long leftist labor lecture

The BBQ Pit
41

I’ve been looking desperately for jobs, and I’ve showed up eagerly to every “busser” and “dishwasher” position I’ve seen advertised. Eventually I was told outright that there was zero chance of a white girl getting these jobs. Mexicans work these jobs, and thats just the way things are. Since then I’ve noticed that it is pretty universally true. You might get a Latina waitress every once in a while, but you will never see a white face bussing dishes. (the exception is in chi-chi joints where bussing and dishwashing is a part of one’s waitstaff training).

I admit that I live pretty near the center of cheap migrant labor, in an affluent town with a huge and very clear white/Mexican divide. But I’m pretty sure I ran into the same thing in Sacramento, where race isn’t as much of an issue.

If you think it’s outrageous that I was told that, you don’t even know half the crap I’ve seen trying to scrape the bottom of the job market barrel. Haveing to piss into a cup with someone watching is just the beginning. One application demanded to know my height, weight and eye color. I got to watch an overweight lady burst into tears over that one. It’s a bad world when you are cheap disposable labor. I just thank goodness I only have myself to support, not a family.

So yeah. My rant was an unfocused expression of pure emotion and rage, mixed with a good dose of personal experience. It’s not the people crossing picket lines I’m upset about. It’s the callous attitude. It’s the indictment of the poor. The implication that if they just worked harder/were better people they wouldn’t be in the bad situation they are in. I’ve got a hundred sob stories about children born into poverty- my friends- who never had a chance. And I can handle that, but I can’t handle people giving them them the big “Fuck you”.

42

Same here in Santa Cruz, really. I see brown faces serving me and cleaning up.

'Course, I usually eat at Mexican and Indian restraunts, so YMMV. :smiley:

43

Who exactly has said “Fuck you, poor people” in this thread?

44

Ooooh… can I be first? Please?

:slight_smile:

-Rav

45

I’m with you on that 100%.

46

I’m sorry, what “bad situation” are these supermarket employees in? In an unskilled position that anyone who can read and count can do, they are:

making well over minimum wage
have low cost health insurance for themselves and their family
have pension benefits

Seems to me they are in a pretty good situation already, considering the job they hold. Talk to me about their “bad situation” when they’re making minimum wage, and have no benefits.

Let me ask you, if you were offered a job as a cashier with the management proposed pay scale and benefits, how would you feel about that?

47

Well, there is no shortage of brown faces bussing tables here in Chicago. Actually, there is no shortage of brown people doing all kinds of things here in Chicago, spanning the entire workforce spectrum from menial labor on up to CEO. Hell, I’m white, and I’ve bussed tables, scooped ice cream, and stacked 40-lb. boxes of books. (Given, those were a while ago now, but still.)

May I dare to suggest, however, that there is frequently a correlation between brown faces who bus tables (as opposed to brown faces who run corporations) and level of education/English language skills? And on occasion, legal immigration status (or lack thereof)?

I also take issue with your comment about people who “never had a chance.” Almost everyone has a chance. At least healthy, young people of normal intelligence who have no adverse immigration issues almost always have choices. Some of the options may take more work than for someone who was born with more advantages, and some may force them to make unattractive choices, but there are always options.

Hell, I once had a co-worker who grew up here in the projects, had her first baby at 14, and had 3 more after that. The last time I saw her, she had finished her degree in accounting and had a solid, professional job, and had moved her family out of the projects. It took a lot of hard work and some pretty hardcore determination, but she did it.

You have ranted about your job situation several times now, and you got lots of great suggestions on how to improve matters, and lots of encouragement. Why are you still in Santa Cruz, applying for bussing jobs that you already “know” you won’t get?

48

I have no idea what this means! Who has indicted poor people? Who has even implied that if they worked harder or were better people they wouldn’t be in a bad situation? For that matter, who has implied that the grocery store jobs even are a bad situation?? THEY AREN’T! Every single person has reiterated over and over that these people have cush jobs making more-than-decent bucks with excellent benefits. What threads are you reading, because it’s sure not any of them on the Straight Dope that I’m familiar with!

49

If I may be so bold, while it is true that no single poster in this thread (or as far as I know the various Union/Strike threads) has explicitly stated “Fuck the Poor”, it seems to me that the attitude is at least somewhat implied.

In general, it gets rather frustrating to listen to folks that are coming from a position of privilege act as if we live in some sort of meritocracy, where all that is needed is a little hard work and some gumption to succeed (the implication being that if you are poor or do not have a job that there is something wrong with you).

Equally annoying are the folks that seem to worship the so-called Free Market. The notion that these imbalances will be corrected, while possibly true, seem to ignore the very real human misery that is going on right now this very moment.

See, most of this comes from a difference in values and political ideology. It is hard for some of us to deal with what looks like callousness and brutality from the folks that are running the show right now and their supporters.

