Indian Milkmen

I read an interesting article over the weekend about a state owned enterprise in India that is actually paying milk delivery workers (milkmen) not to deliver their milk. In fact they have even sold their trucks and there is literally nothing for them to do all day. They come to work and play Sudoku or watch TV. The problem is that the milk delivery business is no longer a monopoly and milk demand has also decreased. Indian state enterprises do not allow layoffs. The workers are caught in a bad situation. Searching for a newer job would be difficult due to their lack of skills. Furthermore they are older and have pensions to consider. Most of them express unhappiness with their situation and their desire to do something different. They feel left behind others who make more in their private sector jobs and can afford nice goods. They have been placed on a surplus list for reassignment, but there are 25,000 other workers on the same list (from a variety of occupations).

I thought that this was a good example for the Kantian second imperative which says that you should treat the humanity in the person as an end and not a means, merely. The idea of the no layoff rule was to treat the humanity in a person as an end, but in the long run this had a negative effect. The market place outran the workers and in the end they were left with nothing to do. Their humanity was violated precisely because there was nothing to do. Among other things, this imperative requires that you provide meaningful work which is lacking in this case. People complain, rightly in some cases, about the negative consequences of layoffs. However, consider the alternative. People can be denied opportunities to grow and change and improve their circumstances when society’s needs change.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120673042293672339.html