Labor is the foundation upon which a good society stands. Without labor, there is no progress, and without progress, the Commonwealth will never properly see dignity, productivity, and unity in an unparalleled manner.
Anni Mouritsen, On Almeidaism, 2018
As I was scrolling YouTube shorts on a long winter night, I came across one of those narrated Tumblr post Minecraft parkour videos. In it, some wannabe VA dictated to me, through the words of an anonymous Tumbler user, that paid sick days and the like do not exist in many European countries. Instead, you are as sick as you want, and when you are no longer sick, you go back to work. There is no haggling over time lost, work made up, and the number of days you’re paid for no work getting done. You’re sick, and that’s just how it is.
I thought they might be on to something.
Foundations
Almeidaism, effectively the Bible of the Commonwealth’s political, economic, and social structure, dictates that workplace democracy is among the highest virtues of the Nova Sociedade. It also dictates that wages are a form of oppression, as they inseparably connect the worker to the manager, creating an innately unfair and unnatural relationship. These two ideas had gained a lot of traction in Rybicki’s First Commonwealth, but weren’t deemed plausible because the average Rosen after the Civil War wasn’t really that interested in socialist dogma, no less working for free.
Still, one cannot separate Almeidaism from the concept of work as a social obligation. Jorge Almeida believed work could be both a social activity and a civic duty, where automation would remove most boring, unrewarding, or menial jobs. In turn, people could work interesting or desirable jobs out of ambition, desire for a title, or influence. Looking to schools, social clubs, and fraternal organizations, Almeidaism asserts that work must be separated from wages, with the latter evolving into a long-term goal of moneylessness.
After the Nuclear Crisis, the Transitory Commonwealth’s Executive Committee debated the idea of implementing moneylessness immediately or further down the road. Some, including Cora Cavaleri and Chernomyrdin Ilyich, argued that moneylessness was impractical in a globalized society, and that it was impossible to implement successfully. Cavaleri and Ilyich prevented moneylessness from being implemented fully (as Deng Liang, Estelle Keilberth, and Florinda Carvalho wanted), instead adding the compromise seen today in articles 2.1 through 2.4 in the Second Constitution:
Article 2.1
The activities of commerce in the Rosen Commonwealth shall be split into two levels, the upper level being moneyed and the lower level being moneyless.Article 2.2
Within the lower level of economics, citizens shall join in participatory labor, free from industrial, wage-driven servitude.Article 2.3
The upper level of economics shall be moneyed for the sole purpose of ensuring diplomacy and participation in the global economy continues.Article 2.4
The economy of the Rosen Commonwealth will use the Ayan Credit as its currency.Constitution of the Second Rosen Commonwealth, Executive Committee of the Transitory Government of the Rosen Commonwealth, 1990
Did you catch that? Two levels to the economy and they’re making a new currency. The ol’ C&I duo won. Labor is still compensated monetarily, but within the context of a highly redistributive welfare state. In short, there are plenty of millionaires but no billionaires.
Despite this cheeky little inconsistency, Almeidaism wasn’t left behind. Title 1 of the Constitution still puts the government in charge of providing housing and basic sustenance, meaning the aim of Almeidaism, at least according to any federal apparatchik you ask, is still being met. Homelessness or starvation aren’t really leverage a company can use against their workers anymore. Instead, credits earned during labor usually go to “luxury goods,” like nice clothes, non-synthetic meat, or furniture. In order to maintain labor as a civic duty and to prevent the saturation of consumerism in Rosen society, wages are deliberately kept low in exchange for companies (especially government jobs) providing significant amenities for workers.
Architecture
Labor is fundamentally democratic in the Commonwealth. Workplace democracy is a core value of Almeidaism and is integrated into every business-public or private-in the Commonwealth. The structure is as follows:
Worker Councils
Councils are effectively small trade unions, usually composed of anywhere from five to thirty people. Councils are the base unit of any institution in the Commonwealth, and are used effectively to ensure labor always exists in the best interests of those involved. They often represent the interests of their members locally, providing critical advisory to ground-level decision makers. Councils usually wield a high degree of autonomy, and determine their wages and hours independently within the bounds set by higher authorities.
