Mercepreneurial Syndicalism

Mercepreneurial Syndicalism is the personal Ideology of Quakernomics on The Leftist Hub. Mercepreneurial Syndicalism aka Mercepreneurialism is a tactic of achieving a Market Socialist system through Economically Democratic means. The belief stemming from the realisation that the Capitalist machine doesn't expect the Left to actually encroach on their territory and that has resulted in them becoming complacent in their attempts to rig the system for their benefit. Resulting in various missteps that could easily expropriated deregulations and judicial rulings in both Europe and North America that could easily be re-purposed for Leftist means. Ultimately leaving the Capitalist paralysed by their own stupidity.

**Ideological Influences**

* Expropriative Anarchism
* David Schweickart
* Yanis Varoufakis
* Anwar Sheikh
* Market Socialism
* Mariana Mazzucatto

## **Origins**

Pretty much since the beginning of the 1900s, Europe and much of "The west" has seen on and off rampant deregulation, some efforts of deregulation have been much more "well" thought out than others. The deregulation that much of us are aware of are in relation to things like Health and Safety standards, the weakening of data protection in regards to private data of employees, access to and right to join a trade union, etc. But there have been other forms of deregulation that have weakened various Anti-trust laws both in North America but also in Britain and wider Europe, including but by no means a full list;

### **Europe**

* Merger Regulation of 2004 (139/2004)
* Vertical Block Exempt Regulation (330/2010)
* State Aid Guidelines of 2014 (Legislative Order in the EU)

### **North America**

* Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (95-504)
* Telecommunications Act of 1996 (104-104)
* Gramm-Leach-Bailey Act of 1999 (106-102)
* Noerr-Pennington Doctrine (Judicial ruling)

These regulations are just some of the laws that were passed with the expressed intent to weaken anti-trust laws in the EU and USA. But the ones that are most interesting are the State Aid Guidelines of 2014 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, these resulted, albeit indirectly in the creation of Industry Associations aka "Business Unions" in their respective economic sectors.

### **Business "Unions"**

Business Unions, in short are the kind of thing that a Neo-liberal would come up with in response to the IDEA of Trade Unions and the “threat” of Anti-trust legislation. The main idea behind Business Unions is a way of two separate companies collaborating in a market that they are both major shareholders in. Basically, in short, it’s a way of merging without actually merging in any meaningful sense of the word. They usually aren’t owned by the same parent company, and they usually don’t own stock in each other’s business. But besides that, they enter into these unions also known as “Industry Associations” as a way of locking their prices with each other and limiting the real competitiveness that is in their market.

The deregulation that has been around since 1996, has allowed for previously exempt companies from participating in Business Unions to start their own or join already existing Business Unions. Which in turn has provided them with skyrocketing profits and has resulted in the biggest companies in the world tying everything about their business to each other without actually getting married in a merger. As for why they would do this without owning stock in each other’s businesses, much like the working class should, when the opportunity strikes, the bourgeois also unionise to benefit themselves.

## The Tactics

### **Business Federations**

This is where we get into the theory, because of the deregulation that I’ve already mentioned and the re-vitalization of these Business Unions. They have accidentally left a massive hole in their plan. Because two can play at that game using the exact same legal pre-text that they have. Business Federations are Federations of individual Businesses, they are run by and for their workers rather than in spite of them. The Federation, legally speaking is a non-profit organization that doesn’t own stock in the membership but does have contractual power over the executives of member organizations in certain circumstances. Mainly when dealing with abuse or harassment cases brought to the federation by federated workers, mainly having the ability to twist the arm of the executive branch of member companies by changing the terms of grants given to them into loans with interest if they don’t abide by the Federations recommendations, or even threatening the executive in question with a Criminal or Civil case against them.

The Federations are made up of a central bureau of elected non-executive employees from member companies. These representatives of member companies are elected through Consensus-based selection and serve for 1 year terms, they can be recalled if the Federation’s Bureau receives a simple majority of non-executive members, this can be 50% of the representative’s workplace peers if the company uses a fixed-rota system.

This Bureau decides on the **SHARED** workplace policy across all member companies, regardless of type (Co-operative, WIC, Traditional Shareholding, etc). They aren’t alone though, the representatives of member companies that is, they have a member of the executive sitting with them as well. The way it works is there are 3 representatives and 1 executive per company. If the company is a Co-operative then they get to pick of their elected managers or similar position.

This shared workplace policy covers everything to do with a worker’s day to day, such as their minimum benefits, minimum wage, the ratio between executive pay and non-executive pay, pension contributions, health and safety, etc. The disparity between the number of executives and number of representatives ensures that the executives of the companies cannot just veto anything that goes through the Bureau. But they do serve an advisory role, and in the case that a company is not profitable enough to pay for the new workplace rules, the executive can provide an application to the chair of the Bureau for the Federation to cover the excess costs related to the change in policy for a maximum of 5 years.

