Corp. Citizenship., Is if for everyone? Options

[Thanos007]

I was thinking about corporate Citizenship the other day and was wondering from an economic point of view if it made any sense. Look at it this way. Corps are primarily concerned with the bottom line. They don't really care if their employes are happy. They know that happy employes make better workers but they would be just as happy getting the same level of work from chipped out zombies. I can see Citizenship offered to upper managment as some kind of perk but to the rank and file?

What does a corp citizen get? Not just medical coverage but a special medical facility paid for by the corp, staffed by other corp citizens. Then there are the schools etc.... That's a lot of money for a corp to be spending when they really don't need to.

Thanos

[durthang]

It is not unprecedented in history. The old mining towns were practically just that, but without official citizenship. One major advantage is that if the corp. citizens are taking the corp. health care, shopping in the discount corp. stores, etc...then almost all of their wages are going right back into the corp. bank accounts.

Even more likely, these corp. citizens are having to use their special corp. credit cards to meet expenses, selling their souls that much deeper to the corp.

[Slacker]

With corp schooling a corp can control what their people know and think to ensure loyalty and docility. They also get first pick of who they want out of the schools.

Also citizenship would mean they can collect taxes from those people. Come on, can't you just see the corps enjoying paying their wageslaves money and then taking it right back from them in taxes? I see pretty much all schooling and medical services being paid for with taxes collected from the citizenship.

[hobgoblin]

what you call taxes would by the corp rather be calculated as payment in services rather then money. ie, you get medical and school cover for your family but a bit less pay. i do belive some would go for that if they allso was coverd by corp housing. in a way is corporate communism ;)

[Crimson Jack]

Corporate citizenship = intravenous living.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

It probably becomes easier to repatriate runaway wageslaves back to their corp master if they're citizens.

[Mortax]

From a few of the novles and flavor text stuff I've read that delt with this, it sounds like you're hitting it pretty close to the mark.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Well, I like to think I have a decent grasp on the game universe by now.

[Critias]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Yeah, but I really, really, really like it.

[Charon]

[Aku]

I'll chip in that it's VERY likely for corp citizenship like this. Another historical example is Hershey, pa, home ofcourse, to the chocolate, and SR just being to the extreme.

Also consider, ontop of what's been said (your pay coming back into the corp via the "corp mall" etc) that they also know PRECISELY where you live, which division your wife/husband works in, and the fact, assumeing this is a Mega, that their law IS law, well, its over all a very productive venture for the corp. Theres also no employee's getting stuck in traffic, since the corp can easily control start/end times of the work day, and surely knows just how many people the corp elevator(s) can carry.

[Fresno Bob]

[Backgammon]

Making someone a citizen also officially stacks his alliegiance on your side. Citizenship is not just a little paper and where you pay taxes. People need to identify and to belong. A proud Ares citizen will feel superior to his non-corp UCAS friends (assuming he has those). The UCAS is a crumbling governement, Ares works. Ares is a AAA megacorp. I AM Ares.

So what's the point of that belonging? When megacorps frequently butt heads with governements over all kind of issues, and do all kinds of dirty things, you want to make sure your employees are going to back you up, simply because they feel that what happens to the corp happens to them. They will turn a blind eye on the bad, they will deny the obvious. They need their illusions.

[Gambitt]

[Kagetenshi]

Look at Silicon Valley and the effort put into some of the cafeterias to get employees to stay on-site during lunch hours. Now expand that and have your employee on-site for most of their life. No risk of being talked away by a competitor, no one outside the corp that they might be talking to, no goods and services being purchased from competitors… heaven.

~J

[Thanos007]

Janitors and check out clerks don't get head hunted. Most receptionists probably don't either. Do these kinds of people have corp citizenship? Is it worth the time and effort on the corps part to offer/give it to them?

Thanos

[Pinel]

Janitors and clerks don't get headhunted, no. But they can be a security risk if they owe allegiance to a nation, i.e. an entity separate from the corp. In the SR universe, corp citizenship would serve as both lifetime work contract and an added security measure.

