The culture of Australian workplaces will
dramatically change for the better in several ways under the guidance of the
AEM. One
important change that will occur, occurs just by becoming an
Egalitarian society. With the ability to make more money than
other people being impossible to achieve, the reasons why people choose the careers they do will no longer
have anything to do with making lots of
money. When a person takes on more responsibility, vocational
education, or becomes more specialised, one does it as a means of
pursuing one's own interests, a natural progression in life,
avoiding hard work, or as a way of giving to one's society. And this serves to
increase the society's respect, rather than resentment for these
people who hold such positions because it displays that they
believe in their society and that they are motivated to do their best for the
society, without the reward of more wealth. At the other end
of the workforce, people who are involved in low skilled or
physically demanding occupations will feel much more appreciated
for their efforts because they are now being economically rewarded
just as much as everybody else. This not only serves to increase
peoples' motivation to stay in such occupations, it also serves to
create a much greater sense of justice and belief in one's
society, which also serves to reduce resentment towards those
people who have managed to escape from these types of jobs,
particularly when one knows one won't be trapped in these
occupations forever. The overall effect is that the majority of
citizens are far more content in their workplaces and this will
serve to improve the contentment within the society in general,
but this is just the beginning.
The Role of
Bosses
Currently, owners or managers have a lot
of money issues to be
concerned about in the running of a business, such as....
- finding the cheapest prices for materials, inventory items,
and services
- determining who gets paid how much
- determining what price to sell their
products or services for
- working out the tax on the products and
services
- working out the tax on employees' wages
- estimating/quotes
- superannuation schemes
- advertising and marketing
- finding work/clients/customers
- insurance and compensation
- bankruptcy
These money issues not only take up
time, they also all add to the stress of
the job, and owners and managers often become motivated to do
such things as cutting corners, fiddling the books, overcharging
customers, and of course economically and emotionally abusing their
workers. Greed also motivates the same behaviours.
Along with economic stratification, these
money issues greatly shape the culture of the workplace in our
democratic-capitalist society, but in the AEM's version of Egalitarianism,
managers of businesses do not need to worry about these money issues
anymore. The state supplies all the company's materials. Hourly
rates of pay are the same for everybody, and the boss doesn't pay
employees anyway (the state does). There is no tax on products
or services, or employees' wages. The state determines the price of
the products or services that the company produces. There are no
superannuation schemes, and the state takes care of advertising or
marketing (if there is any). The state is in charge of the company's
insurance and compensation payments, and it is also responsible for
providing safe workplaces and the appropriate safety equipment, etc. The state
often provides all the work for the business, and it also handles
much of the administration and accounts of the business. And even if
the business becomes unviable, we just move managers and other
workers into other jobs, and nobody is left broke, unemployed, or
deserted.
Another thing that managers or CEOs of
big companies usually have to deal with is what to do with profits of
the company so that the company can make more money. As we have seen, a
common option is to invest in other companies. This changes the
requirements of the job substantially, as managers need to become
experts in economics and investments, and this expertise is one of the
main reasons why CEOs claim such extraordinarily high salaries. As you
also know, many poor decisions have been made and some companies have
lost billions of dollars in the process. This is another thing that
managers, including managers of the biggest companies in Australia will
never need to concern themselves with again. All profits from all
companies go to the state, and the government determines how best to use
this money.
As such, the main objectives of managers
are to make the business run as efficiently as possible, to keep
records, to make
sure that the staff are doing what they are supposed to be doing,
and to make sure the staff are feeling appreciated and receiving the
appropriate training and nurturing. In
many smaller businesses that are already working well (e.g. shops), reliable staff
may often need no managerial supervision at
all.
The role of people
who are in charge of other workers (e.g. managers, foreman,
supervisors, group leaders) will be more like that of a coach.
A coach is on your side, and it is one of your boss's tasks to help
find your niche within the greater workplace just as a coach attempts to
find the best position for you in the team. Your boss's
ability to do this is one of ways we rate bosses, and this helps
overcome another sad but true occurrence within our capitalist
society. That is, many bosses become motivated to keep you down, for
a number of reasons (e.g. you may take their job, they don't like
you, you don't like them, to keep you under their control, you're a woman, you're black, because they are
bullies). In the Egalitarian society, your boss wins when you
win. As such, your boss will have a more positive and nurturing role in your
working life, although this doesn't mean that like a coach or a
parent, your
boss won't sometimes scold at you for slacking off, or that you
won't be dropped from the team (because the workplace is still a competitive
environment).
This issue of being kept down is actually a
major aspect of the democratic-capitalist culture, and most other
cultures in which there is economic and/or social stratification.