*So What's in it for the Businesses themselves?*

Well, the businesses themselves pay dues per quarter to be part of the Federation, this allows the Federation to pay for things like Corporate and Patent lawyers that the member businesses can use free of charge, the Federation also provides grants and zero interest loans to smaller businesses so that they can help the small businesses grow proportionately to the larger businesses. The quarterly dues are flat, meaning that more profitable businesses will pay more than smaller businesses. For example, the flat fee is 4%, a company making profits of $500,000 pays $20,000 per year, while a company making profits of $1 Billion is paying $40,000,000 per year.

The Federations act a mediator in the marketplace, allowing for two businesses that aren’t connected in anyway to work together on products, services, etc. It is in essence, free association between businesses where all expenses are paid and that in turn reduces the cost to individual businesses when it comes to hiring their own lawyers, etc. Businesses also benefit from an employee swap program wherein an employee of one Federated company is able to request the Federation to change “scenery” meaning that they keep the job they’re doing but they do that job for another federated company. With the possibility that the Federation pays for the travel/move to the new companies location within reason.

This benefits both the worker and the company because it provides them with a semi-consistent flow of highly qualified labour that is already familiar with the workplace policy of the company, because it’s the exact same policy of the one they just came from. Which again, in essence, is the free movement of labour across businesses. The worker keeps their salary, benefits, etc and both companies in the exchange get a qualified employee to fill the gap.

In essence, Business Federations act the same way that the European Union works but inside the Business World.

#### Business Horizontalization

When it comes to the goal of flattening an organisation into a Co-operative just like there are teething problems when it comes to company growth, when you run a company that has been hierarchically run for pretty much all of its existence, its pretty difficult. If you flatten too quickly the business crashes and now you’ve got possibly thousands of employees without a job. Do it too slowly and you basically end up with a new executive and the new executive reverses all the previous changes.

This is where WICs come in, as a middle man in the Horizontalization process.

### Worker-Influenced Corporations (WICs)

Worker-Influenced Corporations are as I said before, a syndicated version of a traditional business. What do I mean by syndicated they are monitored and regulated by an in-house Trade union. **It is NOT a trade union of the company’s creation**, but in fact, is the Trade Union that has a plurality of non-executive employees in it. Employees are given an open choice of the union they join, but they must join one.

Once all employees are unionised, the plurality union is contacted and given control of the dividends for the business (this will be important later). The Union then also picks 5 people to be put to a vote by the non-executive employees, the employees can ask any questions they want to the 5 people, if they don’t like any of the 5, they can request another 5, rinse and repeat, until one person is finally picked. That person is elected to the chief position in the executive and are given shares equal in proportion to the other executives. This executive has sole control over the pay and working conditions within the business.

This reduces strike action and in the case that the executive becomes un-cooperative with the employees, that person will be pushed out of the executive and have their shares taken off of them.

#### Structure and Benefits to Workers

WICs allow the employees to elect all of their middle managers, and even the middle managers get to elect the person above them. WICs use a Rowthorn theorem in determining their lowest wages. Basically, this means that the WIC starts from a base point, for example $15 per hour, and once per 6 months they increase it by $1 per hour until productivity stagnates. At that point, the only job of the WIC is to increase that in line with Consumer Price Inflation (CPI). All other wages are adjusted in real terms to fit with the new minimum salary. For example, if a middle manager was paid 20% more than those under them at the old minimum, they still get 20% more than the new one.

WICs also have a 15% of quarterly profits fund that workers can dip into in order to pay off $15,000 of debt once every 15 years. They can take out money to buy a new car, or if they are terminally ill they can use the fund to pay for their bucket list, in short, it pays for anything extraneous that the workers may need to reduce stress, increase productivity or even just increase co-operation with their colleagues.

#### Reverse Progress Reports

And finally, once every year, 2 weeks before dividends are scheduled to be paid out, the non-executive employees are surveyed by the Syndicated Union about the performance of the executive for the last year. They are asked about pay, benefits, responsiveness, and most importantly, if they approve of the last 12 months of running. If FEWER than 70% of the non-executive employees approve of the running of the business, Dividends are frozen and the only money received by the executive is equal to that of the lowest paid employee’s salary. The executives won’t get dividends for 12 months until the next survey, if that wasn’t clear.

#### The Man in the Middle

WICs act as a middle ground between traditional corporations and co-operatives, in how hierarchical they are. Meaning that a WIC is easier to compress down into a co-operative than a traditional corporation.

## The Why and End Point

The point of Mercepreneurial Syndicalism is based on one key fact, 95% of the world’s economy is build on the backs of small to medium sized enterprises. It’s my belief that if you can federalize at least 50% of that under one big federation. You can change the day to day conditions of workers so much that the political systems in all respective countries start reflecting the new normal. Governments do tend to lag behind business by around 10 years. So, when the norm of business changes, the government usually mandates a switch to the new system for everyone around 10 years later.

### What about the Bourgeois?

What about them? They aren’t going to get rid of or legislate Federations out of existence and WICs are based off the same deregulation that THEY put in place. They have two choices, they either die quietly and slowly under the weight of their own stupidity OR they die suddenly under their own stupidity. As for the populous who gets made redundant at the big corporations who just sunk into the ocean, they now get to work at a federated business, which frankly is good for everyone involved.