By "owning" your entire work force through citizenship, you maximize your assets and maintain morale: managers have children and relatives, not all of whom can ascend to senior levels. These can staff the "lesser" employee slots and be used as added leverage against their brighter, more powerful relatives who will think twice about jumping ship if it means leaving their siblings and offspring behind. It can make for interesting runs - I've had my players involved in a few jobs where they were one of many teams hired to simultaneously extract a researcher, his spouse, children, etc.. from different locations.

Cost-wise, once you have set up infrastructure to care for your elite employees and their dependents, the marginal costs of expanding services to your entire workforce would not be excessive. There could be interesting economies of scale (is that the expression in English ?) if you control those services, as you bill them back to the thousands of people you employ across the world.

[Veracusse]

Corp citizenship is most likely a matter of corporate cultural as it is anything else. Who actually gets it is dependant on the values of the given corp. I would assume that Japanacorps would hold corporate citizenship as a high value, at least in terms of honor, loyalty and dedication. Whereas a UCAS corp, such Ares or Novatech might have the values of patriotism in mind.

Of course the bottom line would be a standard value for all megacorps, but just what the bottom line means to each corp could be different, based on what they hold as cultural values.

Some employees might not even know what megacorporation they are working for. They may only know the subsidiary and its parent' corporation, but not the over-arching umbrella Megacorp that governs them all. The higher up executives would most likely know, but not the janitors and receptionists. This could also be a reflection of corporate culture, and be represented by corp citizenship. I can see S-K being like this. It is quite normal for S-K to own subsidiaries of subsidiaries of subsidiaries. These employess, though unkowingly working for S-K, would not be considered corp citizens. Only those working for S-K Prime and its major divisions would be, and corp citizenship may also be a prize to hand out to loyal executives, researchers and managers who do a good job (i.e. do what Lofwyr would have them do).

I think the idea of corp citizenship has a large degree of variance within the Shadowrun world/canon, and cannot be easily generalized across the board for all megacorps.

Veracusse

[Penta]

I could see Corp Citizenship being common for the Japanacorps, maybe SK.

The others? Not likely. For one thing, PR. When your important employees aren't "Americans" or "Britons" but "XCorp citizens", customers are going to regard you warily.

There's already twitchiness in many corps over bringing in a foreigner...I believe it's Sony that just got its first non-Japanese CEO.

[hobgoblin]

the question becomes, whats best for the bottom line. even american corps in america will go down the route if the numbers show that there is money to be made or saved on it.

[wagnern]

Advantages of corperate citizenship? oh, I can see them now. . .

Just imagine it:

"Here citizen, dig a ditch from here to over there."

"But I am a software engineer?"

"We don't need as many software engineers this month, so the surplus has been right-sized to mienial labor. Don't worry citizen we have taken the liberty to adjust your pay to your new statis and have moved you to the labiorers bunk house."

Or the Soma rations. Yum! they will help take the edge of all that nasty thinking.

You will never be lonley agian. The Loving gaze of the Corp will alwies be watching you, looking out for you.

You can ask Central Advertising and Conditioning if they could switch your dream protocol because the Krispy Krunch Kibble gingle is getting old. They will be happy to comply, for they know an advertisement played too often and long can result is backlash.

Retirement, ah, this is a worry of the past. No pension, no 401K, so social security, The corp will take you to their Island paradise to live out your golden years. This island is so good no one ever returns, even to visit.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Retirement?

Many of these are '80s Japanacorp caricatures: You work until you die of a stroke at your desk at 3 AM. They have to pry your fingers apart from the deathgrip you have on the cyberterminal you're still jacked into when the spybot finds you "slacking off."

[Kagetenshi]

Indeed.

~J

[wagnern]

Sorry, I was giving the corps too much credit. I thought they would at least pretend to care for it's 'retires'. But no, Shadow run is based upon the worst of the Japinese corp practices. I don't know, maby american influence would make them pretend to care: "Oh, Bob, well you see Bob decided to retire. Well yes, it was all of a sudden, But just think, if you work hard, you can retire just like Bob."