Unemployment Riots
In October of 2105 the Benelux policies, a group of corporate policies regarding unemployment status, was announced in the grand hall of the Benelux megacity on Earth. Less than five months later, in February of 2106, the first skirmishes between employees and Corporate Security ignited a surprisingly persistent, and remarkably quiet, rebellion.
By the first decade of the twenty second century, the conditions on Earth were approaching a crisis. Almost ten percent of the world's population was among the Unemployed, people not recognized by The Corporation and afforded no rights. Corporate Executives recognized a looming crisis in this population and, in an unimagined fit of humane thought, issued a series of policies to ensure basic human rights for the Unemployed on Earth and provide Unemployment income so that even the Unemployed would have basic economic support. The policies were viewed by the middle management level of the Employee population as a dilution of their interests, however, and drew sharp criticism almost immediately. Within months the typical arrogance of the Corporate Executives led to additional policies declaring that any statement against the Unemployed constituted insubordinate behavior, and The Corporation published an intent to grant Universal Employment within a year. This led to the unexpected effect of the Employees rebelling against The Corporation.
The Unemployment Riots began with a simple march in, of all places, a Luxury dome of Luna. The marchers were not the Executives, of course, but mostly retirees and the lower level Employees who worked at the dome. The march turned violent fairly quickly, however, when Corporate Security used pain emitters to suppress the marchers, and a few individuals attempted to storm their position. The ensuing riot lasted almost ten minutes before the pain emitters and holo-dazzlers put the rioters down. It took a few weeks to replace the lower level employees and evict a few hundred retirees, but that was the last time Luna experienced anything first hand. Over the next seventeen years, however, another group of people somewhere in the solar system gathered together every few weeks to attempt violent overthrow of The Corporation, and the continual unrest prevented actual implementation of the Benelux policies due to funding shortages. The most successful event was the Ganymede Incident, which lasted over three years, but even that event had little impact beyond Ganymede itself. By 2117 The Pleiades Corporation had recognized the waste caused by this conflict and simply canceled the Benelux policies. Other activities in the ensuing years had reduced the Unemployed population on Earth below five percent, and certain other policies had been quietly implemented to reduce the impact of Unemployment on Earth overall, so the original policies were deemed unnecessary. The last of the Unemployment Riots occurred in July of 2117 when a group of technology employees on the Martian North Amazonia hive attempted to seize control of the Martian government through cyberwarfare. They lacked any military awareness, however and were all gathered in a single section of the hive; Corporate Security simply blasted open the external view panes at the section exterior and the sudden pressure drop allowed a quick action to end the event with only fifty of the technologists lost.
A Minor Rebellion
While this rebellion was long lived, most people never even knew it was happening. Throughout the duration of the Unemployment Riots, the Corporate News Service never aired a single report on the fighting. The food shortages during the Ganymede Incident were explained as resulting from mismanagement on Ganymede and people were assured that the problem was being dealt with. There were a grand total of 2345 deaths over the entire seventeen year span from these actions; the Saint Louis megacity lost more Unemployed to starvation each day during the same time period. In the end this rebellion had almost no impact; the policies never had the funding support from Corporate Headquarters for implementation, and likely never would have. The Unemployed actually benefited slightly as the Earth Executive Council actually took action to clean up the megacity downlevels and provide greater opportunity, as well as moderating some of the harshest local policies. The development of the very first space-based combat warship was perhaps the most enduring legacy of this entire rebellion. The Unemployment Riots ended a mere five years before The Great Grieving, and that terrible event so devastated humanity that even those few who knew of the Unemployment Riots forgot about them in the ensuing chaos and reconstruction.
The Ganymede Incident
The most successful rebel action occurred at Ganymede in 2112 when a popular groundswell of employees managed, with the help of a large number of asteroid miners and almost two hundred Corporate Executives, to actually seize control of the moon and hold against Corporate Security forces for a full three years. This resulted in mild food shortages throughout the outer solar system, and even Luna had to cease shipments of a few items; Earth based farms managed to fill most gaps, but the incident was a reminder of how much The Corporation depended on its outer system facilities. The Corporation attempted negotiation at first, eager to avoid any damage to the critical and very costly facilities. When negotiation failed The Corporation began a secret program to develop a resource to retake the moon, but in the meantime also imposed a blockade. Ganymede was primarily an agricultural colony, however, and also retained an adequate industrial base; this meant that the impact of the blockade was fairly limited. The moon was finally retaken in 2115 when a newly built combat assault spaceship, the first fully military ship ever built for space combat, fired a single shot from a mass driver and collapsed a disused cavern complex; only a few hundred were killed but the inhabitants of the moon recognized the threat and surrendered almost immediately.
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