The corporation takes a risk, too: you might be an ineffectual or even counterproductive employee who fails to work its capital to produce a surplus from which a profit can be extracted. You might also fail to show up for work, or come in late, and lower the productivity of the firm (say, because another worker will have to cover for you and fall behind on their own work). You could even quit your job.

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Both workers and corporations seek to "de-risk" their position. Workers can vote for politicians who will set minimum wages, punish unsafe working conditions and on-the-job harassment, and require health and disability insurance. They can also unionize and get some or all of these measures through collective bargaining (they might even get *more* protections, such as workplace tribunals to protect them from jobsite harassment).

4/

These are all examples of measures that shift risk from workers to capital. If a boss hires or promotes an abusive manager or cuts corners on shop-floor safety, the company - not the workers - will ultimately have to pay the price for its managers' poor judgment.

Bosses *also* strive to de-risk their position, by shifting the risk onto *workers*.

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For example, bosses love noncompete clauses in contracts, which let them harness the power of the government to punish workers their workers for changing jobs, and other bosses for hiring them. Given a tight noncompete, a boss can impose such high costs on workers who quit that they will elect to stay, even in the face of degraded working conditions, inadequate pay, and abusive management:

pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its…

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If you have $250,000 worth of student debt and your boss has coerced you into signing a noncompete, that means that quitting your job will see you excluded for three years (or longer) from the field you paid all that money to get a degree in, but you will still be expected to pay your loans over that period. Missing the loan payments means sky-high penalties, which is how you get situations where you borrow $79k, pay back $190k, and *still owe* $236k:

pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kaw…

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Bosses can also coerce workers into signing contracts with "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs), which force workers to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of quitting their job. Put this in stark economic terms: if your boss can fine you $5,000 for quitting your job, he can impose $4,999 worth of risk on you without risking your departure:

pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its…

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Bosses also enter into illegal, secret "no poach" agreements whereby they all agree not to hire one another's workers. One particularly pernicious version of this is the "bondage fee," where a staffing agency will demand that all its clients agree never to hire one of its contractors.

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In NYC, the majority of "doorman buildings" use a staffing agency called Planned Companies, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Firstservice, whose standard contract contains a bondage fee provision. The upshot is that pretty much every doorman building is legally on the hook for huge cash fines if they hire pretty much anyone who has worked as a doorman anywhere in the city:

pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bon…

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Again, this is a form of de-risking for capital. By creating barriers to workers quitting their jobs, bosses can reduce the risk that their workers will quit, even if the pay and working conditions are inadequate.

One of the most profound, effective and pervasive sites of de-risking is the gig economy, in which workers are not guaranteed *any* wages.

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By paying workers on a piecework basis - where you are only paid if a customer appears and consumes some of your labor - bosses can shift the risks associated with bad marketing, bad planning, and bad pricing onto their workers.

Think of an Uber driver: when an Uber driver clocks into the app, they make the whole system more valuable. Each additional Uber driver on the road shortens the average wait time for a taxi.

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What's more, Uber's algorithmic wage discrimination allows the company to pay lower wages when there are more workers available:

pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…

Lots of companies have hit on the strategy of increasing staffing levels in order to increase customer satisfaction.

13/

If you're a hardcore frequent flier, your chosen airline will give you a special number you can call to speak to a human in a matter of seconds, without ever being shunted to a chatbot. This is a gigantic perk - especially if you're flying at a time when air traffic controllers are quitting in droves because they haven't been paid in a month, and thousands of flights are being canceled, leaving travelers scrambling to get rebooked:

thedailybeast.com/air-traffic-…

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Air Traffic Controllers Start Resigning as Shutdown Bites

Unpaid air traffic controllers are quitting their jobs altogether as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues.

^{Adam Downer (The Daily Beast)}