To look at this another way, I believe that it is morally wrong to treat people as if they are disposable commodities. From where I stand, it seems as if this is the natural inclination of The Market to do so. Short of some form of check of control, I do not see how the market will correct this (as after all, it is not in any way in the best interest of those that currently hold the means of production). Until someone comes up with a better plan that supports the dignity of the workers as well as their inherent humanity, I will support organized labor.

50

Fuck. The above post is from me, not Spiny Norman. Sorry for any confusion. (Blasted cookies and my inability to pay attention.)

51

I’d support organized labor too if its focus was dignity and humanity. The supermarket workers in question HAVE dignity and humanity and will continue to have it even under the management plan. They’re striking because they’re not getting enough goodies under the mgmt plan, not to preserve their dignity.

52

Won’t somebody think of the children!!
even sven - You have demonstrated an even greater lack of economics knowledge than usual:

Economics is about choices. You can’t have everything.

No one “deserves” anything at the expense of another persons labor other than what they are willing or able to exchange for it.

You can pay everyone x% more a year but expect a proportionate increase in the cost of the stuff you buy.

$0.50 an hour in a third-world country goes a lot furthur than it does in the USA.

There is nothing magical inherent to America that allows us to ignore the laws of supply and demand and basic economics. If you make it expensive to do business here with excessive rules and regulations, regardless of how good intentioned, businesses will move to countries where people feel luck just to have a job.

Any job is better than being broke.

Punishing “corporations” as if they were people only punishes the workers who lose their jobs when plants close or layoffs happen. “Enron” didn’t screw it’s employees, a few corrupt executives did and should be held personally accountable.

You can’t blame people for wanting cheap products. As I already mentioned, the next best thing to earning more is being able to purchase more with the same amount of money.

People can only control the decisions they make. Poor people can’t help being born poor but they can make decisions that don’t exacerbate the problem - drugs, teen pregnancy, droping out of school, etc.

MBAs are, in fact, taught ethical treatment of employees. We are also taught that if a company does not generate evil profits, everyone will be out of work.

If someone else is willing to work harder for less money than you, explain to me why you deserve your job?

I don’t really understand how our employer became responsible for anything other than providing a safe work environment and a paycheck.

53

It means “I’m completely with you on that”. :smiley:

Sorry…

Joking aside, my impression was that even sven’s rant was simply about some people’s attitudes. It seemed to me that it was set off by the supermarket thread but it wasn’t exclusively about that particular case. In any case, as I indicated previously in this thread, I’m not rabidly blindly pro-union and I didn’t agree completely with everything he said. I was agreeing with the part I quoted which wasn’t even from the OP but was from a response that he had addressed to me. I have seen the “Fuck The Poor” attitude (not necessarily in this thread) that he’s talking about and it does irritate me and that’s the part I quoted and agreed with. Now, unless you’re going to tell me that such an attitude doesn’t exist in the world or that you agree with that attitude, then you and I have no argument.

54

What an interesting definition of “humane” you must have. Ah, well. Ta! Ta! Send us all a postcard!

55

American fascism is, of course, corporate fascism, in which the state becomes a tool of the corporations.

You say may post isn’t lucid, feel free to question any other points you don’t understand clearly. I’m here to help.

56

I’m in agreement, too. How the hell did this happen?

Oh, yeah, in corporate fascism the state is the tool of the corporations, so state power IS corporate power. No inconsistency at all there, after all.

57

It amounts to welfare when the government is contracting with the corps to make $75 hammers and such, as many conservatives have pointed out in the past.

58

Can you provide a cite to such a happening? I bet there’s a good explanation for some of these $75 hammers. Let’s hear some specifics.

59

Actually the hammer cost $400!!!" And Vice President Al Gore, half of the greatest team to run the U.S. in the last century, made an award out of it:

http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ll/sells/hammer.html

http://www.ilsr.org/columns/1995/26Sep95.html

There is a “debunking” of the hammer story here:

http://home.olemiss.edu/~jmitchel/class/hammer.htm

But I’m made suspicious of it because, although it seems to offer good reason for supposing that the hammer cost less than $400, it admits the hammer was still overpriced and refuses to even offer a guesstimate of what its actual cost was, saying there was “no way to know” what an individual hammer cost under that contract. In short, I smell bullshit there. And this debunking story does confirm the general fact that DoD contracts are often ridiculously overpriced for a variety of reasons.

Glad to be of help.

60

You call that a cite? :smack: Good grief, man, your two cites casually mention a story about a $400 hammer; they provide absolutely no documentation thereof. By those standards, I could find some web page which mentions casually that there are alien invaders taking over Vermont and that’s why the Yankees beat the Bosox, and you’d have to consider it a cite. Good lord.