That is, the elite in our current society are continuously trying to
maintain and improve their position within the society by keeping as
many people down in the middle and working classes as possible,
largely because the less money one has access to, the less likely
one is of becoming a threat to their elite status. And this knowledge, and
the resentment it causes, also often motivates many types of
criminal behaviour. In the Egalitarian society, the state doesn't
have any reason to keep you down, and every reason to help you find
your true potential for the benefit of the society. And because there
won't be an elite class or anybody else who is motivated to keep you
down, your society will also play a much more positive and nurturing
role in your life.
Another unfortunate aspect of our
contemporary workplace culture is that in many cases, one doesn't
need any qualifications or training to be a boss. Often, one merely needs
to have enough money to employ someone, and as such, many bosses are
quite (deliberately or ignorantly) abusive to their staff. Other times, people become bosses
because they were good performers in their job, but good performers,
and even gifted geniuses don't necessarily make good bosses,
teachers, or coaches, and they are often unable to warm up to
average performers or unable to understand why others don't
understand. As such, there is a tendency to think of subordinates
as inferior, which motivates disrespect towards subordinates, and which doesn't help
anybody or the atmosphere of the workplace. Most of us can usually
understand how bad experiences in the school system serve to cause
young people to dislike and avoid school and further education, but
the bad experiences in the school system are nothing compared to the
emotionally traumatic experiences created by such people within the
workplace. This emotional trauma is particularly influential in
shaping one's attitudes when entering into a new social environment
(e.g. schools, universities, the workforce, a new job). It is little
wonder then, that we have so many people who avoid work, but in our
typical self-righteous attitudes that are developed in us by our
self-righteous capitalist constitution, we tend to insist that there
is something lacking in these people, rather than to admit that
there is something lacking in the way we deal with people in the
workplace. Also, when people have been in charge of other people for
a period of time, we often see a negative change in their attitudes
towards the workers they oversee (See our discussion about the
'Prisoners and Guards experiment' in
our 'Why We Know that All Elitist Societies
are
Invalid'
web page to see what we mean by this), and this also serves to create
poor workplace relations.
The AEM doesn't necessarily think that all
people need to receive training to be a boss (even though training
will often be provided), as many people already intuitively possess
an aptitude for dealing with people in a professional and
compassionate manner without receiving training, but we do think
that all bosses need to be screened, and that their conduct needs to
be monitored and re-evaluated from time to time. And when our new
workplace culture is established, potential bosses will be able to
intuitively learn from their role models (i.e. their bosses) about
what good leadership in the workplace entails, without necessarily
needing training to know what is appropriate behaviour. It becomes more a
matter of adapting to your social environment.
Currently, people's dependency upon needing
work also allows employers to be economically and emotionally
abusive towards their employees, particularly in low skilled jobs.
In the AEM's version of Egalitarianism, this problem won't arise
because not only are you able to change jobs relatively easily, and
not only are you on the same pay as your boss, with our
multi-occupations scheme (See below), people from all areas of the
workforce will spend time in many different areas of work. As such,
a person who is a boss within one workplace may also be a
subordinate within a different workplace, which tends to create and
maintain a greater understanding about what it is like to be
overseen.
Multi-Occupations
You will be able to divide your working day, week, month, or year
into several
different occupations. Being involved in different types of
labour, and working in different workplaces is designed to....
- put variety and a
change of pace in your working lives.
- provide you with the opportunity to follow several careers of
interest at once.
- provide you with a broad education and appreciation of the
various industries and occupations within Australia,
particularly while you are young, which will
also help you to better find your calling in life, and which
will also help you develop an appreciation for the work that
other people do.
- make our workforce far more flexible.
That is, by creating a society in which most people have more
than one occupation, we create an oversupply of people with the
appropriate skills for any one particular job (without creating
unemployment), who we can call upon if and when we need to. This
gives us the ability to speed things up or slow things down as
we need to.
- experience
different workplace environments and locations. For example, you
could be given the opportunity to leave your current jobs and
residence and do seasonal work on a farm for a period.
Sometimes, you could be asked to do a similar type of work
within a different business when there is a need to speed things
up in this business, or a need to slow things down in your
current business.
- allow workers and the state to scratch
each other's back. For example, you may want to do a particular
job, and we may allow you to do this job, for some of the time,
if you help us out in another job that we need workers for, for
some of the time.
- greatly reduce the continuous time that
individuals are currently spending in repetitive or mundane
jobs, or jobs in which one is required to stand or sit in one'
position for long hours. By using our multi-occupations scheme,
we can employ more workers to work a smaller number of hours
each day in these jobs.
- provide you with a more satisfying life, rich in experiences,
knowledge, and social contact.
