Serious September: Day 5 - Journal
This morning it’s not so much dread I feel, but disdain. I wish alarms weren’t a thing. Imagine if our society was structured to work eight* hours a day when we felt like it. Having a daytime structure like 9-5 (which I would consider a fucking luxury at this point, because let’s be real, I don’t know anyone who leaves at 5), it blocks off the entire day, every day. No matter what the weather. No matter what tasks you might need to accomplish in your personal life. Day in, day out, without fail you are expected to be there. Expected to be present and giving all of yourself to the job. In many cases, with not enough compensation for your time. And if you don’t want to be? Best you fill out that holiday form several months in advance.
Yes, it makes sense to have everyone in a team arrive at work at the same time so they can be collaborative. So they can communicate the essentials, attend meetings… But everything else? I spend a large portion of my day standing in the corner of a tiny office, wedged in with eight other people, all furiously checking emails and plugging away at spreadsheets, as though these little torture chairs are the only place we could access this information and execute it.
I don’t think it would be enough for just one, or even a handful, of big companies, to say: ‘Enough is enough. We’re going to put employment welfare on par with profits’. While that would be great for the people who work at those companies (like Google*), what we need is a massive cultural shift. We as a society should be banding together in our numbers and demanding for fairness. After all, it is the masses who are actively generating the profit for the few - and fairness is absolutely achievable. But in this cultural gridlock called ‘modern’ society, it needs to be fought for. And I don’t understand why people aren’t getting more enraged about the fairness that is being kept just out of reach of them.
Is it because not everyone works in a boring office job? What about everything else? What about jobs like retail or hospitality - jobs that rely on the structure of the ‘working week’ because of us, the consumers?
An even better place to start. Retail and hospitality are two industries that rely on cheap labour to profit. Is it an impossibility to believe that the structure of the working week can’t be changed from the top down? That companies who manage to make millions of dollars profit every year, are physically incapable and not smart enough to introduce more flexibility? More security? Or even, more pay?
Because it’s risky? The structure of the working week is not something that could be overhauled in one foul swoop effectively - that could be disastrous in its own right. It’s about businesses actively and effectively taking steps to increase the quality of life for the people that make their work possible. I believe businesses have a moral obligation to provide, at a bare minimum: a living wage, job security, and humane working hours. If they can’t provide those three things then they shouldn’t be doing business at all. If employers cannot take care of their most valuable asset - their staff - then they do not deserve the time and energy that a person expends in generating that businesses’ revenue in the first place.
After all, our jobs are transactional. We complete a service for a fee. But what happens when that contract is broken, and we are required to go beyond the working week? Let alone 40 hours a week - I’m talking 50, 60, 70 hours, plus.
I ask you this: In what circumstances in society are we able to command people to complete a service for free? Can we walk into a hair dressing salon and demand a free cut because it’s ‘necessary’? No, we can’t. But I could walk into a salon and say to the Junior stylist, “look. I can’t pay you right now, because I’m doing more valuable things with my money. But you should give me a haircut anyway because you need the experience. You need to practice. If you want to be able to live the life you want, you need to prove you can cut hair. And I don’t know if you’ve heard but I’m kind of a big deal. If you cut my hair, I’ll be doing you a favour.”
The laws around overtime in this country currently deny people who work beyond their contracted hours the right to be paid. Tell me - what legal obligations is an individual under to work for free beyond their contracted hours? None. Absolutely none. The only circumstances in which an employee would feel it necessary to work unpaid overtime is because, on some level, they feel as though they must.
I can accept that overtime might be necessary if a person is inadequate at their job and needs more time to finish their contracted tasks. That person should go on to receive more training to help give them the tools to do this. But if a person is truly inept and cannot physically or mentally get their job done - then they should find other work, and should be encouraged by their employer (who should have given them all the tools needed in the first place) to do so.
But what if an entire industry is built on an expectation of long hours that are unpaid? You simply cannot have an entire company filled with incompetent people. If a building was filled with idiots, the business would fail. So what keeps people working late into the night, running their hourly rate down to illegal levels? What gets people into that situation in the first place? Who would willingly sign themselves up to a career that requires complete and utter devotion, and then stay in that environment, even when they’re being treated as an expendable ‘resource?’
Plenty of people. Those who are passionate, dedicated, hard-working and determined to advance. People who genuinely believe that suffering through the hours in the beginning is the key to the money, the security, and the better schedule that will exist for them in the future.
Big businesses exploit this false belief. They bank on people willing to sacrifice the best parts of their day, of themselves, of their energy, on trying to get this ‘desirable’ product or service out the door. And when there is a ‘glamourous’ allure… one that tempts with fame and fortune, then all these businesses have to do is sit back and watch people fight over an opportunity to earn less than minimum wage.
It’s a lie. It’s a trap. And the ‘working week’ structure allows for these attitudes to permeate through office buildings to the point that individuals are driving down their wage to peanuts. It’s compromising their health. People are sticking it out, because if they don’t, then all those extra hours would have been for nothing.
The only way that this can change is if we, the masses - the people who are actually executing the work that drive the profits - demand better. We have to come together as a unit and show upper management the numbers. Show them what hourly wages are reduced to when gross amounts of overtime is the norm - and why this is both inefficient, and inhumane. We need to know why overtime is both the accepted and encouraged practice. We are entitled to be paid for our work.
Nothing in this life comes for free. You are under no obligation to give your time and services without compensation. The only person that holds the power to demand fairness is you. Get angry at the injustice, because that’s exactly what it is. Now is the time to come together with those in the same position as you and put a stop to big businesses and their immoral exploitations.
