that US labor do their
bidding and adhere to their every command.
And corporations and multinationals are growing bolder, not only
in setting expectations in the workplace, but even in dictating an employee’s afterwork behavior and communications.
Sinclair - a growing right-wing cancer w/in the propagandized news
media sector - recently made all its affiliates read the same hard-right
editorial. Sinclair is seeking to consolidate local media coverage, so
that its right-wing views are spread in a homogenous manner throughout
American society. But it’s not enough for Sinclair to control its
employees while at work, Sinclair also wants to control its employees’
after-hours behavior. As recently noted in the Huffington Post:
Sinclair’s employee handbook, provided to
HuffPost, states that the company “may monitor, intercept, and review, without
further notice, every employee’s activities using Company’s electronic
resources and communications systems.”
The handbook goes on to state, “To be very
clear: you should not have any expectation of personal privacy in any
communication using Company owned equipment.”
Sinclair isn’t alone. Apple came out very hard against its employees' First Amendment rights, and threatened to fire anyone
- who exercised freedom of speech and acted in their capacity as a
whistleblower - in regards corporate misdeeds. Bloomberg, who broke the story, noted the following:
The Cupertino, California-based company said in a lengthy memo
posted to its internal blog that it "caught 29 leakers," last year
and noted that 12 of those were arrested. "These people not only lose
their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment
elsewhere," Apple added. The company declined to comment on Friday.
Indeed, throughout Silicon Valley major players like Facebook
and Google, whose motto used to be “don't be evil,” have taken similarly draconian
measures against freedom of speech. Even going beyond statutes - in some
instances - in making coercive threats that are neither supported
by the law nor the Constitution.
And therein lies the rub. While it can be easily argued
that employers should hold lawful and reasonable expectations - concerning an
employee’s work place communications and behavior - those expectations should
cease when an employee has punched out for the day. That is to say, as
long as an employee is not engaged in illegal acts outside of work, the
employer's hold, say, and surveillance over an employee’s non-work hours should be nonexistent.
However, increasingly it seems, employers not only want to
control their employees during work hours, but dictate behaviors and
communications outside of work itself: under penalty of facing unemployment and
greatly diminished job prospects w/in said industry. And as we heard from
Mr. Zuckerberg last week, employers & multinationals have the
power to know exactly what their employees' communications and behaviors are 24/7/365.
It turns out Facebook, per Mr. Zuckerberg, not only hoovers up
data when you are logged onto Facebook - but also when you’re logged off
Facebook, or even if you're not registered, or signed up, for Facebook. Add in your
banking activities, the government surveillance state, internet service providers, and travel records… and
there is literally nothing employers don’t have the ability to learn about
their employees' behavior outside of work.
Per Bloomberg, multinationals feed the deep state/surveillance
state information, and the state in turn feeds the multinationals data and
information. Insidious.
Where does it end? With AI, automation, and globalization
threatening jobs, employers have more leverage over labor than ever before. The
NY Times noted, as far back as 2012, that some employers were increasingly so
bold as to tell their employees how to vote. Georgia Pacific - owned and
operated by the Koch brothers - was a case in point.
It’s no accident that w/ greater concentration of wealth and
power into fewer hands that more Americans are taking to the streets in protest than at any other time, since the Vietnam War.
Therefore, employees need protection - not only from the state’s
panopticon - but as important, from personal life intrusions directed by
multinationals and the private sector.
So how exactly to go about it. Well for starters:
1. Elect politicians willing
to break up cartels and monopolies. This not only diminishes concentrated
economic & political power, but spreads that power among more competitors,
and provides labor with more employment options.
2. Place into office
politicians willing to roll back deep state power, as well as, the wholesale
mass surveillance intrusion social media actors, like Facebook, have come to
exemplify. Very few have a problem w/ law enforcement surveilling bad
actors, as long as a warrant is obtained; but the assumption that all Americans
are guilty - and worthy of round the clock surveillance - is both
unconstitutional and unacceptable.
3. Finally, it’s time for
both a UBI, as well as, an economic bill of rights to guarantee all Americans
economic wellbeing, and their freedoms, from coercion executed by a kleptocracy
acting in bad faith. If workers can lean upon a UBI, or a job guarantee
provided by the state, they are less prone to having - or allowing - their
freedoms to be infringed upon (by monopolies & multinationals & the
billionaire class).
Americans are under economic & political pressures as never before… and monopolies increasingly are the reason why Americans are feeling
crushing economic & political oppression. Whether its the private sector capturing the state
and our politicians, or monopolies running the economy for their own
ends, suppressing wages, or dictating after hours behavior (monitored w/ the
aid and assistance of the governmental and private sector surveillance state)…
it’s time for Americans to stand up and demand safeguards and protections, both economic & political.
The very health of our democracy depends upon systemic reform. Tech is highly seductive... until one learns it's a tool that can be aimed at one's civil liberties, and utilized to confiscate same civil liberties, as well as, harm the means to earn a living. Corporations overseeing the private lives of their employees - via the surveillance state - risk playing god, and clearly, are a threat to the First Amendment, if not the Constitution.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018
