Just
a bit of old fashioned slavery
Maybe it's
the heat.
The radio is
full of dire predictions, record temperatures and no sign of rain-- drought
savaging this part of the country for two years running-- and all I get at work
is dirty looks-- bosses staring at me like whites used to stare at blacks in
the south, as unequal partners in this labor relationship.
They like to
think themselves superior beings, like the Germans in the thirties, industry
owners seeing us as problem children, as gypsies, as jews, as radical elements
whose survival somehow threatens their profits-- as if to pay us decently meant
some sort of degradation for themselves.
If they
didn't need us they'd turn us into lampshades, too-- wearing that same, brutal
mentality in their eyes each time they see us.
A few years
ago, I stood on their side of the line, a night manager for a small cosmetic
company in Fairfield, and was told outright by my superiors that I had to separate
myself from my employees, that it wasn't a good practice to let the men think
we were equals.
It is an
amazing load of crap they sell us when they make us crawl for our pay checks,
as if they were doing us a favor by using our bodies and minds for their
profits-- as if there was something inherently superior in their inability to
get their hands dirty or bend their backs.
There used to
be a time when people could be proud of their labors, before the machines took
over and made life an endless repetition of the same idiotic habits, our skills
more and more closely defined till we have become part of the machine. We break
down, we are replaced. We are rarely considered human.
We are taught
to think the next step down from where we are is the gutter, that there are
others on the welfare lines waiting to take our jobs-- and secretly we envy the
welfare people. Their indignity comes twice a month at the welfare office. They
don't have the boss over their shoulder or on their back. They don't have the
back-breaking bullshit to justify their checks.
But its the
same slavery. We hate them for laziness. They hate us because we have their
jobs. And the people above us both breed that contempt, stoking the hate
between us so we don't learn the truth, so we don't turn on the rich and steal
back enough for us both to survive.