"Employment as Property"

 

Every day to day activity, we say things like- this is my house, my car, my land, my book etc. When we say this we usually tend show that we got possession on those things, meaning we are the owner of them and they are our property. To understand whether Employment of a person should be considered as property, we have to compare its characteristics with the characteristics of the items I have already mentioned, because they are already recognised as property. Lets find out the notions of property and compare them with Employment.

Historically, property is designated to those items which are confined and governed by the rules of property institutions and attributes rights and liabilities on the owner of it. Later courts used to define property as something that can be restored to the dispossessed owner rather than simply giving compensation for loss. With this notion we can easily accommodate house, land and cars which are governed by property institutions and they can be restored. Then it used to be the case that property is something that is tangible and has physical existence. Though, house, land and car can easily be accommodated with this notion, but it immediately raises questions about the things that we nowadays consider as property, like- shares in company and intellectual properties. They have no physical existence apart from a worthless piece of paper (certificate of share and intellectual property). So this definition can to be ruled out as it can't encompass all the properties.

Property in modern sense encompasses two basic elements besides their use and allocation as social wealth- (1) ownership and (2) right to exclude others from the item. In a broader sense these requirements mean- property is something that concerns with the ownership of object(s) which can be bought and sold and giving the owner of it exclusive right to exclude other from making any interference with it. If there is any interference with property then the owner will have right to bring action in the court and entitled to get monetary compensation. Alternatively, something can be property when the owner has sufficient control over the use of it. Again, the owner would have power to transfer his property during life time and upon death or may licence to someone allowing use of it for time being. In addition, an important aspect of property is taxability.

Now undoubtedly employment plays a vital rule in everyone's life but to classify it as property it has to match with the criteria I have mentioned above. First question to answer- are we the owner of our employment? As I mentioned ownership is something that can be transferred during life time and upon death, but for employment we can't not transfer it automatically to the successors. It is the company or institution who employs someone else to replace the position you are holding. You can't by yourself employ someone else at your position though recommendation is possible. From this point of view it may appear employment is not property. On the other hand, we have right to exclude others from interfering and give us the right to bring claim for dispossessing unfairly. Unfair dismissal and discrimination claims can be good example where a person can get monetary compensation as well. But it can be argued, we still have no exclusive right on it as we cannot do whatever we want to do at workplace. However, this is just an inconvenience because we can see can be restrictions on use of land as well (like- using for only residential purpose or can't exceed certain height). Moreover, we pay taxes for our employment as we do for any real property.