They are closing the mine in two weeks, they say. Six days a week bumping down in the gondola, pecking out the rocks and hauling them back up, doing it again the next day for twenty-seven years, one cave-in, three thin raises, and a failed strike. Where am I going to go every day, what am I going to do with all that sunshine? Lou Beach
Ramona felt sad and somehow lonely, as if she were left out of something important, because her family was in trouble and there was nothing she could do. Beverly Cleary
There is tons of work to be done, and lots of people who would like to do the work. It’s just that the economic system is such a grotesque catastrophe that it can’t even put together idle hands and needed work, which would be satisfying to the people and which would be beneficial to all of us. Noam Chomsky
As long as there are ways we can serve, then we have a job to do. Marianne Williamson
That paper–it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. Markus Zusak
Once we attain self-awareness, we stop becoming the victims of worthless comparisons, identity clashes and, of course, idle mindsets that make further progress impossible. Dr Prem Jagyasi
The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain. Thomas Traherne
As most of you who read these posts recognize, this is Labor Day weekend in the US, a last gasp of the northern summer, but also a time to reflect on those who labor in a society increasingly without a culture that values labor, without a culture that grants and sustains the dignity of those many persons who we largely ignore but without whom are lives would be immeasurably impoverished.
In a time of pandemic, when so many children are forced into horrific working conditions or, in places like Afghanistan where women are losing the little income they managed to secure, it may seem a bit tone deaf to focus on US labor issues. But we have plenty of them, some due to restrictive immigration policies, some due to the lack of a sustaining culture of respect for labor itself, and some due to a culture shift, in part motivated by pandemic isolation, regarding what we want in return from the investment of our skills and energies, how we seize current opportunities to create better synergies between what we do for money and what we do with life.
I won’t dwell on the immigration issue, except to say that we remain in the midst of vast migrations of peoples due in large measure to armed conflict and climate change. As now with Afghanistan, these are not only people on the move; these are people with skills seeking a new home, a new outlet, a new chance, but they are met with growing skepticism and even hostility within destination states. Some of this hostility is overt as in “we don’t want you here.” But some is more subtle, a message of tentative welcome so long as they consent to do the work that we don’t want to do, indeed won’t do ourselves. On this weekend, I am reminded of all the soul-sucking, dangerous jobs that exist in this world, from the slaughterhouses to the coal mines and –in the media this week – from picking fruit in 100 degree weather under an unrelenting sun to delivering food on a bicycle in New York City while the winds of Ida howled and over 7 inches of rain came thundering to the ground – and this for the $5 which that delivery worker earned for his trouble.
Many of us have done these sorts of jobs at an earlier stage of life. I have my stories also. But I also was given a pass to “escape” the mind-numbing danger, the back-breaking labor that never gets workers and families off the treadmill of “barely making it” of having to deal with endless health, education and housing issues without anything like a safety net, without anything like the perks of employment for people with degrees and the privileges to match. I remember some of what that felt like. I can’t forget it. None of us should.
And yet we do forget, we do push the labor conditions of others to the very back of our minds, as though fruit and pork magically appear in our pantries, as though our houses heat themselves and forest fires simply end of their own volition, as though century-old transportation infrastructure somehow fixes itself and babies actually bring themselves into the world. We do forget because we are privileged members of societies which have jettisoned their cultures of respect for labor, for the people who often do the dirty jobs that keep the rest of us afloat, for the people who struggle to provide basic necessities for families living on the edge of a society that has long ceased to honor their contributions. We don’t “pull for each other” so much now, do we? Rather, we tend to be consumers first and foremost, little interested in how things are made (and by who), what it takes to make them or, for that matter, dispose of them when the items in question have outlived their usefulness. Our posture is primarily competitive, suspicious of unions or anything else that might cause us to pay more so that our workers can have more. Moreover, we have allowed ourselves to indulge in (as Philip Rieff once noted), “colonies of the violent.” devoid of any stable sense of communal purpose, left to “vacillate between deadly purposes and deadly devices,” all in an attempt to escape what has become our modern mindset’s signature pandemic – that of boredom.
But as some of the quotations at the beginning of this post maintain, there is plenty of work to be done in this world, plenty to care for and support, plenty of skills to blend and respect, plenty of ways to add value and meaning to our own and others’ lives. In a world such as ours, boredom is surely a sign of desperation, if not a complete failure of imagination, a sign that our “strategy” of competition and autonomy, of using each other rather than working with each other, is not having its intended effect. As a society, we are still chasing “wealth” that cannot be sustained rather than, as Vandana Shiva would put it, pursuing wealth based on “rejuvenating the bounty of the earth through care.”
Fortunately, culture and its impacts are not static; its permissions and controls are being modified as we speak, in some welcome instances to help people break through the discriminations and injustices that culture has too often served to hold in place. On this Labor Day we would do well to ask if there a pathway to restore intrinsic value and respect for the labor and contributions of others? Is there the means to counter our current, high levels of comfort with exploitative practices, our equally high levels of indulgence with the forms and tools of violence designed to distract ourselves from becoming the people we could be? Can we somehow identify and preserve the life that allows everyone time to serve our children and communities as well as our employers?
There are hopeful signs. The “great resignation” chronicled in the press over these past few months suggests a growing discontent with how labor is organized and how employees are recognized. Workers worldwide are demanding that the jobs for which they are compensated provide more than just a paycheck, provide more than just the material means to sustain what is too often a demanding and deadening life cycle. Teachers are leaving voids in school systems as threats from parents and from a virus we are still not taking seriously enough push more and more educators out of the classroom. Health care workers are also quitting in droves, many of whom have spent the last 18 months trying to keep people alive who dogmatically refuse to help themselves (or their communities) stay healthy. Restaurant and other hospitality workers are leaving their positions as well, tired of the long hours, short customer tempers and small tips which constitute the bulk of their pay.
These are all essential workers, people we simply cannot do without. These are also not easy choices, the choice to walk away, the choice to say “enough.” But we would do well to support this transition. Several articles this week suggested that the pandemic gave some of us at least the chance to readjust our hearts and minds, to recalibrate how our gifts of time and talent are shared, how the “human” aspects of our “being” might find a fuller expression. We must find ways, in policy and practice, to make such a chance accessible to all. Our GDP and stock prices might take a hit, but the peace that could emanate from a rejuvenated world where children are in school, women are fully engaged, laborers have rest and respect, nature is cared for and boredom is vanquished would be, at least to my mind, well worth every effort.
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