Monday, July 18, 2005
Quitting my job
Having just told my manager that I was leaving in a month, I'm now suffused with relief & regret. Relief that the end of my wage slavery is becoming tangible, and I can start Xing days off on the calendar. Regret that I was promoted 10 months ago, and only started getting paid at the new wages 1 month ago, due to a nasty HR manager. If I was sticking around I'd take it to the union, but I'm leaving.
I've complained to no end about this job, and I'm excited to be returning to school. But I have another regret: I'm losing contact with working class reality. My coworkers, here and elsewhere, taught me about the world. They showed me how 'everyday' people view the world (not horribly self-conscious PhDs like myself.) Workers have saved me from becoming an ultra-left or a lifestyle anarchist. They've depressed the hell out of me with their reactionary attitudes, and they've amazed me with their intuitive understanding of class exploitation. I'm going to move into a world of theory, where if I'm lucky my colleagues will have read about the working class. And I'm sure I'll encounter more than a few people who think it doesn't even exist.
Working class tales
To the cynics and postmodernists, I'll tell the story of last Thursday. I was walking to work and found hotel workers on strike. They had just walked off the job at the height of the tourist season. In broken French, I told one of them how a strike was a great strategy for getting a settlement, because management needed them so badly right now.
He told me they didn't want to go on strike, but that they were working without a contract. He didn't expect to be out long, because the job was so tough that management couldn't handle it. Other hotel workers in the union local had gone out that morning, and - at 8:45am - two had gained a contract already.
Workers don't have grand ideas of general strikes or revolutions, except at key historical moments. A strike is a tool, not a principle. That worker knew how effective it would be, and he appreciated my support. But he cut my flights of fancy short. I learnt from him.
Not going away any time soon - landless workers, Brazil, 1996
Thursday afternoon I was chatting with my supervisor. She's been a secretary most of her working life and is a solid trade unionist. Recently she's been made a manager, and she's now attending management meetings. She told me how disturbed she was by them: the point of management meetings is to delay, deny and frustrate workers' demands. They single people out for punishment. They consider workers to be tools, not people. Other managers have handed her books about how to 'screw people over' (her words). I'm a trade unionist, she told me. I can't treat people that way. I'm going to tell them what I think and not back down.
This woman has never attended a political meeting in her life. She's never read a book on working class history. But she knew that management has different interests from workers. Her experience taught her that managers are bastards. That there's a 'them' and an 'us'. She didn't have to read about class exploitation: she lives it, every day. She's not a socialist. But her words convinced me, yet again, of how socialism is natural, normal and, if not inevitable, then a real possibility as long as there's a working class.
I'm going to school because I hate wage labour. My coworkers, with all their petty squabbles, maddening personality traits and even breakdowns, are tougher than me, because work is their life, they know it, and they're dedicated to it. They're the type of people who, one day, will change the world. And they're a lot closer to it than they, or a hundred radical grad students, think. I'm going to try very hard not to forget that.
I've complained to no end about this job, and I'm excited to be returning to school. But I have another regret: I'm losing contact with working class reality. My coworkers, here and elsewhere, taught me about the world. They showed me how 'everyday' people view the world (not horribly self-conscious PhDs like myself.) Workers have saved me from becoming an ultra-left or a lifestyle anarchist. They've depressed the hell out of me with their reactionary attitudes, and they've amazed me with their intuitive understanding of class exploitation. I'm going to move into a world of theory, where if I'm lucky my colleagues will have read about the working class. And I'm sure I'll encounter more than a few people who think it doesn't even exist.
Working class tales
To the cynics and postmodernists, I'll tell the story of last Thursday. I was walking to work and found hotel workers on strike. They had just walked off the job at the height of the tourist season. In broken French, I told one of them how a strike was a great strategy for getting a settlement, because management needed them so badly right now.
He told me they didn't want to go on strike, but that they were working without a contract. He didn't expect to be out long, because the job was so tough that management couldn't handle it. Other hotel workers in the union local had gone out that morning, and - at 8:45am - two had gained a contract already.
Workers don't have grand ideas of general strikes or revolutions, except at key historical moments. A strike is a tool, not a principle. That worker knew how effective it would be, and he appreciated my support. But he cut my flights of fancy short. I learnt from him.
Not going away any time soon - landless workers, Brazil, 1996
Thursday afternoon I was chatting with my supervisor. She's been a secretary most of her working life and is a solid trade unionist. Recently she's been made a manager, and she's now attending management meetings. She told me how disturbed she was by them: the point of management meetings is to delay, deny and frustrate workers' demands. They single people out for punishment. They consider workers to be tools, not people. Other managers have handed her books about how to 'screw people over' (her words). I'm a trade unionist, she told me. I can't treat people that way. I'm going to tell them what I think and not back down.
This woman has never attended a political meeting in her life. She's never read a book on working class history. But she knew that management has different interests from workers. Her experience taught her that managers are bastards. That there's a 'them' and an 'us'. She didn't have to read about class exploitation: she lives it, every day. She's not a socialist. But her words convinced me, yet again, of how socialism is natural, normal and, if not inevitable, then a real possibility as long as there's a working class.
I'm going to school because I hate wage labour. My coworkers, with all their petty squabbles, maddening personality traits and even breakdowns, are tougher than me, because work is their life, they know it, and they're dedicated to it. They're the type of people who, one day, will change the world. And they're a lot closer to it than they, or a hundred radical grad students, think. I'm going to try very hard not to forget that.
