Ranting about labor

I have gone through an interesting development with my relationship with labor rights and corporations. During my high school years I basically didn't think about it except to say "fuck the man" when in the presence of people I wanted to impress, as I got older I thought I was getting more realistic, accepting the state of things and more or less shrugging at ideas like minimum wage laws or improved worker protections.
These days I like to think I am in a more correct space, and basically hate our system intensely, and yes I realize I am totally a part of it and that doesn't exactly make things better.

We don't care about workers in this country, not really, when I say we I really do mean we by the way, now obviously the politicians, save perhaps Bernie Sanders and his like, don't give a shit about the worker beyond getting their vote, the corporations don't even care that much, but the voter really doesn't seem to care either, and that is the most infuriating part because the worker is also the voter we don't vote in our own best interest, we don't support policies that would benefit us without being dragged kicking and screaming to them, and we denigrate those who want to fight for more and call them entitled millenials or some shit like that.

We, all of us, are partially responsible for the state of things.

Now obviously the balance of power is somewhat skewed in favor of the corporations and the rich that control them, so there is certainly more responsibility on other parties, but the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be convinced to strip protections and take less money for more work since before the Reagan years speaks volumes to the way we have been brainwashed in this country. We think that if someone isn't making enough money it is because they aren't working hard enough, but we are working hard, almost every single person from the bottom of the ladder on up works their ass off.

I worked my ass off today, running a food stand at a Blazer game with insufficient staff and sometimes mutually exclusive policies, my feet hurt like hell, I am still recovering from my cold, and I am generally unhappy about the state of affairs. Yet I got through the day, my customers went away happy, and my inventory more or less balanced.

The stand made in the neighborhood of four thousand dollars tonight, my compensation for the night will be less than seventy dollars, I will never get a raise.

I am not sharing that story to garner sympathy from you, I am not claiming I am some super being or a selfless worker, that's the point, what I did tonight was nothing unusual, I, and some four or five hundred other people working in my company, do it every single night, and most of them are compensated worse than I am for it. Ninety percent of my friends work in the service industry, my story isn't unusual to them, many of them might even think I have a relatively easy job compared to what they do.

Soon the Blazer season will end, last year I started my job right on the tail end of the season. They gave us all a present for working and making it possible for the fans to have a great experience at the Moda Center, it was a small, square, wooden coaster with the Trailblazer's logo engraved on it.

The customers got numerous things, one of which was a free jersey.

A fucking coaster? That is what we are worth, the cogs that make the machine run are worth a coaster.

We somehow think this is acceptable, not just acceptable, but ideal, that this is the way America becomes great, by generating what is effectively a massive serf class that must choose between work and an appointment with a dentist, or going to a school play, or spending an evening with their wife.
But it isn't really a choice, because if you choose one of those options, your employer is free to choose to stop employing you. You know it, they know it, so you make the sacrifice and go to work anyway.

I know it is worse in many other countries, we hear about it a lot, but what we don't understand is that largely in those countries they are working to improve, and many have in recent decades, while our economic overlords here look at them and think "if only..." and then work to strip more protections from the labor laws that grew the middle class in the first place.

A system like this cannot be allowed to survive and to grow, there is no end game for them, no wage minimum enough, and no amount to little to spend on making the job tolerable. It isn't that they hate us, no that would imply they know we exist and think of us as something worth hating, they don't, they don't think of us at all, don't know and don't care that there are people down on the bottom allowing them to do what they do. And why would they? We quite literally gave them the power to ignore us, and until we take it back they will continue to do so.