Dehumanization in the Capitalist Workplace

Along with the relatively recent rebirth of a movement against economic injustice has come not only questioning not only of the great wealth divide but also the structure of the capitalist workplace itself. As jobs disappear many are re-examining the hierarchy of the American labor force and formulating ways to make it more just and humane.

Marxist economist Richard Wolff points out that financial transactions don’t work within the family unit because they promote greed and discord, so why would anyone expect these same skewed priorities to function any differently in the workplace?

Capitalism requires all workplace interactions at work to have, at their foundation, the profit motive that requires the maximum accumulation of capital is the goal of any endeavor. In a service industry such as a hospital, library or school, this goal translates to servicing the greatest number of people with the lowest amount of expenditure. This is effected by a work speed up requiring more desk hours, patients and ever-increasing class sizes. In order to enforce this speed-up, the pressure is applied to middle management.

This group consists of folks who are offered extra goodies in exchange for extracting the maximum amount of monetary value from the effort of each worker, like squeezing as much juice as possible from an orange. There are always people willing to control others in return for their own personal comfort but no matter how you slice it, this process is inherently unpleasant. 

In the workplace it is commonly accomplished in one of two ways: manipulation or intimidation. Most often, it winds up being a combination of both. Manipulation includes not only the concept of worker discipline, but the more pleasant aspects of a worker/manager relationship as well. For example, praise for work is included here. While, in some cases, this may be genuine, it also serves the function of motivating the worker to continue to work hard. Intimidation is the method that is more fundamental to the manager/worker relationship. Every interaction at work harbors veiled threats to the survival of the worker because, at any moment, his position could be terminated. In the private sector, where the“employment at will” doctrine prevails, job insecurity creates perpetual stress. It is only with the advent of union protection that working people were granted a bit of relief from this sword of Damocles. 

In an inauthentic, contrived, highly-pressurized environment like the capitalist workplace, collateral damage is everywhere. In public sector work, managers are trained to distance themselves from treating and even perceiving their subordinates as human beings. Training workshops are instituted to instruct them not to engage their underlings in genuine conversations about the actual concerns in their lives. Any opening that might let friendship in must be slammed shut. This would interfere with the credo of putting production first and foremost. A philosophy where suppressing anything close to emotional intimacy is an absolute necessity.

For starters, we can begin rethinking and reworking ideas that have ceased to function properly and replace them with a more beneficial and productive vision. We all deserve something better. How can we create a cooperative workplace? Is there a way to pay people for creative contributions to society, not just wage slavery? A cooperative model would be a good starting point. Those who have a say in their lives at work will be more likely to pull together for a common goal. In a world where everyone can earn compensation for some kind of contribution, there would be no need for every exchange to be predatory or adversarial.

Alliances are stronger than hierarchies. Subordination only breeds varying degrees of resentment.. We are all tired of the tired old degrading capitalist model that is now longer functioning. Instead of begging for a piece of the pie, now is the time to throw out the moldy mess and begin to bake something entirely new.

Sexism Must Die!

It's undeniable that the Republicans are waging war against women. But just how are women faring in other political communities, for example that of the 99%? Has sexism been defeated in the sixty plus years since the emergence of second-wave feminism, dated roughly from the popularization of Simone De Beauvoir's book, "The Second Sex," first published in 1949, but translated into English and read widely for the first time in the fifties.

I wish I could report back that the Occupy Movement is free of sexist bias, but honestly, I can't. It is undeniable that many young women, as well as young gender non-specific types, are stepping up with competence and assuming power, but an alarming crisis of self-esteem and bias still persists in the meetings I have attended. Women are still hesitant to speak up and will undercut their statements with phrases like,"I don't know that much about this but..." There is often a preponderance of males in meetings and when it comes to stepping up to summarize goals and lead groups, men still dominate the proceedings.

A Workers Assembly meeting I attended this weekend was about two thirds male to one third female in composition. This probably occurred because union membership is skewed to favor higher paid, better jobs, which are primarily held by males. This is not to imply that women are silent at these gatherings. Women my age (fifties and sixties), for the most part, don't seem to have problems speaking out. Some younger women are taking leadership as well. But more pervasive overall patterns of discrimination and even self-suppression are apparent and more difficult to erase.

Last night I attended a second small meeting of an Occupy spin off that was a small group of boomer males with only a couple of women. A very articulate woman took notes at the last meeting and she was drafted again, somewhat against her will, as note-taker at this one. Of course, that was after all the males refused to volunteer and their gazes turned toward me. I replied, just as the men had, that I didn't have a laptop or know stenography either! I didn't address the gender bias because I was caught off-guard. I thought we dealt with this in the sixties when we women walked out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) because we didn't want to be secretaries and coffee fetchers.

