Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 767-769

Someone is stealing our time, our time alive,

and all our lives are marked by that theft.
They have told us that time is money
 and since money can be owned you can possess a man or a woman's time
and spend the human beings who live in that time
like a coin or a dollar. In some trucks
we are ordered to install
a recording tachometer, so that the owners
can constantly check
on the driver: the device tells how the driver shifts,
when he stops the vehicle, how fast he was driving
at any time. So even the man alone on the highway
has the foreman watching - he remains in the factory,
like the man or woman in the bar after supper
with one eye on the clock because even off work
somebody owns your time.
Tom Wayman

Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. … But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs — about 6 million in total — disappeared.”

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Average Is Over
 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
 Published: January 24, 2012

Men [sic] are as mature

As the forces of production
Of their times allow them to be.
T.W. Adorno

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 764-766

Between 70 and 80 percent of Americans report rudeness and incivility at work, Herschcovis told LiveScience. Fewer are systematically bullied, she said, but the best estimate puts the number at about 41 percent of American workers having been psychologically harassed at work at some point.
Your bullying boss may be slowly killing you

Resignation

by Catherine Shaw

This, superiors,

is to offer you

my resignation.

Too many years have passed

without recompense

and without sentience

too many days,

each one vacant

as the bare vestibule

I pass through

day after hollow day

from or to

the circle of sorry labor

I inhabit,

my subordination.

Automaton, I

go about my work

in mindless quietude,

totting up numbers,

filling out forms,

stacking and stapling-

so efficient!-

but watching every minute

on your grey clock

loiter and drag

on its tired trail

to the tired end of day.

And what of

those dear others

who share my circle

and whose faces match

my own encrypted face?

They are not dear.

Away from here,

they live lives

I can't imagine

in small and singular worlds

that have no use for me.

if there's friendship here,

it's made of shallow stuff,

of pleasantries,

enforced equivalence:

the accident of company!

I soon learned

to be on guard against

such amity,

to cultivate

the ingrown point-of-view,

pruning away

those shoots of anger

and intelligence

that would expose to me

the baseness

of your hierarchy.

It's just as well.

I may be dwarfed

but how much worse

to flare up in my insignificance

and be unheard

and change nothing

and destroy only me.

"I will seek work elsewhere!"

That has been my quest:

a foolish enterprise,

a grail of styrofoam at best.

Wherever I go,

I find your duplicate:

vestibule, paperwork,

watched clocks

and grey-eyed vacancy

What's the good of going?

I'm too weary now

to take my future in my hands

and forge another way.

This, superiors,

is to offer you my resignation.

I'll stay.

The main problem: There just aren’t enough jobs to go around.

Lose a job, prepare for a really long job search
LIFEINC.

You Are a Socialist

Roy Zimmerman

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 761-763

VEST

X
When a supervisor says No

you did that wrong

despite my just

-ifications

you shouldn't have done it

I feel fastening around my ribs

          a vest

          of rage

    whose tight clasp

restricts my chest, weights down

each breath

When did I cast

my ballot for this power

over my time, this vise

diminishing me

Outmoded

as a dunce cap

still in use

Tom Wayman

An Associated Press report… on census data found that “a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.”

Inconvenient Income Inequality
By CHARLES M. BLOW
New York Times
Published: December 16, 2011

`

The current presidential race has demonstrated that a million dollars is nothing — nothing — these days. Nothing!

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times
Published: January 13, 2012

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 758-760

The United States faces a protracted unemployment crisis: 6.3 million fewer Americans have jobs than was true at the end of 2007. And yet the country's economic output is higher today than it was before the financial crisis.
…
even a manufacturing revival is not likely to mean a great many new jobs on balance. Likewise, anyone whose hopes are pinned on "green jobs" may be disappointed. Though jobs will be created in the switch to cleaner energy sources, jobs tied to traditional energy will be lost in the same process.
"Tectonic Shifts" in Employment
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012
BY DAVID TALBOT
technology review MIT

(emphasis JS)

Unemployment in the eurozone stayed at a record high in November as the impact of the sovereign debt crisis rumbled on, according to official figures.
x

The jobless rate in the 17 nations that use the euro was 10.3% in November for the second month in a row, according to the Eurostat statistics agency.
x

There were 16.3 million people in the bloc out of work.

x

At the same time, an index of consumer confidence fell to a two-year low in December, the European Commission said.

Eurozone unemployment stays at record high
6 January 2012
BBC NEWS BUSINESS

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

x

xThis was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.

x

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

x

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
Regrets of the Dying
(emphasis JS)

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 755-757

For corporate interests in the United States, the wageless recovery is excellent news, of course. They’re spending less on labor at the same time they get to pick and choose between highly qualified job applicants, thanks to the huge numbers of unemployed people seeking work in a highly competitive market. Soft market conditions also make it easier to cut benefits, suppress unions, and exploit workers, because the ones who speak up can be easily exchanged for those who won’t.
Frozen Out: Is Congress About to Slash Heating Assistance Funds Just as Temperatures Plummet?
s. e. smith
AlterNet

The pipeline, known as Keystone XL, would be built by a Canadian company to carry heavy crude oil 1,700 miles from the tar sands in northern Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast.
…
…the only independent study, conducted by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, concludes that it may generate no more than 50 permanent jobs when the work is done.
Keystone Claptrap
Editorial
New York Times
Published: December 12, 2011

The logic of “production” goes like this:

If the world requires a certain amount of something, then there are two choices:

1. some number of people work ALL of the time to produce the desired amount, or
2. some larger number of people work PART of the time to produce the desired amount.

Ah, but,
the logic of “consumption” is quite different, and goes like this:

1. we need to employ people all the time,
2. such employment produces a surplus,
3. people need to be convinced to purchase the surplus through marketing and advertising,
4. the surplus has to be quickly converted to waste, so people will purchase again,
5. this is accomplished by denying basic needs to everyone so that they have to work in order to consume.

The first story is a recipe for a civilization that spends some of its time meeting its obligations to society and the rest of its time in pursuit of leisure and other interests and projects. The second story is a recipe for a civilization with waste, pollution, and mass slavery.
Unemployment Is The Cure
Paul Hartzog
21st September 2011