Just Say No to McWork!

Last updated on: April 6, 2011 at 7:31 am by Henry Karlson

Just Say No to McWork! 2011-04-06T07:31:59-05:00 Henry Karlson

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On facebook, the local Fox affiliate asked the question, if you were jobless and looking for a job, would you take a job at McDonald’s. This was asked because McDonald’s promised 50,000 new jobs by the end of the month. So many people said yes. They were saying it is better to have honest work and a paycheck than being without a job. The response should be no. People should rather be unemployed and thumb their nose at McDonald’s than take a job there. Why? Because of human dignity.

McDonalds, and so many other companies offering jobs, offer low paying, part-time jobs, without benefits, so that such companies can make mind-numbing profits. They are not interested in providing jobs to the people, they are interested in making as great a profit as possible. Creating new jobs creates new money-making markets; but they want to have these markets run by people who are paid as little as possible, an insignificant amount of money for the work they do and the money they help generate. The lower the salary and benefits they can get away with, the greater the profit. The average worker is being used by them as servile servants, and they are told if they are not willing to accept this fact, many others will be willing to take their job, and so they should just be quiet and not cause any problems. We are told that they should be willing to be paid little and be grateful for the crumbs they are being given. Hard work, after all, pays off – just, of course, we often forget who benefits from the hard work is often not the one who does it!

The labor force should cause problems. When corporations are able to be praised for turning thousands of people into their servile servants without any dignity, without a living wage, we find ourselves entering a disastrous stage of human development. We are regressing. We are told that living wages are no longer to be expected. The reality is that if living wages are not offered, people should not take the jobs being handed out. There is a time for people to say no to the system. The vast number of unemployed have a power to change the system if they wanted. Right now they are looked upon as people who will take any work offered, and so we can make them fight for jobs which are beneath them and their dignity. They must come together and say no to this. They should not sell their souls for the sake of a few dollars. They are human beings. They deserve to be treated as such, especially when they are the ones who are going to do the real heavy labor which their bosses will not do, that is, they are the ones who are going to work to generate products, to generate the wealth their bosses take and make their own.

Many people say, if you are not willing to work, you should not receive any aid from society. This is used, however, to force people to take jobs which will not give them a living wage. If asked if this should also be applied to people who do not become prostitutes, the answer is either “prostitution is not legal” or “who makes you the judge?” The first, of course, is answered by the second. We are finding ourselves in a time when morality is question, and legalized prostitution is on the rise. Where prostitution is legal, then it is an “honest job” and if people are not willing to take it, can they also not be denied assistance? As long as you think people must do honest jobs or be denied social benefit, and society has defined such soul-destroying work as honest work, the answer must be yes. This, however, tells us something about our society and where we are headed. People are being told to sell themselves out, to sacrifice their whole bodies, their human dignity, for a few dollars. We are turning people into prostitutes. As Playboy shows us, one doesn’t have to have sex in order to sell one’s body out, in order to prostitute oneself. Prostitution, in the modern age, is about the destruction of human dignity for the sake of money. Our system, which looks to the un-employed as a body which can be used and employed without regard to their human dignity is a prostitutional system. We should not be surprised, therefore, if some government (such as in Europe) demands a woman (or a man) to become an actual prostitute or be forever turned away from social benefits. It is what we should expect from the system and it tells us where our social priorities lie. We value so little the dignity of the human person. No wonder hard workers do not have to be paid much; if they are of so little value, what they can produce must also be of little value. Wealth is what is seen as true value in our society, and those who have it are more than human – they participate in wealth itself, and so they must be respected for that wealth, they must be bowed to and worshiped as demigods. Such is the idolatry our capitalist society has made.

There is the need for the working class to say “no more.” Yes, they must unite and work together. They have been promised all kinds of lies (“if you work hard, you too can make it”) and those lies must be exposed for what they are. We do not need to have a society where everyone makes the same wage, where everyone is the same, but we need a more just distribution of the income made by the work which is done. Those who have the wealth, currently, control it because they have not found sufficient opposition. They fear collective bargaining, because they know a collective can become their equal, and make demands. They want everyone to be for themselves, to believe that, on their own, with good hard work everything will be fine. They know, as long as there is no collective, they will be able to control the outcome and control the populace, making them fight each other for the crumbs they hand out. But the more people see those who have the wealth making profits while the rest of the working class have less wealth to use for their own, the greater the chance this imbalance can be overcome. People need to be awakened, to see how they are helping to support the wealth get even more than their fair share of the pie. Only then can the workers get what they deserve.

Work at McDonalds, and so many other positions like it, should not are be seen as a job. They are slavery positions which simulate jobs, but to do not give what is needed for a living wage. Only by having a living wage, without any strings attached, can one be said to have a profession. Work which does not pay a proper wage, but is considered “work,” is used to stop people from becoming a threat to those who have wealth. It is also used to make sure people remain wage slaves. We need only to remember how, during the American Depression, migrant workers were given “jobs” which did not pay enough to live, so that those who took those “jobs” were enslaved to their employers, being put under greater and greater debt. Can we not see this is what is happening today? Can we not see this must end? Surely corporations can afford giving living wages to their workers. Sure, they might not make millions, but the corporate heads still will be able to earn a good living as well, if they gave their workers the wages they deserved. After all, the workers are doing the work, are they not? Why do we keep supporting those who do far less real work on the backs of the workers, and then tell people “if you do not work you do not eat”?

The sad fact is that this kind of criticism is often seen as denigrating those workers it seeks to help. “What, you think so little of those who work at McDonalds”? No. I think so highly of them, for being workers, than I think they deserve to earn decent wages. The problem is not the worker at McDonalds. I do not think lowly of them for working. The problem is the corporate world which turns such hard workers into willing slaves, promising them the sky – “hard work will make you rich and successful” – all the while so few will ever be able to achieve that kind of success if they do all the hard work they do. The reality is that those with wealth help each other and fear those who want wealth to be used as it is meant to be used with a universal distribution of goods for the common good. We find, however, wealth is being collected and kept centralized in the hands of a few. The wealthy are still gaining huge profits while everyone else suffers; this means they must be taking out more and more of the wealth from its distribution into society. It is not being used for the common good, but for the good of the people who own it. It is being collected to be used as a force against the people, instead of spread as a tool for their benefit. No wonder we find, in Wisconsin, Governor Walker on the one hand working as hard as he can against collective bargaining, while on the other hand, giving all kinds of governmental positions to unqualified individuals like Brian Deschane (a college drop-out, with a drunk-driving record, and no work experience who was given a nice, cozy position earning $81,500 a year, and now, because of an outcry, “demoted” to a position still earning well over 60k a year! — a job given to him apparently because he was the son of one of Walker’s major campaign contributors). The wealthy with power know exactly how to keep the power and use it to keep their wealth. Isn’t it funny to see how the wealthy stand together and collectively control society with their power, but they get upset if the poor want to get together and, using the power of a collective, to help make things better for all? It’s clear, they really are not against collective all collective bargaining – only the collective bargaining of the majority, for they know if the majority actually worked together, their hold on society will end.

Henry Karlson

Labor

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