1. Historically, salaried employment has involved the subordination of the employee to the employer.
But history is one thing; the logic of commodity exchange is another.
2. An employee is required to obey orders from his employer, who is economically his client.
Either these orders are of the same nature as those placed by a customer to a supplier, or they are accompanied by injunctions of a different nature. These injunctions are made on top of that.
3. The purpose of the employment contract is to provide a service in exchange for a wage.
This remains true when the employer is a public administration. A civil servant is, in his capacity as an employee, a merchant who sells the product of his work to his employer. Any other employee for profit is in the same position.
4. Making the relationship of subordination the criterion of the status of employee has unfortunate consequences.
The labor market is divided into categories that fall under different regimes. This results in distortions of competition, unjustified inequalities and a proliferation of administrative complications. We must ask ourselves whether a completely decompartmentalized labor market is one of the characteristics of a deideologized economy.
5. The labor market is better organized if all labor remuneration is easily comparable.
Currently, and especially in France, this is not even the case for all jobs governed by law by a relationship of subordination. This is even less so when the comparison is extended to other forms of remuneration for work, such as that of the liberal professions and self-employed people, for example.