Friday Frivolity: Labor Economics and Alien

This frivolity comes to you courtesy of the Planet Money podcast, which devoted an entire episode to the theme of labor economics in the Alien franchise.

Cutting to the chase, the entire plot of the Alien franchise turns on contractual boilerplate. Remember, at the start of the original movie, the crew of the Nostromo is awakened prematurely from cryosleep. Mother, the ship’s computer has detected a transmission, and company policy requires that they investigate.

According to the script, Parker, one of Alien’s “truckers in space” objects: “I hate to say this, but we’re a commercial ship, not a rescue team. This kind of duty’s not in our contract . . . .”

Ash, the malevolent cyborg, interrupts him: “You better read your contract. Any systemized transmission indicating possible intelligent origin must be investigated. At penalty of total forfeiture.” And so the plot of Alien was saved because of some contractual boilerplate that, most likely, none of the crew members noticed.

Planet Money imagines how this would have played out differently had a union representative been present. They create a new character and have him enter the dialogue after Ash. He says, “Yeah, remember our grievance procedure? So I’m going to file that. And while it’s being investigated, we actually can’t go. That’s part of the rule.”

Roll credits.

That would have been the end of the movie but for the monopsony power of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. The alien is terrifying, but we only encounter it because of a second, quieter monster: a corporation that exploited its market power to exclude from the room anybody with the wherewithal to resist it.