‘Fire and hire' is the most blatant example of a practice that has existed most
recently since the Thatcher era. Zero hour contracts are itsinstitutionalisation. No one dependent on selling their labour has ever feltsecure but now with the P&O scandal the fiction of ‘rights' at work has beenblown apart. ---- Under capitalism, work is our means of survival, a need. Atbest we can earn enough to be comfortable producers but never enough to escapeour dependence on employment. At worst we can work hour by hour remaining coldand hungry. Is work a choice? Only in as much as having food and a roof over yourhead, or starving and being excluded from society are equal choices. However, asprecarious and poorly paid as it is, capital needs our dependence on it forsocial control, whilst ‘bread and circuses' and sheer fatigue distract us fromthe theft of the value of what we produce.The long since gone promise of a job for life was only ever a sentence to beserved, not a privilege to be savoured. If wage labour was so good you can besure the rich would have kept it for themselves!The big lie is that work is standardly 9-5 or an 8 hour day - it never has been.We are forced into unpaid choices dictated by work that under cool reflection areabominable - to wake at 6, nourish and prepare ourselves for an unchosen journeyfor which no one pays us. A lunch break chained close to our machines.Then the journey home, shopping, food and laundry accomplished in a timescale tomeet bedtime to recover and repeat the process. Rest is a disturbed sleep andrude awakening to fit in with the work clock again, day after day for the wholeextent of our fit and healthy existence.As Paris revolutionaries said in '68 "The difference between our work lives andour leisure time is that no one pays us for the work we do in leisure time."The wage labour gulag rules half our waking lives for two thirds of our lifespan- and that's if all goes well. What do most of us think we're working for? Atfirst escape the dread of the poverty of benefits but ultimately the abilitysomeday or other to escape work itself!Whether we are lucky enough to enjoy our jobs or loathe them, the common factoris we simply have no choice. Even if we love our job we don't have the choicewhen to go in, how long we stay there, whether to choose not to work or when wefinish. As for the social benefits? Think of the style of relationships you areforced to tolerate at work, the petty power, the instruction, the hierarchies anddemands without your decision or consent. These are the exact opposite of therelationships we choose to create freely amongst our peers in any other part ofour lives where we have some control. Dignity and belonging, meaningful activityand contribution are not synonyms for wage labour, they are the opposite to befound in its rejection and abolition! P&O is just the tip of a titanic iceberg ofthe abuse and exploitation of workers everywhere. We must defend jobs and improveworking where we can as our current means of survival, but continue to recognisethat while dole is poverty, ‘work' is slavery - one solution, revolution!https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2022/03/23/the-wage-labour-gulag/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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