ON WORK
We are forced to work far more
than would be necessary to sustain life in a sensible society. We are forced to
work longer because we are tempted to buy all those new things that are
advertised to make us happy. This is the delusion we are coerced into believing.
The average working week of 38 hours is not enough for most people to earn
enough money to live well. Many people are having to find part time work to
subsidise their base pay or work overtime to get more pay. This trade off is
mostly created to fulfil their desire of much higher living standards and
wants. People don’t want the basic car, the average house or no name clothing;
they want what they have been unconsciously persuaded to have by big business.
Many of us work without much sense
of intrinsic motivation or moral satisfaction, work for many is a social chore.
The monitory system has been designed to govern and shape how we humans fit
into the social scheme of things. We are all forced to keep busy at work
(regardless of if the work is meaningful and rewarding work) to ensure we can
be controlled. The pressures of not being socially humanised that are put onto
us in so many hidden ways are nothing short of mass manipulation.
If people don’t work, they are labelled
hippies, dole bludgers, burdens of society, dropouts and lowlifes just to name
a few (that’s sounds like every retired person where it seems OK to fall out of
the system and finally be free). It is for these dehumanising terms and the
pressure to be someone many of us work.
People in later generations now have
to work longer and harder just to keep up with the technologies needed to
sustain a modern comfortable life. Simple living has long gone. Many couples
now need two full time incomes just to stay ahead in life so they can raise their
financially draining children, pay of their home and maybe have some cash saved
over for retirement. This would be the main reason why more professional working
couples are having fewer kids and or none at all.
Labour power is brought, sold and
exploited in almost every sector of society. The labourer has no control over
their own labour, which they are forced to give away in return for materialistic
life, and so it becomes something of a double edge sword. You do not give out
hard labour or perform your unrewarding tasks because you want to, or because
you enjoy it, you perform your tasks because you have to. This then falls under
the realm of slavery. If you don’t work, you may face starvation and or even
social ruin.
You
have no real control over whether you want to work or not, and in most jobs you
have no control over what conditions you work under, how fast the assembly line
moves or what is the procedure. When you work, you become a machine, a
programmed robot serving anyone that is higher than you.
Many of us work without much sense of satisfaction or doing anything worthwhile, work is a social chore.
I am becoming very much aware of how
big corporations are taking advantage of their workers. Big businesses are just
like the Government, they conveniently fail to realise that without the worker,
their companies would not exist. It’s the workers that keep the whole society
moving forward as they are the 80%. We basically make things to sell to the
other workers. It’s a circle.
Many organisations don’t morally look
after their workers at all; they extract every labour dollar value out of them
while giving them minimal comforts. Small open plan cubicles, cheap chairs to
sit on, poor tools, unmaintained plant and equipment, lack of visual pleasures
are just a few of the evidences that really do promote the value of their
people. Then we are tricked into thinking that open plan offices are great...to
some who like to talk all day and get nothing done it fine, but people who
really want to work do not enjoy open plan offices as it hinders their
work.
If an organisation is making
millions a year in profit, then they must be stealing “cheap labour”. As the business
world works on immoral systems anyway, it is easy for business to just pay
workers the base rate, regardless if they, the workers, are performing better
than base rate or if the workers effort is deserving of more pay. We see it all
the time how officers give themselves a pay increase, yet put onto the workers
a pay freeze. Politicians and council
officers are also great at giving themselves salary increases. Reports of 30
plus percent pay increases are not a moral choice within a culture that cannot
even give 3% to every worker. But as socially sculpted people, we dare not all
stand together as say this is wrong. A little fuss is initially raised by some
critical thinkers, and some support for the cause ensues, but this sort of
morality dies out very quickly as there is nothing anyone small group can do.
The collective society is either to scared or worse; don’t care.
Some juniors work harder than
seniors, but get paid less because it is legally acceptable. It really ids not
the moral thing to do but it sure makes for more profit. This is just another
way that businesses are exploiting workers. People think that a large food
chain employees young workers to help them get into a career and work. This is
what they sell us. The fact is that this is not the truth. These organisations
are only after cheap labour. Cheap labour keeps there expenses low and
therefore give means for more profit. Any aged worker seeking a job in one of
the poplar fast food restaurants would be secretly age discriminated against.
For one they say we only pay junior rates...well there is the discrimination
straight up. But this type of thing just gets ignored. We could easy have a law
that says that at least 30% of the workforce must be full time adult workers,
but any government that would even propose a solution like this would be
rejected by the business community.
Many organisations cause people constant
stress. Working hours are never solid, pays are not right, people get accused
of taking a day off etc etc.
Most mangers are forced to put
pressure onto their workers to sell, sell, sell, or produce, produce, produce,
not only so the manger can get their bonus at the end of the month but so the
officer, shareholder etc can get theirs. The officers always expect their
workers to do thing they wouldn’t do themselves.
Work costs our community millions of
dollars every year, but we never read or hear about it. It’s kind of hidden and
kept under the carpet. Ask yourself, what is depression? What is stress? Then
ask yourself, what are some of the consequences of just these two things;
Family breakdown, drug addiction, gambling etc (all things the government makes
a lot of money from).
Many work related stressed people
react to stress by drinking coffee (to stay awake) or by drinking alcohol (to
unwind and de-stress) or by overeating, or by dropping exercise programmers, all
because they are too busy or too tired to do the things that would give them
some pleasure at the times they are not working. The is not much time to detox
yourself from the stresses imposed by work. This leads to an increased level of
stress which leads to drinking more coffee, more alcohol, more overeating, less
exercise, more stress, and higher chance of becoming depressed and so on. Work
can destroy families, diminish health, and take away the joys of living.
