We often hear a term a lot, but we don’t quite understand what it means. This happens with the Consolidation of Employment Laws. People know about vacations, holidays, 13th, but they don’t quite understand what the employment rights they have. Understand what AB 5 is and why it is important once and for all.
The constitution of the law and the range of guarantees it covers varies over the centuries. Mandatory guarantees did not always exist in the written, organized and formalized way as we know them today in the CaliforniaAB 5, but the regulation of coexistence since the beginning of civilization was present in the web of relationships.
Over time, rights have become more extended and complex and conceptions of quality of life have also changed and are changing every day. People started from a conception of work destined only for slaves and a reason for eternal subordination to a conception that contributes to the evolution and improvement of man.It may seem contradictory, but we will understand better how it happened.
How was work in the past?
In ancient Greece, work was intended for slaves and they were considered inferior to free men. Or rather, slaves were not even seen as people, but as things. They were the property of their employers, experiencing various difficulties, including forced and unprotected employment.
Working at that time was not a good idea. It was a burden to carry tirelessly and obligatorily until the end of the days. After all, it was up to God to delegate the position of each person in society, be it artistic, political, and intellectual or employment activity. There would be no question about this divine will, period.
But, centuries later, soon after the first industrial revolution, the discourse changed its place. If God had lost supremacy over earthly destinies, those in charge would need a valid argument to support their current positions and social relations.
In the era of the bourgeoisie, with the end of the middle Ages, they needed to justify, in a satisfactory way, the reality experienced by thousands of workers, all over the world, who lived under inhuman conditions, in precarious, unhealthy housing and subjected to exhausting daily work, in addition to horrifying working conditions.
Here, then, ideals appear, expressed in phrases, such as: “Work dignifies and ennobles man” and “All hard work brings profit, but just talking leads to poverty”.
Who has never heard of this from their parents, uncles or grandparents?
Such expressions are nothing more than the intentional use of ideology as an instrument of cultural domination, with a strong potential for direct manipulation of communication on the subjectivity of workers. This strategy is still widely used and phrases like these are often recalled in our memories.
At that time, even after the abolition of slave employment, there was no mention of employment rights? These were taxed as social rights, and guarantees were rare for those who depended on the sale of their employment force to survive.
Origin of employment rights
It was only with the workers’ struggles, their mobilization and mass demands that some advances emerged. They enabled a little more dignity in the professional development of men, women and children during the process of industrialization and formation of large urban centers.
It is worth remembering that the workforce of women and children was massively used in the industrial environment, with the cheapest and devalued ones being paid as half forces, which increased the profits of the industrialists. Therefore, they were the most requested employment.
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