The AEM is also
interested in dividing most people's working day or week into physical
and non-physical labour (non-physical
labour also includes study), which we also feel has benefits for the
individual, the society, and the culture in general (although it will not be compulsory
for those people who are part of the existing working
population). The general scheme of our plan is that the majority of
people start out in their working lives doing physically demanding
labour
for most of the week (e.g. 90%), and gradually increase their non-physical labour
as they grow older. By the time they reach 60 years old, they are still
doing around 5% physical or active labour. This scheme is part of a
bigger plan to create a more structured culture, where people can see to
a fair extent, what benefits the future has in store for them. As this scheme has
quite a number of facets to it, we will discuss it further down the
track. For now, some of the benefits include....
- Unlike the
contemporary system, it caters to you as a human being who has lots
of energy to burn while you are young, but who gradually slows down
with age, injuries, and other ailments.
- Reduces your health
problems and the state's health bill by helping to develop bone and
muscle during your younger years, and by helping to reduce
cardiovascular problems during your later working lives, while
keeping your muscled exercised and fitness levels up.
- Allows younger people to start their
working lives in relatively low-stress related jobs.
- Does the sensible thing of using the
young, while they are healthy and full of stamina to do more of the
society's physically demanding work.
- It allows a greater number of people
to slowly infiltrate specialised areas of intellectual labour as they grow older.
Preventing
Occupational Traps
In our contemporary democratic-capitalist society, it is often very
difficult for people to change occupations. Employers are very often
looking for experienced employees because they don't want to risk
their money training people who aren't capable of the job or who
might leave within a short space of time. This situation tends to trap
people in various occupations because they don't have experience in
other types of jobs. Other times, people have begun a family and
don't dare risk venturing off into unknown waters while they have
such great economic responsibilities. In the AEM's version of
Egalitarianism, you may find yourself doing jobs that you don't really
like, particularly early in your working life, but you can always be
assured that this is not where you will remain if you don't want
to. Having multi-occupations also helps stop this, and it also allows
people to experiment with different jobs in order to find what type of
work they enjoy.
Rights of
Passage
The more you have achieved in the
workforce, and the more you have succeeded in the workplace
challenges that you have taken on, the more you are able to direct your
career where you want it to go. Therefore, the older you grow, the
more likely it is (but by no means certain) that you will have achieved more and succeeded in
more workplace challenges, which means that older people are more
likely to out-compete younger people for that popular job or that
university course. However,
this does not mean that older people will be able to hog the best
jobs for three reasons.
- With our multi-occupation scheme, the
situation becomes more like this: older people are more likely to spend
more time in that job while younger people are more likely to spend
less time in that job.
- Because
younger people are able to do that popular job or study for that
degree for some of the time, this
gives us the ability to see who the shining stars are. People can be allowed more hours in this field, in accordance to
their achievements and abilities. For a small percentage of
people, this may begin as soon as they leave school.
- We also reward effort with more hours in
that field. Effort usually entails undertaking voluntary work or
study in your spare time to achieve results. Generally, people
who put more effort in will get to where they want to go faster.
Vocational
Education
Most people who are granted the right to do
study during working hours will usually be required to also partake
in practical work that is related to that field of study (whenever possible). This policy allows the state to make
sure that it gets value out of you while you are studying, and
especially if you decide not to follow through with this
study.
Some college and university course will no
longer be necessary. Australia and many other western countries have
become rather, what we refer to as 'qualification crazy' because employers
want staff pre-trained. In the AEM's society, we will, to a large
extent, return to the policy of training workers on the job. This of
course, will often be associated with formal study and passing
exams, but it will become much easier to advance and specialise within a field of work through demonstrating one's ability to learn
in the field.
For those occupations that
require a more formal tertiary education, unlike the present system,
we do not let anybody do whatever degree they want and then let them
try
to find a job. There are literally thousands of people out there who
never found a job that required the academic degree they acquired.
We make predictions about how many architects for example, that we
will need in 5 years time, and regulate our student intake to match,
but this doesn't mean that you can't study these disciplines if you want
to. Those who don't make that year's intake can still study for free,
in their spare time. As mentioned in the previous section, the state
acknowledges this type of effort and enthusiasm, and this saving to our
education budget, and it will always serve to get you where you want
to go faster. This may serve to make scholarships in various disciplines, at various
times, unavailable, particularly in the earlier years of an academic
course, because we are inclined to grant scholarships to those that have
already gone a fair way to achieving it in their spare time.
The aim of the AEM is to make education an ongoing
responsibility and quest in most
peoples' working lives, to some extent, as part of the process of
motivating workers
to develop and refine their skills and knowledge. As such, most
occupations will entail a measure of education and
training.