“Humans have shaped themselves in
beasts of burden”
Many people working long or
stressful hours arrive home exhausted, tired and aggravated, all in the name of
seeking “happiness”. We really do have to ask ourselves what is happiness in
this context? Is it pleasing yourself or others? If you are working just to
live, why live? It’s not your life you’re leading, you’re living to supply
wealth to someone else, and you are just replaceable cog in the whole machine.
What is a working day? You may
work productively from 9am to 5pm, but what about the time it takes you to get
ready for work/ What about the time it takes you to get to work?. Are these
things classed as work related time? Some people travel for hours to get to and
from work, not because they want too, but because they have too. These extra
none paid hours, what I call ‘twi-time” can turn an 8 hour working day into a
12+ hour working day.
This extra time you give for free is
not your time, so if it is not your time, whose time is it them? and who should
pay you for these twi-time hours. In a well thought out moral world we would
get paid for some of the time it takes to travel to and from work. If you are
doing something that is not for you, you must be doing something for someone
else, meaning it must be someone else’s time. If it takes you two hours to get
to work, you should be paid for those hours (Payment could be cheaper rego and
fuel for work related travel). Anything less expected than this is exploitation
of the worker in my books.
If we are forced to work in this
society and we need a car to get to work, who pays for that vehicle? You do.
Who pays for the requiement of work clothing, work food etc, you do. It’s all
given free. You might be getting paid $20 per hour for your labour, but how
much of that money is taken out just for work related expenses eg; health,
travel, makeup, then ask yourself, am I only worth $5 per hour after my work
related costs have come out? Your answer should be NO, if you don't really
care, then you must be in the working category of people getting paid too much.
Many busy people working long and stressed hours arrive home exhausted,
tired and aggravated
Partners and children become upset and unsettled due to work related problems,
thus resulting in constant arguments that can lead to family breakdown and
divorce. As a consequence, unhealthy levels of stress caused from this work related
risk can lead to a variety of disorders and illness. These include chronic
fatigue to depression, insomnia, anxiety, migraines, emotional upsets,
allergies and increased abuse an dependence of tobacco and alcohol.
People can get so focused on work
and chasing those social expected dreams, that they can start to blame these
work problems like stress and depression on other things, like: My wife and I
do not communicate any more, I don’t know what the problem is. But the
underlining issue is in fact work related.
Stress and depression from work
barely scratches the surface of problems that costs the community relating to
work. What the workplace statistics don't show is that tens of millions of
people have their life spans shortened by work. Some of these workplace
incidents would fall under the realm of homicide; after all, the work killed
the worker. Even if you aren't killed or crippled while actually working
onsite, you may very well be travelling to and from work, looking for work, or
trying to forget about work (walking home intoxicated and walk into a vehicle).
The vast majority of victims of the automobile are either doing one of these
workplace activities. Add to this augmented the body count of all those victims
of the auto-industrial pollution created by all those driving for work related
business, work related alcoholism and drug deaths, cancer, heart disease etc.
These are are modern afflictions normally traceable, directly or indirectly, to
work. When you hear of big business promoting zero harm, one would have to
question the authenticity of this statement, and question what harm is work
related.
Work then makes homicide a normal
accepted way of life. Our miliarty forces would not accept this type of death
rate, but in general society it is not much of a concern. Our annual death rate
from work related issues may never be documented, but one must realise that over
80% of your life is based around work based activities, and in the end you really
die for nothing; or rather, you died for work.
Work should be nothing to die for.
People say why go and join the army as you may be shot and killed, but in fact
more people die in Australia from work related incidents than soldiers at war.
Don’t look at the yearly work place death rat e of about 150 per year, this is
not the true count. It is a convenient mean level to fool us all into
saying...well that’s not too many considering the amount of people working.
In the workplace, why is Ok for
some but not ok for others? Well it again comes down to ones control over
another (officer/manager to worker).
What this means is that because of
your lower status to the person above you, it seems ok to have different
things. Take the simple example of an office worker that is not allowed to have
wallpapers displayed on their computer screen, yet the managers and supervisors
can. How can this be in anyway a form of righteous justification towards the
reason why these workers are void of such a simple pleasure? The worker must
think that in regards to their status, they must subhuman and that they must be
controlled by all means that don’t seem humanly just or important. This policy
is a form of control, unwittingly saying without words to the worker that you
are less, and that by policy, I can prove and instil my power over you as a
worker.
In this simple example, to view a
picture for even a short time whilst inside a grey walled office, can provide a
human brain with stimulating pleasure, and with that pleasure comes a feeling
of comfort and enjoyment. Then from that enjoyment comes a better desire to
carry on with a positive high productive attitude. Not allowing this type of
simple visual pleasure makes the worker feels caged and controlled, morale
drops and then productivity drops, then what you end up with are human robots
void of thought. This example can be used in many examples; it could be used if
the worker is not even allowed to play music while at work, which can have the
same type of stimulating affect and make a person more creative.
I think it is about time workers
started to be treated fairly. I am not talking about the common fair rights of workers
on a basic level such as what we have know, I am talking about the serious
control of working hrs, work related expenses, the governing of ratio between the
highest paid worker and the lowest paid worker and allowing for more time paid time
off.
People have to stop being pressured
to do things that are not ethical or rewarding, but sadly I know this is never going
to happen at our current state of greed.
“We are out of control by the control
that guides us” MD
