I know it's a bit early in the day for me to be blogging. It isn't yet three in the afternoon and the weather is beautiful and I've already been out for a hike in the woods so I might as well do the deed now before I have a chance to get tired and just send off another piece of my novel The Thirteen Crucifixions which I'm glad to be serializing on this blog for the (hopefully) enjoyment of you my dear readers. That said I don't want to get lazy. One of the functions of this blog is to share and promulgate ideas and get all of you thinking and maybe even doing or being something to become the change that you want to see in this world. No violent revolutions please, by the way, as they usually end up ruining everybody's day.
So, here's what I'm thinking of today. How to socialize, or equalize the workplace. This matter has caused me quite a bit of thought over the years, especially given some of my own problems and challenges in the work place, with finding a job, keeping a job, and with being in work that pays decently and that I also find meaningful and does not somehow result in destroying my soul.
I suppose that many of you (at least among my paltry sampling of readers here at home in Canada) have already heard about McDonald's heart ache de jour. Somewhere in my dear country they have just held a job fair with a table covered with application forms and almost no takers. They have had to do this since our federal government has sharply curtailed the Temporary Foreign Workers Program so that more Canadian citizens will be hired (I almost typed in the word "tired", for my daily Freudian slip), and I have to admit that this is one of the first and likely only things this government has done that I actually agree with (aside from Bill C-36 which criminalizes the soliciting of prostitutes but not the girls-or boys-themselves, or the Nordic Model, as it is often called). Shit food service chains such as McDimble's (as a friend often called them), Wendy's, Tim Horton's, Burger King, etc. have often claimed that TFW's are the only reliable employees they can get since regular Canadians are lazy and don't want to work, or they don't want to work at shit jobs that pay minimum wage, have no redemptive social value, provide no job security, no benefits and no future.
They've done very well with TFW's, who are easily exploited, are always under threat of deportation, and are so desperate to work their way into Canada and enjoy the many privileges on tap here that they will happily suffer whatever indignities and will stoop to whatever ass-kissing it will take to help them get there. They are often housed by their employer or they think nothing of bunking up, four, five or even six sharing a one bedroom apartment so that they can afford the ridiculously high rents here and still have money to send home to their starving loved ones and/or put aside for their kids' university education.
Now, I suppose that if us local folks were willing to make these kinds of sacrifices that we would also do okay. But we have what some might call a sense of entitlement. I would rather think of it as a sense of fair treatment. No adults should willingly have to accept living in substandard conditions in order to get by. None of us want this for ourselves and we know full well that if we are going to do okay then we are going to need at least a functioning bachelor apartment for one tenant only or, at the very worst, our own bedroom in a decently maintained communal house with civil, well-mannered and toilet trained housemates. And I'm just talking here about single adults or couples without children (whom should be upgraded to a one bedroom unit, methinks)
The conventional wisdom is of course that one has to work to live. This is a survivalist and selfish mentality that makes it impossible for real community to develop. It is also the first commandment of capitalism. It is my view that toiling in difficult, often unsafe and demeaning work for minimum wage does very little to build character and much to destroy it. The workplace and the job market have got to be transformed from top to bottom. Chains such as McDonald's and their ilk, famous for promoting unhealthy fattening food and paid slave labour should be allowed to die a natural death. Our sense of work and our work ethic need badly to be radically changed.
As much as I loathe a lot of what Che Guevara did in the Cuban Revolution and in other places (and throughout this blog you are going to find not one flattering word about el tio Ernesto) he did get one thing right: work is a collective act and a collective responsibility. It should not be about personal gain, nor enslavement for pay, nor bartering one's soul for businesses whose sole value is the dollar and have no real sense of public accountability. On the other hand, none of these changes are going to happen overnight and if we do not wish to relive the horrors of Stalinist Russia or North Korea or the bumbling idiocy of Cuba under the brothers Castro then we should equally avoid revolution. Change is going to have to occur gradually, especially if it is going to take root and become lasting change.
First of all the issue of pay has to be addressed. No one should have to work for a slave wage. Social contract has got to be returned to the work place. Any business or company that does not pay a living wage to their employees has no right to exist. The workplace also needs to be restructured. Hierarchy, whether in the workplace or in rental housing (landlords) or in the church, is a holdout from feudalism and has no place in egalitarian society. At work management needs to be in the hands of the workers. Yes, this sounds communist but get over it. Work should be redistributed, according to talent and fairness. Instead of contracting out cleaning services to underpaid workers, said workers need to be absorbed into the companies and according to their skill level and abilities and interests trained or re-trained to be contributing members of the company on all levels and in all functions. For example in a central branch library, a librarian at management level would also spend one or two hours a day cleaning floors or toilets and the cleaners would be spending one or two hours a day assisting at library services. And so on.
I am not going to say here that everyone should be paid the same salary, though I think there should be a federally legislated maximum wage and enough legislation and moral consensus in place to prevent CEO's and top executives from reaping unearned bonuses on top of inflated salaries. I am calling here for an economic system where no one, regardless of their position, be they bank CEO's or corporation heads or doctor's, lawyers, dentists, or teachers, can earn more than eighty-five thousand dollars a year. Similarly, we need equally binding and strong legislation guaranteeing that no one, not even a waiter, barista, mental health peer supporter or street cleaner should have to get by on less than forty thousand a year.
It's win-win. Everyone earns a decent salary, everyone has meaningful work, no one is being abused or exploited and because everyone after taxes still has money in their pockets the economy is still going to thrive. It is time to get rid of greed.
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