May Day! May Day!
May. 1st, 2006 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcTraditionally the 1st of May is celebrated as Labour/Worker Day. The origins of this day, particularly with respect to its ties to Marxist/Marxian ideologies led the US and Canada to move their Labour Day to September. To some extent this has successfully differentiated between a day that celebrates working and a day that underlines the importance of workers' rights movements.
I think, however, that many who celebrate the former aren't fully cognizant of the incredibly powerful impact workers' rights movements have had on the world. Almost entirely for the better.
In feudal times, a very narrow strata of society owned private property. Most people were tenanted labourers: they worked on the land of their landlord, were charged a value for their residence (often squalid), and eaked out a subsistence living. With the advent of modernity came both the service sector and industrialization. Enterprises small and large required labour and capital. Arguably it was the labour that largely generated the capital. Profitability was substantively driven by keeping costs--labour mostly, and materials somewhat--low. And therefore keeping labourers paid as little as possible.
Common ways to do this included firing without cause (to keep others on their toes), overwork people to illness, injury or death, and to withhold earned wages at will. And these sorts of exploitations--treating workers as objects rather than as people--that led to the worker's rights movements. Make no mistake about it, these were adversarial relationships: initially owners and workers, but eventually the advent of a managerial class meant workers against owners and managers.
Few of us lived in a time when people routinely died working in factories--often in horrific industrial accidents. Or were maimed. When women workers were routinely sexually assaulted in the workplace. When employers hired thugs to beat up or kill those who dared seek fairness in the workplace. Initially trade unionists weren't arguing about the terms of collective agreements: they were arguing about staying well, staying alive, having a chance to raise families in security, economic and social. In many smaller towns, enterprises operated as employer, landlord, shopkeep, and schoolmaster. To lose a job was to lose...everything.
We live in a different world now--at least in Canada and the US. But the battles fought 100 years ago here are being waged today in places like Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. We might have (legitimate) concerns about buying "sweat shop" merchandise; trade unionists in those jurisdictions are happy we do--if we can help them leverage working conditions that in local terms are fair. They want living wages, not Canadian wages. They want to be paid for their work. They want to be able to engage with their peers, their employers and their governments in a discourse about how the benefits of industrialization can be a benefit to society--not a handful of entrepreneurs.
So Happy May Day! And here's a few things we should at the very least acknowledge as legacies of those commie pinko Bolsheviks from the past:
The weekend
Minimum wage
Anti-child-labour laws
Collective agreements
Occupational health and safety standards
Employer-paid benefits
Pensions
Family leave/maternity leave
Lunchtime
Adult basic education/literacy programmes
Human rights codes
All of these came directly from the work of trade unionists. Many others, like public education, are also substantially derived from their work. Rather than take these things for granted I'd like to say thank you to the women and men who fought these battles, so all of us might benefit from the richesse that is modernity.
Because if we don't cherish it, and aren't cognizant of its origins, it's suprisingly easy for it to slip away...
I think, however, that many who celebrate the former aren't fully cognizant of the incredibly powerful impact workers' rights movements have had on the world. Almost entirely for the better.
In feudal times, a very narrow strata of society owned private property. Most people were tenanted labourers: they worked on the land of their landlord, were charged a value for their residence (often squalid), and eaked out a subsistence living. With the advent of modernity came both the service sector and industrialization. Enterprises small and large required labour and capital. Arguably it was the labour that largely generated the capital. Profitability was substantively driven by keeping costs--labour mostly, and materials somewhat--low. And therefore keeping labourers paid as little as possible.
Common ways to do this included firing without cause (to keep others on their toes), overwork people to illness, injury or death, and to withhold earned wages at will. And these sorts of exploitations--treating workers as objects rather than as people--that led to the worker's rights movements. Make no mistake about it, these were adversarial relationships: initially owners and workers, but eventually the advent of a managerial class meant workers against owners and managers.
Few of us lived in a time when people routinely died working in factories--often in horrific industrial accidents. Or were maimed. When women workers were routinely sexually assaulted in the workplace. When employers hired thugs to beat up or kill those who dared seek fairness in the workplace. Initially trade unionists weren't arguing about the terms of collective agreements: they were arguing about staying well, staying alive, having a chance to raise families in security, economic and social. In many smaller towns, enterprises operated as employer, landlord, shopkeep, and schoolmaster. To lose a job was to lose...everything.
We live in a different world now--at least in Canada and the US. But the battles fought 100 years ago here are being waged today in places like Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. We might have (legitimate) concerns about buying "sweat shop" merchandise; trade unionists in those jurisdictions are happy we do--if we can help them leverage working conditions that in local terms are fair. They want living wages, not Canadian wages. They want to be paid for their work. They want to be able to engage with their peers, their employers and their governments in a discourse about how the benefits of industrialization can be a benefit to society--not a handful of entrepreneurs.
So Happy May Day! And here's a few things we should at the very least acknowledge as legacies of those commie pinko Bolsheviks from the past:
The weekend
Minimum wage
Anti-child-labour laws
Collective agreements
Occupational health and safety standards
Employer-paid benefits
Pensions
Family leave/maternity leave
Lunchtime
Adult basic education/literacy programmes
Human rights codes
All of these came directly from the work of trade unionists. Many others, like public education, are also substantially derived from their work. Rather than take these things for granted I'd like to say thank you to the women and men who fought these battles, so all of us might benefit from the richesse that is modernity.
Because if we don't cherish it, and aren't cognizant of its origins, it's suprisingly easy for it to slip away...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 12:18 am (UTC)Except in BC where the Liberals weren't anything provincially (or much federally) until the mid 90s. Most of the current "safe" federal Liberal seats out here were Tories until Chrétien came along...with Preston Manning.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 12:26 am (UTC)