The Walking Dead 15

One of the requirements of citizenship in Zombie Nation involves existing as a wage slave. This has nothing to do with finding one's dignity in work, and everything to do with losing one's dignity in meaningless, soul-destroying labour, such as does nothing to really contribute to the general wellbeing of the community, and certainly nothing for the worker, apart from providing barely enough income for keeping your sorry ass alive for yet another day. And of course, this is never really mentioned, but it is strongly implied that the whole purpose of keeping ourselves alive has nothing to do with anything in respect to our human dignity and everything to do with making us exploitable commodities for the capitalist machine. That's right, Gentle Reader. We do not work because it is meaningful. And we do not work for the general wellbeing of others. Neither do we work to keep ourselves alive long enough to actually do anything significant with our lives. We work only for the benefit of the machine that our governments have sold their souls to, and by fiat, our very own. When I began working for a living at age eighteen, living independently, we had in this country a very generous unemployment insurance program. It was called Unemployment Enjoyment, by many of us, and even after working two months at a crappy job, we could quit, and live six months on two thirds of our income, presumably while seeking other work, though many of us, myself included, often used some of that time to kick back and relax. Of course the conservative factions in society and government were outraged by this wanton exploitation of the public largess, and eventually laws were enacted, cutting back on everything, tightening up everything, and the end result now is that more than half of unemployed workers do not qualify for the euphemistically renamed Employment Insurance, and if you don't find another job lickety-split then you will have to see if you qualify for welfare, which doesn't even pay your rent, or more likely, end up sleeping on the sidewalk or inside a low barrier shelter. This is not an exaggeration. Our governments have so retooled the unemployment insurance and welfare systems as to virtually enslave the workers to their employers. This means, of course, that it is much harder now, harder than ever, to have a voice in one's employment, because we have bought into a gentler but still insidious form of slavery. We have to work to survive, even if our miserable low wages do very littrle to really keep us alive, and we have little option but to continue in these thankless occupations, working for bosses who are vindictive bastards and toiling at labour that does nothing to feed the soul and little more to put food on the table. Such are the conditions in working class Canada, where the unions have been disembowelled and the rest of us have to cope in precarious and shortterm contract positions, no rights, no benefits, completely at the behest of employers who care not a tinker's damn for our wellbeing and only about maximixing profit on our backs. I consider myself one of the luckier ones. Even though I am still stranded in a job that I do not like, I can retire in two years, and most of my rent is subsidized by the government, besides which, there is a lot of human meaning in my work with people struggling with mental illness. But not everyone is so lucky here in Zombie Nation. A lot of other workers are being perpetually shafted with little recourse but to accept hardship or perhaps to rise against the government as they are doing right now in France. The workers will only take so much of this abuse, and if our leaders want the pressing issues of climate change to be more substantial than a mere boutique cause for the upper classes, then they are going to have to start realistically addressing the problems that global capitalism and greed have created for our most vulnerable workers. Otherwise, there will be blood on the streets.