I wonder what next week will bring. I'm getting so
disillusioned with
the whole concept of
working for someone else, of being granted a
paycheck approx. 1/2 of what's considered a living wage a
round here,
unusable unaffordable medical benefits, knowing that the guy in
charge is living quite
well on my sweat.
I've got to get out of this before it kills me.
We've all got to get out of this.
Throw down your chains! Tell the owners to whom you are but a body
filling a slot in the production cycle that they are going to have to
do it themselves, or share the profits of the enterprise in a more
equitable way than making us punch a timeclock and cutting us a check
every two weeks that barely covers the rent.
Take half, divide the rest among the employees. I bet that American
production would skyrocket.
Throw down your chains!
This rat's going to get out of the race before he dies, that's one
thing for sure. My needs are simple. Most people's needs are
simple, it's their wants that take up the energy.
Equity for our sweat, our time, our backs and brains, or a general
strike. Everyone who works, and this includes management types too,
needs to stop work for a day and let the bewildered stockholders and
owners and CEO's wander around a silent and dusty factory, and
realize that they cannot do it without us. I don't care how much you
know about production, what kind of expert you are, there is no way
the primary benefactors of our work could do it themselves, or they
would, because they seem to even begrudge us the damned pittance that
trickles from their pockets to our mouths.
Throw down your chains!
Am I lazy? Certainly, when it comes to doing other's work. At
projects that have intrinsic meaning to me, at challenges that hold
my interest, I am industrious, efficient, and tenacious. But when
you bore me, when you extort work from my fingers by the threat of
homelessness and thus refuse to reward Good Work in any meaningful
manner, you're damned right I'm not going to be satisfied.
Throw down your chains!
But someone has to do the work, the dirty, the dangerous, the soul-
crushingly humiliating and (worst sin of all) boring jobs, you say.
Someone has to do it.
Then make it so the people who want to do This work get to do This
work, and the people with a talent and a flair for That work get
assigned to That work instead of forcing everyone into the mold we've
been programmed for almost since birth. Show some creativity, some
compassion, some flair. Don'y just stand by and let people be turned
into machines.
Owners, you are chained as surely as your workers, and while there is
a soul working in your factory who does not belong there by true
excersize of free will and inclination, you are not free.
Throw down your chains, the ones you wear, and the ones you make us
wear because you are too goddamned complacent and unimaginitive to
conceive of a better way.
It was a long week.