We must look with amazement and utter awe at the workers who continue to operate in radioactively dangerous environments in Japan to bring the unstable nuclear reactors under control, built by GE, Toshiba & Hitachi, while managers, administrators and corporate kings look for new ways to cover their backs and distort information (to avoid responsibility). Let us remember what varied workers do, go through, risk and die for – to do their job, to protect the innocent and save others around the world!
These brave men and women, who are exploited themselves in many ways, are the face of “labor”!
Today American Liberals, Progressives, labor rights' activists, Socialists and Marxists remember, with pain and horror, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history, that killed more than 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the workers, mostly young immigrant women, leaped to their death when they tried to escape after they found the emergency exits locked. (Watch Democracy Now's excellent coverage, March 25, 2011, of this fire and the labor law changes that followed).
How many fires in factories and warehouses have we heard about around the world where workers were thrust into small rooms, with little or no ventilation, no bathrooms, no windows, no emergency exits...not even a bucket of water or sand to put out a spark? Plenty!
Many workers, including children, work in appalling and dangerous conditions around the world - even today. They toil for hours under poor lighting, poor air circulation, with poorly constructed desks and chairs, using obsolete or outdated technology that is hard and painful to operate and without proper safety gears or updated protections. Many workers end up with bad eyes, bad lungs, bad posture, spinal problems, serious or severe disabilities, cancer and other chronic health problems because of the job they do. Many actually die at work, and because of work.
If we count the mental health problems due to bullying, brutish, dehumanizing, demanding, demeaning, dismissive, cruel, crude, humiliating, hurtful, insensitive, isolating and stressful work environments, the list of job related problems would increase a thousand fold - even for white collar workers.
A faculty, who underwent treatment for depression, once said to me cynically, "I guess we cannot change the work environment that wants more and more from us: more research, more publications, more teaching, more student load to carry, more administrative work, more community work, more grant writing, more regulations to follow, more niceness...and all under less pay, less sleep, less collegiality, less peer support, less recognition...with more sexism, racism, ethnocentrism....It never stops. I guess the system will never change...so we take tablets to cope better or change ourselves!"
If this is what teachers, faculty and white collar workers have to go through, imagine our garbage collectors, road workers, house cleaners, etc.?
In countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan lower status of workers, and their ill treatment, is sustained by centuries of feudalism, classicism, casteism, sexism and colonialism. Many white collar workers in these countries, including in computer industries, have bought into corporate culture and psychology for their own “middle class” lifestyles. Many have colluded with the upper classes and foreign companies that treat their land, resources and labor as exploitable disposable human waste.
In countries like the United States, where reports on disasters and deaths that occur in other countries are treated mostly as “media voyeurism” and as “mere information for its own self-survival”, there has been both stagnation of workers' rights and decline in labor protests – with the exception of few areas (like the mass protests in Madison, Wisconsin).
Many American middle class workers, blue or white collar, became too comfortable with their incomes, benefits, middle class lifestyles and community networks that they forgot to be vigilant to how their rights were being slowly eroded – even as they moved up the economic ladder. Many also, unfortunately, colluded with the big corporate boys (from car manufacturers to currency manipulators) to allow for policies and actions that were unkind to third world workers, sabotaged domestic labor laws and manipulated political systems to protect or sustain the status quo.
I had mentioned more than a decade ago that as “capital gets globalized” and the “rich get multinational”, with leadership that does not connect or commit to any community or issues other than its narrow economic interests and wealth accumulation, labor has been locally trapped or/and internationally exploited.
Workers are either stuck in their environments, and are unable to move for better jobs, better pay, better respect, better inclusion and better mobility, or they are forced to move for survival - while they continue to remain second class citizens or servile subordinates globally.
Work has many forms, faces and types. In many ways everyone who has to work for “survival”, and relies on their earned income, small savings and careful budgeting to manage and cope economically (including teachers and faculty), are “workers” and are part of the “working class”. We work, or are forced to work, to survive and struggle with all the psychological anxiety, challenges and stress of trying to manage “basic economic demands, obligations and requirements”.
Rich people, even many millionaires, who complain about “not having enough” so they can send their kids to expensive private schools, shop frequently at designer stores, go on expensive vacations and celebrate in exotic places, do not count! Whining by the rich or the upper classes over their victimization or economic struggles do not indicate “struggle for survival” (working or middle class).
If you have to work to pay your rent, food expenses, electricity, etc. you are working class. If you do not have more than six months of savings to pay your basic expenses (as you look for a job or consider a career change) you are working class. If you have to forgo visiting your own family for funerals or weddings because you cannot afford the travel and accommodation then you are working class. If you have to sell your family jewelry, your car or borrow money to pay for an emergency (like an accident, an illness or arrange a funeral) then you are part of a struggling working class. If you live in a rented accommodation, and cannot afford a house (even if you have worked for twenty years), you are poor or working class.
More than ninety percent of the world is working class! The five percent that is not owns eighty percent of the global wealth. More than eighty percent of the wealthy live or are from Western countries.
