Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1500-1502

a 27-year-old salesman for Abbott Laboratories’ operations in India — in fact, one of the American health care company’s top performers there — rode his motorcycle to a remote railroad track and jumped in front of a train.

In his pocket, a note in blue ink, handwritten in a mix of Hindi and English, said, “I’m going to commit suicide because I can’t meet my company’s sales targets and my company is pressuring me.”

Ashish Awasthi’s death last month resonated across India and through the halls of the health care giant. More than 250 fellow Abbott drug representatives in India walked off the job for a day, protesting what some called the company’s overly aggressive sales policies.

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Dhirendra Yadav, 26, a former sales agent in central India in the neurology division, said he resigned in December 2013 under what he called “immense pressure to conduct business in unethical ways.” He said his former manager — who later became the manager of Mr. Awasthi, the man who committed suicide — insisted that he use his own money to buy medicines costing nearly 15,000 rupees, or about $220, to help his group meet a sales target. That would be more than half of a typical representative’s monthly pay.

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India’s economy — despite its 7.6 percent growth — still produces far too few jobs for the one million people who enter the work force each month.
Driven to Suicide by an ‘Inhuman and Unnatural’ Pressure to Sell
By GEETA ANAND and FREDERIK JOELVING
New York Times
AUG. 11, 2016
 [emphasis JS] 

 
WASHINGTON — The United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth, also abides the deepest poverty of any developed nation, but you would not know it by listening to Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump, the major parties’ presidential nominees.
The Millions of Americans Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Barely
Mention: The Poor
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
New York Times
AUG. 11, 2016
 [emphasis JS]

 

 

I’m actually not worried about it because it’s going to ultimately be very easy and require a very small fraction of our output to support all the material needs of the human race.
Ray Kurzweil