The law of unemployment: has equality law been captured by Friedman’s ideologues?

The second half of the 20th century saw in Western democracies the rise of individual rights at same time as the demise of collective ones. Within this pattern, we saw collective labour rights give way to individual employment ones. What is particularly noticeable over this period is the paradoxical coincidence of growing employment equality rights alongside increasing economic inequality. Many would argue that the existing equality laws are not strong enough. However, it is arguable that in fact equality law has been an instrument of economic inequality, wielded by Friedman’s ‘cronies’ (beginning most conspicuously with Reagan and Thatcher). It does this by increasing the labour pool, making it easier for employers to expand and contribute economic growth, a value seemingly unquestioned in public debate.

Sex discrimination law, for instance, in targeting 50 per cent of the population, hugely increases the labour pool, first, by encouraging women to enter the labour market, and second, in addressing the obvious problem with the first with maternity rights, enabling women to work and bear children, saving the labour market from generational shrinkage. The latter - notably - produces a backlash from right-wing populists, insisting that child-bearing is an individual choice and the costs of which should be borne by that individual.

While race (including nationality) anti-discrimination laws quite rightly raise a nation’s conscience over the evils of racism, they facilitate immigration, enabling the demonization of those who object to it on economic grounds, such as depressing market wages for those already least well off. This again fuels populism, indeed, paradoxically, the rise of racism, or even fascism. Disability discrimination policies have brought persons from institutional, and subsequently, marginalised existences into the workplace, again broadening the labour pool.

It is argued below that equality law is vulnerable to misuse by cynical governments, with resulting further economic inequality. It does this by broadening the labour pool and using the consequent unemployment as a method of achieving other goals, none of which favour the unemployed.