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. The fact of the matter remains; this prejudiced behavior is unacceptable and it will only serve to undermine our movement. At this point I'm trying to pull together a presentation of sexism and homophobia that both young and old can understand. The very lifeblood of our movement depends upon it!

State by State Civil Rights?

Women Worked Long and Hard

Yes, I am glad that our frightened, ultra-cautious, politically pandering president gave a grudging nod to same-sex marriage after a swift one to the behind by butt-kicker, Joe Biden. But I am not happy with the sentence he used to qualify his decision, the one relating to Sasha and Malia friends who have very nice, acceptable queer parents. Civil rights should not be dependent on niceness or acceptability. Even the craziest and nastiest minority members deserve to be treated as human beings.

Same-sex marriage rights, or other civil rights for minorities have and will continue to lose when put up for a vote by the majority. The pitches for these votes repeatedly call upon representing "the will of the people." But exactly who are the people? I have always been deluded into believing that I am one of them.

Women did not win suffrage by a majority vote. It was through prolonged political struggle. Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution pass giving over one half of the population the right to determine their own destinies through the ballot box. The first stirrings of that movement occurred as far back as the 1820's, one-hundred years earlier.

So many of us will not live to see victory for LGBT civil rights. By victory, I mean full federal constitutional protections on every level, from health care, to job discrimination, to immigration, inheritance, tax law, everything that heterosexuals take for granted. These rights extend far beyond the simple concept of marriage. They are the building blocks that could help create a foundation of a fair and equal society, at least on paper.

In My Mind I'm Shunning Carolina

I hate to admit it but my partner and I just missed having summer vacation plans to visit North Carolina. We had heard from many friends that Asheville is an oasis of progressive thought in a vast desert of a mindless, self-righteous brand of hate-mongering Christianity that scares the crap out of me.

Now, with the overwhelming passage of unnecessary and repetitively anti-gay Amendment 1, North Carolina has proven itself to be a place worth avoiding. Because of it, not only will queers be unable to obtain rights connected with marriage or civil unions, unmarried heterosexuals will likewise face discrimination and the inability to be legally recognized in any way whatsoever. A couple of commie-jew-dykes like us have no business spending our precious money and time in this environment.

The last time the state of North Carolina amended its constitution was to ban interracial marriage! So the precedent is as clear as their desired result. I often wonder what this country would be like if only the South had seceded.

As far as summer vacation goes, Deborah and I will be visiting one of our favorite countries, Mexico. Many expatriate Americans of all stripes reside there. Perhaps the new wave of immigration will be in the opposite direction. Anyway, like so many Jews of our generation who are referred to as paranoid and neurotic, we are always on the lookout for a place to go, just in case of exile. I would term this kind of sensibility practical and realistic rather than cynical and far-fetched!

May Day in Oakland--Protest and Repression

New Oakland Police Tank

Bloodlust on the part of the O.P.D. began just after noon in downtown Oakland when the boys and babes in blue trotted out their latest toy, a tank-like armored police vehicle. This early afternoon show of irrational force included flash-bang grenades, tear-gas and warnings to get off the streets and into the Plaza and served mainly to infuriate all present who care about freedom of speech and assembly.

The group proceeded to City Hall under this armed escort battalion. The central theater of protest then moved to the Fruitvale neighborhood where thousands of people were lining up for the 3pm March for Dignity and Resistance. The group was animated, diverse and dedicated. The march was long and full of music and drumming. We stopped for a rally in San Antonio Park before proceeding into downtown Oakland at about 6pm. Police behaved themselves perhaps due to crowd size and multiple witnesses from porches and windows.

Black Block protesters were present as well with their flags and shields and masks. The only vandalism I witnessed was when one member threw a rock at a Fox News van. If I'd been younger, I'd probably have done the same. The TV news, of course, was loaded down with the evening skirmishes between police and marchers. We had already left by the time the night heated up.

Demonstrations like these, while gratifying, can no longer be the focus of the 99% Movement. Now, we have to get serious and do the hard work of organizing and mobilizing behind the scenes if we are ever going to see real change in this country. They can roll over us physically but they can't stop our resistance. To quote Emile Zola, "The truth is on the march and nothing shall stop it."

