Social Employment Policy

A previous chapter made the distinction between regular employment and social employment. This chapter outlines the standards, rules, privileges and responsibilities associated with various aspects of social employment. This is the Social Employment Policy. This policy has policy parameters that citizens have control over and use that control to fine-tune the working of this policy.

The section, "Various Responsibilities", outlines society's responsibilities regarding social employment. The most important one is that society pays the wages of social employees. There are many others.

The section, "Public Not-For-Profit Organization", describes a new class of organizations with restrictions, rules and privileges specific to this kind of organization. The primary restriction is that they can employ only social employees. Present-day not-for-profit organizations and charities would have to adjust their management hierarchy and employment structure if they choose to be this kind of organization.

The section, "Standard for Wage Rate", specifies the concepts behind and the mechanism for establishing the standard wage rate for social employment. The computation involves the per-capita GDP.

The section, "Limits on Social Employment", specifies the limits regarding social employment for private for-profit enterprises and citizens.

The section, "Work Hours and Time Off", mentions the short list of rules about work hours and time off associated with Social Employment.

The section, "Safeguards in Social Employment", highlights the safeguards in social employment policy that ensure that it cannot be misused by those who have plenty of wealth.

Various Responsibilities

Providing social employment is society's way of fulfilling its responsibility towards all its citizens in helping them find employment. Every citizen who is willing to work can have employment as long as some private enterprise or some public not-for-profit organization is willing to hire such a citizen.

Government, the proxy of society, is not responsible for providing employment to those who do not have it. Here is the outline reason for this choice. Government employees are our employees. We hire them to do specific, well-defined tasks. Finding work to do for those who cannot find regular employment is not a well-defined task. Relieving the government of this responsibility, ensures that we do not burden our government employees with tasks that they are not skilled at. Social employment is provided by those who can best use human capabilities.

Society asks its government to establish a system that deals with the accounting and payment aspects of social employment. The government bears the responsibility for the fiscal aspects of social employment wages; that is, collecting taxes and paying wages.

Society asks its government to facilitate the creation of a new kind of organization called "public not-for-profit organization". The government provides the digital infrastructure for these public not-for-profit organizations. We ask the government to build community centers with general use cases for what a community infrastructure should support - not just libraries, swimming pools and basket-ball courts. Public not-for-profit organizations can use community infrastructure for free.

Society bears the cost of social employment through taxes. As the unemployment rate in regular employment goes up, society spends more on supporting the social employment wages. As the unemployment rate in regular employment goes down, society spends less on supporting the social employment wages.

All existing private enterprises and these newly created public not-for-profit organizations can hire citizens as social employees. These organizations bear the social responsibility of providing employment to those who are willing to work, especially when it is at zero cost to them.

The citizen bears the responsibility to have knowledge and skills that are in demand by these organizations. Citizens bear the responsibility to price their time, knowledge and skills commensurate with the work that is being requested of them. After all, citizens are the producers and consumers.

Public Not-For-Profit Organization

We will create a new class of organization called "Public Not-For-Profit Organization". These organizations can take up any socially beneficial purpose and do work to accomplish it.

This new class of organization must have the following characteristics:

They are not-for-profit.
They are not owned by any other entity. That is, they are self-owned.
They can employ only social employees. They cannot not employ regular employees.
All decision makers of such an organization must be its employees. This includes any trustees, board of directors, CEO, etc. Thus, a single person can ever be a decision maker of only one such organization.
For their non-wage expenses, these organizations are funded by donations from citizens.
They are limited in size based on the number of employees. This limit is a policy parameter that citizens decide. 100 employees is a good initial value for this parameter. The purpose of this limit is to restrict the scope of activity that one such organization can accomplish. We do not want to give too much authority and power in the hands of a single such organization.
They operate only within the society or country. That is, they cannot conduct any kind of foreign transactions.
They have open accounts that any citizen can view and audit at any time.
They have open and transparent organization structure and operations. These should be visible and accessible to any citizen.
The records of all employees relating to their employment history with such a public not-for-profit organization is public information.