Exploitation and abuse of labor not only leads to labor resentment, incompetency, sloppiness and shoddiness (can you blame them?), it also leads to, as Alex Kerr argues in Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan (2001), loss of intelligent knowledge, including important technical know-how, which can lead to mismanagement of very dangerous disasters - like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor fiasco.
Corporations operate like bureaucracies...sometimes worse than Government bureaucracies. Corporations have often avoided responsibilities – even during times of danger and disaster caused by their neglect or actions. They point fingers at other corporations, at the press, at the public and at Governments (that they have tried to buy and control). They cover-up their oversights, errors, neglect and crimes.
In many instances Corporations lie, commit criminal violations and cover-up better than Governments: because they have more money, they are private and citizens' groups watch Governments more carefully and more often than Corporations. Example: American Libertarians and Tea Party activists have scrutinized Government policies and actions, including excessive Executive Power, better than many Corporate policies and actions.
Labor Unions and Workers' Rights have to expand beyond old manufacturing industries - as manufacturing itself has changed. Manufacturing has gotten mechanized, technically advanced and globalized. But labor rights and laws have not gotten more consistent, advanced and globalized. They remain local, they remain trapped in early 19th century Western laws and they are confined to jobs that are primarily industrial, physical and assembly-line focused.
We need reformed labor laws that can be pursued and implemented by new labor institutions, created by a global labor movement, that is more expansive, inclusive and can take actions against corporate exploitation, abuse, neglect, lies and criminality wherever it occurs.
How many nuclear reactor catastrophes - that we now know were due to faults, defects and serious problems, including concerns about a possible tsunami effect, that were covered-up - do we have to contend with before we hold corporations accountable? How many workers must die, get injured or get put in harm's way for corporate greed and neglect?
How many workers: from Bangladesh to Bulgaria, from China to Chile, from England to El Salvador, from Nepal to Nigeria, from India to Ireland, from Pakistan to Portugal, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, from the United States to Uganda...must jump from a burning building, to their death, because they chose to work...and did so to merely survive?
As my gracious grandmother, Visalakshi, often mourned when listening to the news on human tragedies, “Oh my goodness, how much ugly karma must we accumulate for every human stupidity, greed and evil? When will human beings learn? It takes so little to be good and human, but so much more to be inhuman. Why do so many choose the latter?”
My grandmother passed away more than twenty years ago, and all I can say to her spirit after all these years is, “Patti, wish I knew! After all my education, books, travel and experience all I can admit to is, 'Human ignorance, stupidity, selfishness, cruelty and evil continues to baffle me!' Any advice from the other side?"
Lets work better and together for a global labor movement and institutions that protect, secure and serve labor...as they serve us!
These brave men and women, who are exploited themselves in many ways, are the face of “labor”!
Today American Liberals, Progressives, labor rights' activists, Socialists and Marxists remember, with pain and horror, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history, that killed more than 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the workers, mostly young immigrant women, leaped to their death when they tried to escape after they found the emergency exits locked. (Watch Democracy Now's excellent coverage, March 25, 2011, of this fire and the labor law changes that followed).
How many fires in factories and warehouses have we heard about around the world where workers were thrust into small rooms, with little or no ventilation, no bathrooms, no windows, no emergency exits...not even a bucket of water or sand to put out a spark? Plenty!
Many workers, including children, work in appalling and dangerous conditions around the world - even today. They toil for hours under poor lighting, poor air circulation, with poorly constructed desks and chairs, using obsolete or outdated technology that is hard and painful to operate and without proper safety gears or updated protections. Many workers end up with bad eyes, bad lungs, bad posture, spinal problems, serious or severe disabilities, cancer and other chronic health problems because of the job they do. Many actually die at work, and because of work.
If we count the mental health problems due to bullying, brutish, dehumanizing, demanding, demeaning, dismissive, cruel, crude, humiliating, hurtful, insensitive, isolating and stressful work environments, the list of job related problems would increase a thousand fold - even for white collar workers.
A faculty, who underwent treatment for depression, once said to me cynically, "I guess we cannot change the work environment that wants more and more from us: more research, more publications, more teaching, more student load to carry, more administrative work, more community work, more grant writing, more regulations to follow, more niceness...and all under less pay, less sleep, less collegiality, less peer support, less recognition...with more sexism, racism, ethnocentrism....It never stops. I guess the system will never change...so we take tablets to cope better or change ourselves!"
If this is what teachers, faculty and white collar workers have to go through, imagine our garbage collectors, road workers, house cleaners, etc.?
In countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan lower status of workers, and their ill treatment, is sustained by centuries of feudalism, classicism, casteism, sexism and colonialism. Many white collar workers in these countries, including in computer industries, have bought into corporate culture and psychology for their own “middle class” lifestyles. Many have colluded with the upper classes and foreign companies that treat their land, resources and labor as exploitable disposable human waste.
