Workers’ Memorial Day poster Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living. – Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The so-called news will be filled with stories about eager shoppers buying whatever junk is in the big box retailers. I am not buying any of it. The only thing I really need is gas and perhaps a check up on the tires before I go out of town on Sunday. But I can do that tomorrow. I have been horrified reading about the way labor has been completely marginalized in stores. Software and just in time scheduling have allowed management to control workers’ lives to the point where people can’t earn decent wages or work second jobs because they’re always expected to be available. Like prostitutes, except for less money. I remember considering applying for a job to pick up some extra cash and finding that I couldn’t limit my hours to one specific shift, for example nights. So I did not complete the application.
Right across the street from me is a house with a poster in solidarity with Wisconsin public workers, who were stripped of most of their collective bargaining rights by our infamous governor. However that law has been declared unconstitutional and workers are bargaining once more. The governor is infamous for his remarks about divide and conquer referring to the way he would turn private workers against public workers and then go ahead and screw private workers.
The workers in the stores may not know up to the last minute whether they are supposed to work. But who would devise a system like that? Certainly not anyone with an ounce of humanity. Not someone who deals with child care or other family issues. But someone who sees workers as widgets to be moved from here to there I need three widgets for 5 .3 hours in that department for this afternoon. I have noticed how few workers there are in the stores, too. All the while the stores report record profits. The stores open more and more locations for ever expanding profits not for us but some nameless investors.
The same prognosticators who were completely wrong about our just completed elections are already speculating about 2016. We don’t get a few days or weeks of actual governing. It’s like we’re being treated like rats on a treadmill. So if you control our economic and political lives, aren’t there ways in which we can resist, stop cooperating, not remain slaves? Yes, indeed, there are. Exercising those brains, such wonderful items. Think for a moment. What on earth could be so important that you need to trample over your neighbors at 2AM? Reporter, is it really news and shouldn’t you be home with your families instead of at the mall encouraging commercialism? For once, I’d like to see someone say, look, we’ve done that story too often, I’m not doing it any more.Today is enjoy time with friends and family not wasting it on junk day.Give the workers a break.
