‹ Back

Today I find myself jarred and reminded of my goals and self proclaimed purposes. Over the past week I have learned of a couple of pieces of unfortunate news. One, that my closest friend has found himself with a supposedly short term but crippling back injury, leaving him unable to work and collecting only partial his wages in the interim . Two, Another friend, a developer/programmer has informed our group that the union contingent of the company he works for has lost the vote to have their workforce officially unionized, during the skirmish of which his manager in particular was fired, speculatively, because “they were not anti-union enough”. My friends words and allegedly. These two events seem somewhat disparate at first, but let me tie them together.
 

My friend with the back injury works for a company that actually has a union. Though due to, I suspect, the weakened modern state of unions or likely more fundamentally the notion that a worker cannot simply have his needs met fully unless he is producing maximally and not simply because he is a person, he is only collecting a portion of his wages until the situation is concluded (i.e. he returns to work or it is decided he can no longer work his position). This doesn’t really puzzle me as I can immediately assume, redundantly, that they can’t just pay him his full wages without producing results for the company, after all our needs can only be met when the wants of the machine are met first. It does however leave me questioning how something so obviously absurd can be expected to be the norm. A man works a back breaking (pun intended) position as a mechanic and when he succumbs to injury, almost certainly in relation to his work to at least some capacity, he is put aside with minimal, bureaucratically blocked, or bureaucratically limited, compensation and medical coverage. This is because his position and production is what grants him the right to be a healthy, compensated, and a (slightly) beyond fed individual. I suspect the company not only grants him short term and partial payment because of some well fought for laws and codes, but because they figure at least if he can still eat and make rent he will be available again at some point to produce instead of the additional costs and hassle of finding another worker to replace him. This is a grim view of the situation indeed and I do not fault you, the reader, for feeling I am being presumptuous and heavy handed; but I ask you, do you fear the possibly of injury first because of how it would impact your lifestyle, or how it would impact your ability to provide for yourself, your partner, and your loved ones? I do not posit these notions because I believe that the company my friend works for is wholly evil. Mostly it is the contrary though I will not divulge much more information on the company in particular to protect his privacy. What I do find to be evil, or at the least cruel, is the system it operates in. I do not believe how it treats its injured workforce as abnormal but not does that make it right. Everyday the average individual is putting themselves and their lives at the service of a company, a businessman, a CEO, or even some smaller “entrepreneur”, for their gain. Yet their ability to pursue their dreams, ambitions, goals, and idea of wealth is at the very least stunted if not outright blocked the moment they no longer prove use to someone at the top. Even I as “self employed” only get to do so because the machines, software, products, etc I need to preform my service for customers ultimately funnels some of my income to another already much more wealthy person. And if they are not able to have theirs, I simply do not get mine. (This idea isn’t to be confused with the idea that I did not “fall out of a coconut tree” and that I don’t get to claim myself as self made when I use the roads my fellow workers have built and their taxes paid for, an idea I agree with it).

For my friend at the software company whose union vote fell through I continue the thought. As I speculated before the lack of support my friend with the back injury is getting can be just chalked up to a weak union and not that unions “don’t do anything”. Unions absolutely do something. The collective bargaining of aligned, supported, and legally backed workers in a union is as useful and as powerful a tool for the worker as any, least under the system we have today. All over my social media and news feeds there is news of workers from some of the biggest companies from Amazon to Starbucks fighting and winning (or failing) to unionize. And I wholly support them! The short of this thought however is that as useful and powerful as unionize are they are only ultimately granted existence as long as those at the heads of companies lack the means to fend them off or dissolve them. While a collective group has stronger bargaining power they are doing just that, bargaining. And woe is the workforce who tries to form a union. While probably relatively minor (in scale and absolute devastation) to some other tactics and methods of union busting we’ve seen through out history, this software company did not lack them. Meetings on company time about why you shouldn’t unionize, posters, emails, printouts of all sorts strewn wildly to deter, scare, or convince you that you don’t want to unionize, and of course, allegedly, firing middle managers for not being “anti-union” enough. I would like to think tactics of this nature applied to democracy more broadly would be considered appalling, yet we see them applied in the most direct and required part of the workers life. Where they are expected to spend most of their time, most of their days, and the only reasonable way to earn their daily bread. Again I am pro-union. I believe that if the vote had passed all of the workers of the software company would have been better off. Likely better paid, better treated, better hours, etc. But until when? When the software company opens its coffers and “donates” to some official or lawmaker weakening the power of the union? Or perhaps when the parent company spins off a suspiciously redundant software company and finds that the unionized company simply isn’t necessary to its portfolio laying off dozens or even hundreds of workers? The point ultimately is as long as one or a few individuals motivated by wealth are in charge of a production then the workers will always been seen as a tool or expense of theirs rather than the humans they are. Imagine, if you can indulge me, if everyone worker on the floor was in charge and held a voice and benefited from the growth, profits, etc of the company and not few. A novel idea I know. No one in history has considered it.

Sarcasm aside it is moments like these that remind me of what I want my works to some day lead to. A group, if not a world, working together for fulfillment, enlightenment, and the well being of each other rather than a few. What can I do? What can you do? I’m still not sure. But I write this to remind myself and you’s that these issues prevail and to continue to explore ideas to confront them.

 

I do have ideas to grow what I have. And while that may seem contrary my hope is to grow what I have, until I can share it with others and make it ours. I hope soon to more concretely explore those ideas. But until then thank you for reading and I hope you continue to watch my career with great interest.