In countries like the United States, where reports on disasters and deaths that occur in other countries are treated mostly as “media voyeurism” and as “mere information for its own self-survival”, there has been both stagnation of workers' rights and decline in labor protests – with the exception of few areas (like the mass protests in Madison, Wisconsin).
Many American middle class workers, blue or white collar, became too comfortable with their incomes, benefits, middle class lifestyles and community networks that they forgot to be vigilant to how their rights were being slowly eroded – even as they moved up the economic ladder. Many also, unfortunately, colluded with the big corporate boys (from car manufacturers to currency manipulators) to allow for policies and actions that were unkind to third world workers, sabotaged domestic labor laws and manipulated political systems to protect or sustain the status quo.
I had mentioned more than a decade ago that as “capital gets globalized” and the “rich get multinational”, with leadership that does not connect or commit to any community or issues other than its narrow economic interests and wealth accumulation, labor has been locally trapped or/and internationally exploited.
Workers are either stuck in their environments, and are unable to move for better jobs, better pay, better respect, better inclusion and better mobility, or they are forced to move for survival - while they continue to remain second class citizens or servile subordinates globally.
Work has many forms, faces and types. In many ways everyone who has to work for “survival”, and relies on their earned income, small savings and careful budgeting to manage and cope economically (including teachers and faculty), are “workers” and are part of the “working class”. We work, or are forced to work, to survive and struggle with all the psychological anxiety, challenges and stress of trying to manage “basic economic demands, obligations and requirements”.
Rich people, even many millionaires, who complain about “not having enough” so they can send their kids to expensive private schools, shop frequently at designer stores, go on expensive vacations and celebrate in exotic places, do not count! Whining by the rich or the upper classes over their victimization or economic struggles do not indicate “struggle for survival” (working or middle class).
If you have to work to pay your rent, food expenses, electricity, etc. you are working class. If you do not have more than six months of savings to pay your basic expenses (as you look for a job or consider a career change) you are working class. If you have to forgo visiting your own family for funerals or weddings because you cannot afford the travel and accommodation then you are working class. If you have to sell your family jewelry, your car or borrow money to pay for an emergency (like an accident, an illness or arrange a funeral) then you are part of a struggling working class. If you live in a rented accommodation, and cannot afford a house (even if you have worked for twenty years), you are poor or working class.
More than ninety percent of the world is working class! The five percent that is not owns eighty percent of the global wealth. More than eighty percent of the wealthy live or are from Western countries.
Exploitation and abuse of labor not only leads to labor resentment, incompetency, sloppiness and shoddiness (can you blame them?), it also leads to, as Alex Kerr argues in Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan (2001), loss of intelligent knowledge, including important technical know-how, which can lead to mismanagement of very dangerous disasters - like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor fiasco.
Corporations operate like bureaucracies...sometimes worse than Government bureaucracies. Corporations have often avoided responsibilities – even during times of danger and disaster caused by their neglect or actions. They point fingers at other corporations, at the press, at the public and at Governments (that they have tried to buy and control). They cover-up their oversights, errors, neglect and crimes.
In many instances Corporations lie, commit criminal violations and cover-up better than Governments: because they have more money, they are private and citizens' groups watch Governments more carefully and more often than Corporations. Example: American Libertarians and Tea Party activists have scrutinized Government policies and actions, including excessive Executive Power, better than many Corporate policies and actions.
Labor Unions and Workers' Rights have to expand beyond old manufacturing industries - as manufacturing itself has changed. Manufacturing has gotten mechanized, technically advanced and globalized. But labor rights and laws have not gotten more consistent, advanced and globalized. They remain local, they remain trapped in early 19th century Western laws and they are confined to jobs that are primarily industrial, physical and assembly-line focused.
We need reformed labor laws that can be pursued and implemented by new labor institutions, created by a global labor movement, that is more expansive, inclusive and can take actions against corporate exploitation, abuse, neglect, lies and criminality wherever it occurs.
How many nuclear reactor catastrophes - that we now know were due to faults, defects and serious problems, including concerns about a possible tsunami effect, that were covered-up - do we have to contend with before we hold corporations accountable? How many workers must die, get injured or get put in harm's way for corporate greed and neglect?
How many workers: from Bangladesh to Bulgaria, from China to Chile, from England to El Salvador, from Nepal to Nigeria, from India to Ireland, from Pakistan to Portugal, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, from the United States to Uganda...must jump from a burning building, to their death, because they chose to work...and did so to merely survive?
As my gracious grandmother, Visalakshi, often mourned when listening to the news on human tragedies, “Oh my goodness, how much ugly karma must we accumulate for every human stupidity, greed and evil? When will human beings learn? It takes so little to be good and human, but so much more to be inhuman. Why do so many choose the latter?”
My grandmother passed away more than twenty years ago, and all I can say to her spirit after all these years is, “Patti, wish I knew! After all my education, books, travel and experience all I can admit to is, 'Human ignorance, stupidity, selfishness, cruelty and evil continues to baffle me!' Any advice from the other side?"
Lets work better and together for a global labor movement and institutions that protect, secure and serve labor...as they serve us!
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