Since citizens have authority to view and audit all aspects of the operations of such public not-for-profit organizations, citizens can flag malpractices, demand their remediation and even initiate shutdown of such organizations. This shutdown can even extend to barring the decision makers of such organizations from holding such decision-making positions in any other such organization for a fixed period.

After reviewing these restrictions, rules and privileges, when some present-day not-for-profit organization or charity finds that this new public not-for-profit organization's model is unsuitable for its operations, perhaps it is time to reevaluate the true nature of this present-day organization.

Standard for Wage Rate

Society knows the annual GDP and the population. Using these two numbers, we can compute the per-person GDP. This per-person number includes children, working-age citizens and senior citizens. This number is the average economic activity on a per-person basis. Intuitively, this number represents the average annual salary for each citizen.

Social employment wage rate is a fixed percentage of the average per-person economic activity. Initially, social employment wages are set to 20% of the average per-person economic activity. This percentage number is a policy parameter that can be changed collectively by the citizens.

Social employment wage rate can be quoted only as an hourly wage rate. Its computation should use the annual standard work hours after accounting for the paid time off that regular employees get. Thus, if the paid time off is 5 weeks, then it amounts to 1800 work hours per year and hence the social employment hourly wage rate is computed as follows:

social employment hourly wage rate = (GDP / population / 1800) * 20 / 100

There are pros and cons for keeping the social employment wage rate lower than the minimum wage rate for regular employment. Based on citizens' assessment of these pros and cons, the citizens collectively choose the value for this parameter.

Private for-profit Enterprises can hire social employees, and the number of such employees can be at most equal to the total full-time regular employees. Thus, on any given day, an enterprise cannot have more social employees than regular full-time employees. In addition, on any single day, a private for-profit enterprise cannot obtain more hours of work from its social employees than it obtains from its regular employees. If it ever exceeds this daily quota, then the enterprise pays for the difference. This puts a limit on how much zero-cost labor a single private for-profit enterprise can use.

Public not-for-profit organizations can hire social employees with limits specified in the section related to the organization.

A citizen can be a social employee of at most one organization. It could be a private for-profit enterprise, or it could be a public not-for-profit organization.

A citizen on any given day cannot be both a regular employee and a social employee. This means, for a citizen to take up regular employment, the citizen must first quit social employment. Similarly, for a citizen to take up social employment, the citizen must first quit regular employment.

Work Hours and Time Off

For a social employee, social employment is always considered an hourly employment. This is regardless of the number of hours worked.

In a single year, the total number of hours that any citizen can work as a social employee is at most the standard work hours per year. Further, in any week, social employees can work for at most 40 hours. Further, on any day, a social employee can work for at most 8 hours. Thus, there is no material difference between social employees and regular employees in the amount of time they can work and earn wages.

A regular employee will accrue paid time off. In addition, regular employees can take unpaid time off. The time off for a social employee is always unpaid and is available in any quantity at any time as long as the employer is willing to retain the social employee as an employee.

We have already discussed the long list of requirements for an organization to be a public not-for-profit organization. That ensures that it adheres to a code of conduct that is expected of such organizations.

Those who have wealth, own a very large proportion of all private enterprises. It may seem that wealthy people, who own private enterprises, will "game the system" by misusing social employment. However, such "gaming of the system" is ultimately impossible because all citizens control the minimum wages for regular employment and the fixed wages associated with social employment. If citizens feel that private enterprises are misusing social employment, they can raise both these wages and in effect nullify the advantage of the zero cost of social employees, because eventually the cost is paid by those who have the wealth.

Since a citizen can either be a regular employee or a social employee on any given day, using social employment to "earn extra money" is not a possibility.

Ideally, the wages for social employment should be lower than the minimum wages for regular employment. This ensures that only those who cannot obtain regular employment seek social employment, as it is not financially advantageous for knowledgeable and skilled citizens. Since this is a policy parameter, citizens can choose the value as they deem appropriate. They can even set the wages of social employment marginally above the minimum wage for regular employment. Citizens are in charge of these decisions.