Physiotherapy
and Preventative Medicine
We regard all types of workers as athletes.
Every job is associated with some types of injuries. Even people
whose job requires that they be seated for long hours tend to
develop back problems. And just as an athlete does warm-up exercises
and stretches to prevent injury, so too will workers do exercises
and stretches to prevent workplace injuries, during the first 15-30
minutes of each working day. Workplaces will have visiting
physiotherapists to create individually orientated exercise
programs. Those workers who already have injuries will also have
programs developed to strengthen these injuries and to reduce pain.
It is hoped that this policy will serve to produce a better quality
of life for workers and reduce our health bill substantially. This
policy will eventually be compulsory for all those young people entering the
workforce and will continue throughout the rest of their lives, but
you of the existing workforce will not be required to do it if you
choose not to.
Flexible Hours
of Work
In spite of the rhetoric to the
contrary, one of the problems in our contemporary
democratic-capitalist society is inflexibility. Because the AEM's
Egalitarian state administers all work, and because
multi-occupations will eventually be the norm, it becomes much
easier to cater to the individual's circumstances or preferences in
relation to how much work one wants to do, and when it is convenient
for one to work. This of course can't apply to all types of work,
all of the time, but we will usually be able to find something,
particularly if one is planning to work these hours on a regular
basis.
No Overtime Work
It is highly unlikely that one will ever be
asked to work overtime. We just don't need people to do overtime,
particularly when we can shift our workforce around to suit the
demands of the day. However, from time to time, the need for people
to do overtime may be unavoidable. However, as this is an
Egalitarian state, overtime doesn't earn one more pay, which is
currently the primary incentive for wanting it. Instead, the hours
one spent doing overtime will be paid back to one, in one of several
ways that you can choose from.
- Add these hours to one's holiday period
or long-service leave.
- Take time off in lieu.
- Subtract time off one's retirement
age.
- gain more working time in an
occupation of your choice.
Working Beyond
Retirement Age
The AEM tries to encourage people to work
beyond retirement age, particular since people keep insisting
upon living longer, by allowing people over the age
of 65 to....
- only work 4 hours per day to receive a
full-time working wage.
- work in whatever areas of work they want
to (if possible and practical).
Personal
Presentation at Work
In our democratic-capitalist society,
personal presentation has become an extremely important criteria in
gaining and maintaining many different jobs and doing business, because everybody is trying to sell
you something, whether it be a product or service, one's public image, or
the image of one's company. In the Egalitarian society, we will
rarely be trying to sell you anything (we are instead, very happy
when you don't buy anything), and as such, the way you are
presented (or how sexy you are) is unimportant, no matter how
important your job is. As long as you are wearing appropriate
clothes for the job (in relation to safety and function), which will
usually be supplied to you, and as long as you are clean and
don't stink when you start work, we're happy. We actually don't want you to iron your work
clothes because we don't want you to waste precious
non-renewable resources (e.g. coal for electricity) just to look
pretty for work. The exceptions to this policy may include
those people who work in such places as our international hotels and
airlines, or in certain acting roles, and we will usually supply,
clean, and iron these uniforms for these staff.
Annual Holidays
and Long-Service Leave
In our current democratic-capitalist
society, when one changes jobs, one often looses the opportunity to
take annual holidays, and in many casual jobs, one is required to
regularly save a portion of one's pay one's self, if one hopes to
enjoy a holiday at all. Consequently, there are many people in our
society who have rarely been on holidays, and since annual holidays
help make work worthwhile for any individual, a big chunk of the
motivation to work is not available to all people. In fact, the vast
majority of people in our jails have never been on holidays. Also,
when one changes jobs, one usually has to recommence working towards
achieving long-service leave again, which means that only a small
percentage of the workforce actually get to enjoy long-service
leave.
In the Egalitarian society, changing jobs
doesn't affect your annual leave or your long-service leave. As far
as the Egalitarian state is concerned, changing jobs is just the
same as transferring to another department within the one big
company and therefore, all your entitlements transfer with you. As
such, everyone can expect to enjoy annual holidays and long-service
leave every 10 years.
Religious
Holidays
As you may have read already, the AEM does
not support the institutionalisation of any religion. As such, we
don't stop work at Christmas or Easter, or any other date of
religious significance. Instead, we allow everybody 5 days per year
to celebrate whatever he or she wants to celebrate, whenever they want to
celebrate it. You can take these days off in one hit, thereby having
a week off work, or you can spread them out throughout the year, or you
can take them when your religious institutions believe you should.
We only ask that you select these days off in advance, so that we
can organise our workload around them.
Also see our 'Going Off the Rails'
page for details about how you can undertake projects or occupations
without the blessing of the state, but with the state's support.
