Working Class

Playing the Working Class in Hegemony: Population and Prosperity, Assign Workers and Trade Unions, Buy Goods and Services, Strike, Demonstration, the Free Actions, income tax and end scoring.

Goal

You lead the workers. Your Workers take jobs in other classes’ Companies and are paid Wages (your Income); you spend that money first on Food, then on Health, Education and Luxury to raise your people’s Prosperity — your main source of points. You own no Companies (except Cooperative Farms from cards).

Your favourite Policies are in section A (socialist): free Health and Education, a high minimum wage, high taxes on capital.

Population and Prosperity

The Population track counts your Workers (10 at the start). The number under it is your Population (3 at the start): how much you must spend to use a resource, how much you must eat, and the most you may buy from one source in one action.

Prosperity (0–10) rises by 1 each time you Use Healthcare, Education or Luxury, and you then score the new Prosperity value in . It drops 1 step each Preparation Phase, but you never lose points for that. At the top of the track you keep scoring 10 for every further step.

Preparation Phase

1. Pay 5 interest per Loan.
2. Prosperity −1 (not below 0).
3. Draw 5 Action cards (back up to 7).
4. New Workers: add 2 gray Workers to Unemployed Workers. Then by Immigration: 7B draw 1 Immigration card, 7C draw 2, and add the Working Class Worker shown on each. Move your Population marker up 2–4.

Basic Actions

Discard a card to take one of these:

Propose Bill

See Bills and Elections.

Assign Workers

Move up to 3 of your Workers — unemployed ones or uncommitted ones already working — into available slots (see Workers and Companies). Fill a whole Company or nothing; assigned Workers are committed until they produce.

Trade Unions

You may assign a skilled Worker to the Trade Union of its industry on your board, as part of Assign Workers, if at least 4 other Workers of yours work in Companies of that industry (skilled or not; Cooperative Farms count for Agriculture). A Union leader is always committed and earns no Wage. Each Union gives 1 Influence every Production Phase and 2 every Scoring Phase. If you drop below 4 Workers in that industry, the leader goes to Unemployed Workers at once.

Buy Goods and Services

Buy one kind of resource from up to 2 sources, at most your Population from each (sources and prices). Put it in Goods & Services.

Strike

Put a Strike token on up to 2 Companies where your Workers work — not on committed Workers, not on Companies paying L3, and on Public Companies only when a player runs the State (4 players). One token per Company.

At the start of the Production Phase, tokens on Companies now paying L3 are discarded. Every operational Company still on strike neither produces nor pays this round, and you gain 1 Influence for it. In a Middle Class Company with your employee, only your employee’s bonus production is lost. A struck Company cannot produce by card effects either; if it loses its Workers, the token goes.

Demonstration

Only if your unemployed Workers outnumber the open slots for your class by at least 2. Put the Demonstration token in Unemployed Workers. It is discarded with no effect if someone builds a new Company, assigns your Workers to it and the condition is no longer met — all three. If it is still there at the Production Phase: discard it, gain 1 Influence, and the other classes lose, in total, equal to your unemployed Workers plus your Trade Unions; you split the loss, but no class can lose more than its empty Company spaces on the board (face-down Public Companies count as empty for the State).

Apply Political Pressure

Add 3 of your Voting cubes to the bag.

Free Actions

One per turn, before or after the Main Action.

Use Healthcare, Use Education, Use Luxury

Spend resources from your Goods & Services area equal to your Population, then gain 1 Prosperity (and score the new value):

• Use Healthcare — also +2 and a new gray Worker in Unemployed Workers (Population +1).
• Use Education — also upgrade one of your Workers anywhere (even committed; it stays committed) into a skilled Worker of your choice. You may also retrain a skilled Worker into another industry if it is not in a skilled slot.
• Use Luxury — Prosperity only.

Swap Workers

Swap an employed skilled Worker sitting in an unskilled slot with a Worker from Unemployed Workers, as often as you like. If the first one was committed, the newcomer is committed.

Receive Benefits

(4 players) Take what the State has placed in your State Benefits area; Voting cubes go straight into the bag. The State gains 1 .

Pay Off Loan

Pay 50 and discard a Loan.

Production Phase

1. Produce: you receive the Wages for your Workers; Cooperative Farms make 2 each; each Trade Union gives 1 Influence. Your committed Workers stand up.
2. Cover Needs: Food equal to your Population — use your own first, buy the rest; if you cannot pay, take a Loan.
3. Pay Taxes: Income Tax per Population, from Labor Market (2) and Taxation (3):

Scoring Phase

2 per Trade Union.

Game End

• Socialist Policies (1–5 in section A): 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 of them score 1 / 4 / 8 / 12 / 18 .
• 1 per 10 left, at most 15.
• Unpaid Loans cost points.