“If the Work Requirement is Strong”: The Business Response to Basic Income Proposals in Canada and the US

Authors

  • David Calnitsky Department of Sociology & Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs29357

Keywords:

Guaranteed annual income, Basic income, Business, Labour markets

Abstract

Historical accounts of the business response to basic income proposals imply that employer attitudes have been mixed. In the 1970s and 1980s, when an array of basic income schemes was proposed, some groups were supportive and others were opposed. This paper shows that, in a number of high-profile proposals in Canada and the US, behind the apparent dissensus among business groups lays a consensus stance against universalistic and unconditional guaranteed income schemes. The disagreement among business groups comes down to either (1) a basic misunderstanding of proposal details, or (2) the fact that the policy itself can take on a wide range of concrete forms. To the extent that business has exhibited support for guaranteed income policies, the actual policies in question tended to be “two-tiered” rather than unitary, selective rather than universal, and miserly rather than generous. The income maintenance policies that garnered some support among business groups would all include explicit or implicit work requirements for “able-bodied” adults. By contrast, generous, unconditional guaranteed income policies that reduce workers’ market dependence—namely, those that basic income advocates find desirable—found no audience in business circles. I close by exploring the mechanisms underlying the impact of basic income on bargaining relationships in the labour market and comment on the promises and pitfalls of a social policy that continues to be highly malleable.

Author Biography

David Calnitsky, Department of Sociology & Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba

David Calnitsky is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manitoba. He will start as Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Western University in 2018. His research interests include work, poverty, social policy, political economy, economic sociology, and social theory, and his research has been published in Social Problems, Canadian Review of Sociology, and The Sociological Review. Direct correspondence to: David Calnitsky, Department of Sociology & Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, 750 Bannatyne Ave., Winnipeg, MB Canada R3T2N2. E-mail: david.calnitsky@umanitoba.ca.

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Published

2018-09-30

Issue

Vol. 43 No. 3 (2018)

Section

Articles

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