Manifesto | The History of Antijob's Emergence
Employers constantly write to Antijob. They say this and that, slander, we've been maligned, it's the machinations of competitors. And then they demand, "Remove the story about another LLC 'Pancakes and Matryoshkas', or we'll sue you." Or, on the contrary, they offer money to remove the material.
What can we respond: take a hike, owners of factories, newspapers, steamboats! And also their loyal top managers, PR people, and security chiefs. Honestly, we do not strive to objectively cover labor relations. We inherently see the boss as a jerk. If any of the visitors to Antijob even unfairly threw mud at some businessperson, we are not particularly interested in how the businessperson will clean up.
Is this, like, unfair?
How do the bourgeois businesspeople themselves act? For example, there's major repair work going on in my neighborhood right now. The migrant-looking builders who are carrying it out have been settled... next to the garbage dump! The windows of their temporary huts directly face the trash bins. That's how they are treated. In general, the entire current economy of Moscow depends on migrant workers. At the same time, no one is particularly worried about any minimal social protection systems for them. On the contrary, a large part of the bourgeois media perpetuates prejudices against them, the usual pathos of the materials – they should be glad that they are even allowed to work under such conditions instead of being deported, and the police sometimes catch thugs who try to kill migrants.
But do legal wage earners in Moscow have much more rights?
A job with a white (officially declared) salary and compliance with the Labor Code is considered good for this alone. Although, in theory, an employer's compliance with the Labor Code is the minimum bourgeois right of workers. Complaints to the Labor Inspection about salary delays gather dust there, as practice shows, for a month or two. Imagine: you haven't been paid for a couple of months, and in order for the bureaucratic ass to somewhat stand up for you, you have to wait almost as long! It's unclear how the worker is supposed to live in the meantime.
A job where you don't have to stay overtime is considered good just for that. Although the businessperson is supposed to pay for eight working hours, not half a day in an office chair. Despite the groans of state men about the poor demographic situation in the country, an employer often gets angry when a woman goes on maternity leave. Not every working woman can count on decent money during the period of caring for a newborn. And by the way, it's problematic for a woman aged 25-35 without children to get a job: employers are afraid that she will want to have children. Employers often believe they have a right, motivated by who knows what, to yell at an employee. Sometimes, employees with modest incomes are forced to falsify the financial statements of the company – and in case the police show up, the employee turns out to be the scapegoat.
When being hired for a new job, any conflict at the previous one is usually interpreted not in favor of the employee. And we perceive complaints coming to us from workers through a symmetrical prism.
Honestly, again, we don't particularly strive for employers to become better. The conflict between owners and workers, whether in an acute form or slumbering, is an integral part of capitalism. It will be fully overcome only with the abandonment of the wage labor system as such.
The Dark Cloak, The Right Hand of Fate
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