Towards sustainable and organic work

The world market for organic produce is now worth over $40 billion a year.  The market is driven by many people’s desire to get back in touch with the cyclical nature of food growth and, in modern cities, to connect to a glamorous fantasy of rural life.

It’s an artificial delusion.  Farming is hard work; organic farming, doubly so.  There are also far too many people alive today for us all to return to the inefficiency of subsistence farming.  Modern farming can, in very real terms, make the desert bloom and produce nutritious food.

For thousands of years, the single purpose of agriculture has been to beat nature; to create more food more regularly than what nature is capable of.  That was the reason humans stopped being hunter-gathers and started being farmers.

The success of agriculture gave rise to the division of labour, as people started to specialise in different tasks.  Suddenly there was a butcher, a baker, a candle-stick maker, as well as the farmer down the road.  However, all these businesses were tiny, family-owned, affairs. 

Until the rise of the corporation, family incomes rose or fell on the success of their businesses.  Once there were large businesses, there were large fortunes to tax, which allowed governments to grow and unions to organise.

Instead of work being in tune with growing seasons, or production orders, it became organised around the five-day week, and the two-weeks paid vacation annually.  Instead of incomes being tied to business success or failure, salaries became a fixed and static monthly event.

For the majority of employed people, work is no longer organic.

This is a problem.  Salaries are no longer considered a remarkable way of paying people, they’re considered an entitlement; a right.  Think about how difficult a guaranteed salary is for a business.  The revenue that any company earns is based on the sales of the things they produce.  This is not a stable thing but fluctuates across the year.

Despite this, whether revenue is high or low, employers pay a fixed salary to each of their staff.  In good months, employees grumble as companies profits rise and they don’t get any of it; in bad months, employees grumble if companies don’t give the automatic pay increases they expect.

Investors and company owners continue to see their incomes rise and fall with market conditions.  The number of dollar billionaires has collapsed as a result of the credit crisis and their tragedy is amusing fodder for internet chat rooms.

This rigid employment structure has consequences, however.  When a business owner sees profits fall, she cuts her spending and reduces her lifestyle accordingly.  But she continues to work, and she is driven to incredible exertion to push her company into new markets.  She does not stop working.

Employees experience a downturn much more dramatically.  Companies, unable to ask employees to accept lower salaries, fire thousands of them.

The collapse of General Motors was brought about by their Union’s demand that unsustainable pension benefits continue to be paid.

Around the world, companies are trying to be more forthright with their staff.  British Airways, facing a $600 million loss, has asked more than 30,000 employees to work for one month for free.  What they’re basically saying is this:  “Lose your pay for one month, or lose it entirely when we retrench thousands of people to cut costs.”

Other companies are following suit.

So far, the response from Unions and employee groups has been extremely negative.  Leaving employers no other alternative, job losses over the past few months can be described as “carnage”.

The surviving companies are smaller and structured around fluctuating revenues.  Proposed employee salaries are based on small basic incomes, plus deferred bonuses paid in phases as company profits are assessed over time.

These companies are more project-focused, more in tune with market conditions and – dare I say it – more organic.