Corporations typically refer to their employees as human resources. A resource is something to be utilized for an end other than itself. Water is for quenching thirst, doing our laundry, watering crops, putting out fires. Wood is used for building shelter, as fuel for fires, framing paintings, and for making eating utensils. Water and wood, then, are not ends in and for themselves, but are used as resources to achieve other ends.
What, then, does it mean to be a human resource in the context of a corporate environment? To be a human resource is to be a means to achieve the ends of the corporation one serves. And the end of corporations is to realize a profit for the shareholders. Therefore, to be a human resource is to be one of many resources used to realize corporate profits. In the corporate context, a human resource has utility like all the other resources used to generate profits. Insofar as a resource contributes to the bottom line, it is retained. When it ceases to do so, it is discarded. A human resource is reduced to mere utility. As a resource within the corporate structure, a human being has no more value than the raw materials and machines used in a production process. What it means to be human is reduced to being a mere means to the achievement of corporate ends. The human qua human disappears.
The corporation has no concern for the human as human. It cares nothing for the aspirations of the humans it regards as resources. By its very nature, the corporation is incapable of caring. The corporation will utilize human resources in the same way it utilizes all of its other resources to maximize revenue and minimize cost. If that requires working its human resources long hours, it will do so. The corporation does not care what toll working long hours has on family life or how it hinders pursuit of individual goals. The corporation cares only about maximizing profits. To the extent that persons internalize the corporate culture, become immersed in it, and accede to its demands for conformity, they become less and less like humans and more and more like machines.
A machine does not ponder the meaning of its existence or question whether its assigned tasks serve its own ends. A machine does not entertain the notion that the corporation it serves may not be worthy of its loyalty, nor does a machine reflect that its energy and talent might be better devoted to ends other than those embraced by its employer. For these reasons, corporations prefer machines to humans, and will replace human beings with machines, whenever possible. Machines don’t ask questions or look elsewhere for employment.
As our economy is currently structured, millions of people must work for corporations to secure their physical survival. This arrangement of being reduced to a corporate resource daily assaults the humanity of those who are employed in it. Retaining a semblance of humanity under these conditions requires vigilance and resourcefulness. The corporate assault on one’s humanity must be resisted, if one is to retain any semblance of dignity.
Carl Norman
Idaho USA
