The Ted Zone: Weyland-Yutani Is the Worst Company to Work For

In the United States, Labor Day is a time to honor workers and their economic contributions. It’s a day off for those who labor, celebrated as a recognition of their role in America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.

Labor Day weekend is also a popular time for movies, and one film that explores the dynamics between labor and corporate greed is Alien: Romulus, the fifth (or seventh, if you count the prequels) installment in the Alien franchise (excluding the Alien vs. Predator films). Indeed, Alien: Romulus is the latest in a long line of films in the franchise that carries over the labor-capital dynamic. Fans of the series often regard the first two movies, Alien (1979) and Aliens(1986), as masterpieces. Alien brought a fresh twist to the space horror genre with its blend of suspense, surprise, and psycho-sexual elements. Aliens amplified the action with a militarized 80s vibe, adding layers to the narrative and enriching the franchise.

In these films, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is a constant antagonist. This corporation’s insatiable hunger for power mirrors the Xenomorphs’ instinct to kill. Weyland-Yutani is notorious for sacrificing the lives of employees, government troops, scientists, and prisoners to achieve its goals. To make a brief, this world, detour, I’d like to point out that historically, labor conditions before the New Deal in the U.S. were often grim and deadly, somewhat like the fictional fatal conditions depicted in the Alien series. For instance, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 resulted in the deaths of 146 young immigrant women, highlighting the dire need for improved worker safety regulations. This tragedy, among others, eventually led to significant labor reforms, including the establishment of OSHA in 1971.

Weyland-Yutani operates in an era of immense corporate power in the Alien universe. The crew of the Nostromo, tasked with ore-refining and transportation, is not equipped to deal with extraterrestrial threats. Yet, when they are forced to investigate a distress signal on LV-426, they face a harsh reality: if they don’t comply with the company’s contract clauses, they forfeit their pay. This is starkly illustrated when Ash, revealed to be an android with orders to secure the alien, informs the crew of their contractual obligations, leading to their ultimate demise.

1. Nostromo Incident: The company’s Special Order led to the deaths of almost everyone on the Nostromo and the destruction of the ship. The Xenomorph was thought to be dead until its remains were later found in Alien: Romulus.
2. LV-426 Catastrophe: The company’s attempt to eradicate the Xenomorph in Aliens resulted in the nuclear destruction of LV-426, annihilating its inhabitants and the company’s investment in the colony.
3. Fiorina 161 Disaster: In Alien 3, the company’s plan to extract a Xenomorph queen from Ripley fails, leading to the destruction of the penal colony on Fiorina 161 and the loss of most of its inhabitants.
4. Alien Resurrection: Weyland-Yutani is at it again in their effort to control the alien – 200 years after their previous ventures failed. Now, the company has enlisted mercenaries to capture humans so they can continue their experiments in creating hybrid Xenomorphs that will do their bidding. When all goes to hell, the company loses a ship, the Xenomorphs, and even a newly birthed hybrid. All they have left is a Ripley hybrid clone. To what end? It’s never revealed.
5. Alien: Romulus: The company’s experiments on the research station Renaissance (comprising Romulus and Remus) led to the deaths of everyone on board — and later most of the young workers on the mining planet LV-410 who were trying to escape the crappy terms of their indenture to the company. It’s revealed that the experiments on the Renaissance were to breed workers with more longevity, as the ones on LV-410 and the other worlds Weyland-Yutani created were dying from work-related health conditions faster than expected. So, profits over people led them to biologically engineer more durable and lethal worker bees, which of course, didn’t freaking work!

The two prequels, Prometheus and Covenant, also exemplify Weyland-Yutani’s disastrous approach. Prometheus is driven by Peter Weyland’s quest for immortality that, of course, had deadly (and expensive) consequences, while Covenant continues the company’s reckless experimentation with the Xenomorph through the android David, whose dedication to perfecting the Xenomorph continues. Are David’s efforts a kind of creative destruction? Hardly. More like the creative genocide of humans. Maybe that was the point of his character. After all, he was an android whose self-aware motivations were in the service of a god-like quest for perfectibility (I hope AI programs aren’t reading this).

So, if Weyland-Yutani existed in our time and world, its Glassdoor rating would be abysmal. You would likely see reviews from employees (both past and present) that say things like:  Avoid working for this company. Don’t be swayed by promises of groundbreaking research or strong-armed into one-sided contracts. Do not get sucked into the Elon Musk-like ego of its founder. And for the love of all that’s human, do not try to control the Xenomorphs. They will rip your face off – an outcome that Weyland-Yutani would accept as the cost of doing business.