In honor of International Workers’ Day last week, and the ongoing writers’ strike happening in the U.S. right now, I wanted to revisit the challenges of protecting labor rights in space.
Earlier this year, I discussed some of the risks of protesting or striking in a space habitat. But there are other potential characteristics of a space settlement that could make workers more vulnerable to exploitation: the dangerous working conditions, for example, or the isolation and remoteness that will make it difficult for regulators to monitor compliance with labor laws.
But the isolation of a space settlement might also reproduce another form of labor exploitation: the company town. Company towns on Earth, which were especially popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were usually constructed around factories, dams, or extractive sites like mines. Essentially all of the housing and stores were owned by the same company that employed the workers living in the town. In space, this could be easily reproduced if a space mining or manufacturing company also constructed and maintained the habitat, life support, and food production for its workers.
The problem with a company town is that, in the absence of alternative choices for housing or non-company-owned stores, the company has a monopoly on local rents and businesses, on top of controlling the working conditions and wages of the employees. The classic case study for the dangers of this kind of monopoly is the company town of Pullman, Illinois, built in the 1880s to house workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company, which manufactured railroad cars. When the economy worsened in 1893 and demand for their cars dropped, Pullman reduced wages by 20-30% but did not lower rents. Caught in a financially untenable situation, Pullman factory workers went on strike with the help of the American Railway Union.
Perhaps space settlements built to house workers of a single company won’t charge rent or have company stores; maybe housing and food will be guaranteed in the employment contract. But a lack of choice could still lead to exploitation— companies may be tempted to cut corners on things like water cleanliness or air recycling, and if worker-residents have no alternatives, due to lack of both competition and political representation, they may end up having to decide between putting up with low-quality living conditions, or quitting their jobs and trying to make their way to another habitat or planet.
Although company towns declined in the first half of the 20th century (in part because private transportation became more affordable, allowing workers to live farther from their job sites), we can see new attempts by private companies to control more of their employees’ lives and the local community ongoing today. Consider, for example, the famously luxurious campuses built by giant tech companies, where employees can eat meals for free, get their laundry done, work out, socialize— all of which encourages workers to stay at work longer. Google has announced plans to go a step further and build a “mega campus” that will include also employee housing. And in Texas, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has expressed interest in expanding SpaceX’s launch facility, Starship, into an entire city of the same name, which would encompass not only the existing town of Boca Chica but also the surrounding area.
This renewed interest in developing modern company towns on Earth suggests that “company space settlements” may appeal to some portion of today’s private space industry. It’s crucial that we study the history of company towns and labor exploitation, and not just assume that today’s industrialists won’t succumb to the same temptations without careful and deliberate regulation. Besides ensuring strong legal protections for workers and labor unions in space, we should also safeguard the strategies that space workers will need to be able to protect themselves, like the ability to leave or change employers, to report violations of labor laws without fear of reprisal, and to go on strike or protest.
Other News
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Alexandra Witze about Off-Earth and space ethics for Nature.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Artemis & Ethics workshop I attended at NASA Headquarters. Another participant, Linda Billings, just posted her own summary of the meeting, if you’re interested in another perspective.
I’ll be attending the last two days of the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference on May 27-28 in Frisco, TX. I’m giving a talk on the afternoon of May 28 as part of the Living in Space track— come say hi!
I’ll also be moderating a panel on crew selection for the Interstellar Research Group’s 8th Interstellar Symposium in Montreal on July 10-13.