Approaching the End of Working Life

I just can't face any more contract concessions at my workplace. The last negotiations didn't go well. They began with pink slips from Gavin Newsom and his city cohorts and ended with pay cuts and furlough days. Only the MUNI transportation workers resisted the bad deal and voted no on workers shouldering the financial pain. 

I fought hard against the concessions but, like a cat who refuses to go gently into her box to be taken to the vet, all that kicking, scratching and stretching out my claws to hold onto the sides was wasted energy, I knew that, in spite of my best efforts, I would wind up in that box. It was easy to see that the people pushing me there were not only bigger and stronger but had all the power and authority on their side. 

So, I accepted the vet and life in the box and it's really not that bad because I am in the company of the finest of felines. Knowing this has served to make my demotion back into the class from which I came not only tolerable but a starting point for organizing. 

With new contract negotiation going on combined with the fact of my advancing age and a far more oppressive workplace, I have decided to bid adieu to the working world and spend the rest of my days writing, dismantling capitalism and traveling. I am so lucky to have a pension, and eventually I will also have social security, so that I can make this decision. 

At first, the thought of breaking with work was hard, what would I do with all that unstructured time? Now, it seems difficult to believe that I was able to make the demands of work palatable at all. In psychology this process is called resolving cognitive dissonance. 

I will be a retired librarian soon. They say when one door closes another opens, so I'm looking forward to not being stuck in that proverbial hallway too long. My conscious keeps repeating, Close the door, Joan, close that goddamn door! "Blow out your candles, Laura...and so goodbye."

Management Manipulation of an Economic Crisis

Richard Wolff

One of my favorite economists, the open and unabashedly Marxist Richard Wolff, states the following about a concept very foreign to American workers, democracy in the workplace. He begins by commenting that for a democracy-loving people, Americans sure do make a glaring exception for the world of work:

"If democracy belongs anywhere, it belongs in the workplace. Yet we accept, as if it were a given, that once we cross the threshold of our store, factory, or office, we give up all democratic rights. If this agreement at least delivered a rising standard of living, it might make sense that people would accept it. But now we have an economic system that imposes an undemocratic workplace and doesn’t deliver a decent economy in exchange."

Wolff finds it both stunning and amazing that a freedom-loving, group of people who extol the virtues of individual initiative should find an authoritarian-style work environment inevitable.He finds the uncritical acceptance of status hierarchy not only oppressive to workers but counter to productivity as well. 

Of course, the fact that co-operative style workplaces where everyone has a voice and an interest in the organization's success operate more efficiently and humanely is a no-brainer. Even when the product is public service at, for example, a large urban library, a democratic workplace could improve both morale and efficiency, making the institution more relevant and meaningful to all who are involved in its operation.

The current concept of increasing productivity involves a certain type of management that plays down any human commonality between those on the serving end of instruction and those receiving it. This strategy is basically just the sugar-coating of a management manifesto of manipulation. The workshop tips that proliferate in the civil service workplace are indicative of the contempt in which employees are held.  

What exactly are these apprentice managers, some of whom make only about $5,000 a year more than their charges, learning? Shocking, anti-human things like how to avoiding exchanging personal information or having any kind of a genuine relationship with inferiors. They are boning up on ways to ward off and field questions from underlings in order to avoid any degree understanding or emotional intimacy. They are provided a treasure trove of stock phrases to parrot back regarding sick pay, vacation pay or any kind of personal leave. In short, the foundation of this "management training" consists of indoctrination in the "skills" of remaining aloof and barking out directives at people who are assumed to be lazy, devious, potential scammers.

I have worked at my library workplace for seventeen years and have, of late, witnessed its deterioration into a sweat shop. It started when the San Francisco City Librarian gave birth to the idea to keep on only a skeletal staff. This wasn't done by layoffs but simply by no replacement workers being hired after folks move on or retire. This natural attrition has left a skeletal staff in the place where a full staff used to be. A micro-staff that is expected to work just as hard as the full staff used to. Why not five hours a day on the public desk instead of three? Why not have everyone work some evenings and weekend days? Why not have one person order books in three subject areas instead of just one?

This kind of "experiment" is taking place right now in workplaces across the country: speeding up production as salaries drop due to furlough days, fewer sick and vacation days, increased employee contributions to health and pension benefits or the elimination of these benefits altogether.

Yes, if nothing changes the workplace for the "lucky" few employed workers of the future will be upper management's wet dream and the working stiff's nightmare. The way they put it on 60 Minutes was that it's a "buyer's market" for employers. But all it really means is the value of labor has become dirt cheap and those who perform it, totally expendable.