Friday, November 14, 2014

Against Human Resources



          Against Human Resources


          Consider the phrase, “Human Resources Department”. You find that name in  academic and corporate bureaucracies; and no doubt in government too. What an insulting name!
          For am I a seam of coal? A vein of ore? A stand of pine? Those are resources; they have no rights. They can be used up and then discarded. Are humans to be treated that way too?
          The phrase “human resources”, bespeaks a management attitude in some ways worse than chattel slavery. Chattel means cattle; a chattel slave is livestock, owned by the owner. But a resource is not even animate; it is a passive source of extraction; so a human resource lacks even the right of animals to not be abused.
          Surely there are other names for the hiring department? Such as “Hiring Department”? Or better yet, “Labor Relations Department”? I am not just any human, I am a worker, I work for them; and I am not a resource, I am as human as my employers and I must be related to.

2 comments:

  1. Another dehumanizing term is Human Capital, which is sometimes used in my agency. Worse in some ways than Human Resources.

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  2. Good point. A resource is from nature, but capital is a human construct. I don't want to be thought of as a stand of pine, but I'd even less want to be thought of as a bank account.

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