Worker Assemblies
Assemblies resemble a traditional trade union. They can vary wildly in size depending on the magnitude of the company they exist within; for example, a worker assembly at a medium-sized bicycle company could comprise twenty to thirty representatives, while an assembly in a large government department, like the Department of Health, could have as many as six hundred representatives1. Assemblies typically handle things the upper portion of a company would manage, like wages, hours, benefits, and regional priorities.
Note
This is where things sort of diverge in the terms of the structure of workplace democracy. The thing is, the structure is different based on what the organization in discussion is. In a government organization, this is where the difference between Devolved Departments and Federal Departments are laid out, but in a major corporation, this is where workplace democracy dissolves into a higher body tasked with company priority and policy, usually a Board of Supervisors or something similar. For the purposes of this note, I will first cover the structure of departments and then the structure of corporations.
Devolved Departments
Devolved departments are the lower halves of federal bodies that answer to the Commonwealth’s republics. They have the discretion to delegate power further to provincial and municipal governments. Devolved departments are usually an extension of federal departments, simply carrying out the priorities set by an undersecretary or secretary. Most important figures within a devolved department are either directly elected by assemblies or appointed jointly by assemblies and the leadership of the federal department.
Federal Departments
Truthfully, departments at the federal level don’t have much to do with the average worker. They set priorities for the department in the context of the whole Commonwealth, and usually issue policy in broad strokes with the assistance of consultative bodies drawn from the entire department. They are answerable to both assemblies and the Directory, having to walk a fine line between federal and republican priorities.
Supervisory Board
In major companies, a supervisory board usually comprises representatives elected by the assembly and figures such as shareholders, academics, or other specialists important to the long-term goals of the company. Ironically, individual workers tend to get a bit more of a say in day-to-day business in private corporations as opposed to government organizations.
Two Economies
I’m sure you’ve already gotten the impression that private industry still very much exists in the Commonwealth. It does. The private sector hosts huge global players like Standard Electronics, Ayan Electric, and Forza, which every day act in the interest of… what? Shareholding is a complicated business in the Commonwealth, and the vast majority of shares are usually related to some kind of retirement funds or other companies. Plenty of SE’s shareholders are random small businesses in a remote republic, not because of some kind of shady money laundering thing, but because the average Rosen lacks the liquidity to put money into the stock market, instead doing it through the vessel of the company they work for (and manage, thanks to Almeidaism.) And everybody knows and loves the biggest shareholder of them all: the Commonwealth’s republics and the federal government.
In the end, you sort of have to swallow the bitter pill and realize private enterprise as we know it doesn’t, in fact, exist in the Commonwealth: no organization serves private needs. As the constitution notes:
Article 2.7
Private industry must act by the Commonwealth government in the citizens’ best interests.Constitution of the Second Rosen Commonwealth, Executive Committee of the Transitory Government of the Rosen Commonwealth, 1990
So the second economy. 65% of the Commonwealth’s GDP is generated by government-owned corporations. Government corporations are usually extensions of the federal bureaucracy. For the purposes of distinguishing between private and public enterprise, federal departments, especially at the Republican level, are typically considered “government corporations.”
Government corporations are crucial to the proper functioning of the socialistic Rosen economy, though the competence of public versus privately operated corporations can be confusing (and, often, imbalanced) at times. For example, the Commonwealth’s valuable petroleum industry2 is actually mostly controlled by HOSMAX, a private corporation overseen by the Rosen Oil Agency. In contrast, the Commonwealth’s mining industry is under the control of the state-owned corporation CommTerra.
Still, government corporations allow the Commonwealth to support the high standard of living guaranteed constitutionally to Rosens.
Demographics of Labor
The working environment in 2053 is held to a high standard, and in turn is deeply prosperous, productive, and innovative. Made clear
Welfare
Footnotes
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In such a case, the assembly is usually authorized to delegate some of its responsibilities to a smaller standing committee or something similar. ↩
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Oil hasn’t quite been made obsolete by fusion power. Plastics manufacturing is still a key industry, and gas as fuel for cars is common in the Commonwealth’s underdeveloped automobile sector. ↩