Power In Business (Part 1): Employers

There are four different general categories in which people have power regarding business: employers, employees, consumers/clients, and unions.  Of these four, only the first three are necessary in order to have a functioning business, for even if someone runs a self-employed sole proprietorship in the strictest sense, they are simply taking the role of employer and employer all at once, and without consumers, there is nothing to start or run a business for.  Unions, unlike these other roles, might not be logical prerequisites to having a business, but they are necessary if workers are to have bargaining power that exceeds what one employee could ever hold alone.  This series will address each of the four groups one by one, exploring what grants each one its respective, unique kind of power in business and how each of them could be misused.

Employers have one of the most prominent forms of power in business.  Without employers, there is no one to provide work to employees or to start/oversee the product or service to be sold to consumers, and thus employers have a pivotal status in business.  All the same, they are just one pillar of business power out of several, and they, like the other kinds, could not have their power without other groups of people being in positions where they have their own.  For a self-employed person with no employees, there is one less group to have power over or that has power over them, but there is still the inherent need for clients, without which there is nothing to provide the revenue to preserve even this dual status of employer and employee.  Indeed, each of these groups needs at least one or more of the others active in a business environment to even have any basis of power for themselves.

It is employers, though, in conventional business structures, who provide work and compensation (along with additional benefits where applicable), which workers need in order to live within the way Western society is set up.  In some industries or times more than others, this means that employers are something that employees need even if the latter simultaneously loathes the former, justly or unjustly.  This does give employers a degree of power, though not only is there power on the employee end as well, but it is also true that this power of employers is not by default misused or handled ethically; that depends on the employers worldview and motivations.  Employers nonetheless could lie to, underpay, illicitly discriminate against, or otherwise mistreat their employees, perhaps by firing them on a whim, by withholding implied or promised promotions and raises, or by showing favoritism on the basis of gender or race (in any direction, not just to men over women or white people over people of color).

Employers have to varying extents the power to jettison employees into starvation and homelessness by firing them when they are at their most vulnerable, to refuse to increase pay in accordance with merit or with the cost of living even when they have no financial obstacles to doing so, to poison the reputation of employees so that getting hired elsewhere in the same industry is almost impossible, or to tolerate or contribute to all sorts of other oppressive things like sexual harassment or hostility to mental illness.  At the same time, this power could be used instead to protect workers from injustices inflicted by management, other employees, or consumers, as well as to reward productivity and provide an environment conducive to flourishing of all members of the company.  It is also still true that just having the power to reign over a company from a very high position on the hierarchy does not mean employers have a monopoly on power in business.

Even aside from the separate but interconnected power of employees, consumers, and unions (for one can only have power if the others are present, and the others cannot be present without having some form of realized or potential power), employers cannot control other factors like the actions of competitors, weather, or political or military upheaval that interferes with business, rendering their power over circumstances limited at best.  It is also true that abusive employers do not use their power cruelly just because they are employers.  The worldviews, motivations, and resolve of various individuals with power decides what they believe about it and hell they express it, employers included.  The very reason why some of the selfish and cruel employers might exercise their power in an exploitative manner, in fact, could be that they fear the legitimate power of the other groups present for a business to exist.  If it was logically impossible for employees, consumers, and unions to have significant power, egoistic employers could never be threatened by them!