Labour & Pop Culture: Electronic Plantation

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Electronic Plantation” by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. 

This song examines how employers have made employment precarious through various strategies, such as off-shoring jobs, free trade agreements, and electronic monitoring of employees.

The song is pretty direct about economic globalization:

Pit the whole world against each other
For who will work for the lowest wage
The rest of you can die
As epidemics rage

Yet it also really brings home the relationship between political decisions and the impact these have on the working lives of real people:

Same old job
Now you're just a temp
Less pay, no benefits
No raise, no vacation
Or sick leave days

Some of the lyrics seems a bit polemical:

We monitor you all
Every time you leave your chair
Or talk on the phone
One minute overtime
At the toilet
And you're fired

Yet even in my privileged position, I’m subjected to electronic monitoring (soon to be intensified with the roll out of the Student Success Centre) which will be used to ensure I meet whatever service standards the employer sets. Whether the benefits of this will offset the costs are unclear…

This is a fan video (best one I could find):



Ya-Ha-Ha
Ho Ho Ho
Shipped your job to Mexico
But we got plans for all of you to re-train

Pit the whole world against each other
For who will work for the lowest wage
The rest of you can die
As epidemics rage

Worked hard all your life
Now you must go on line
And stare all day
At a little plastic screen

Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation

Same old job
Now you're just a temp
Less pay, no benefits
No raise, no vacation
Or sick leave days

Chain the slaves to the oars

Faster, faster, row some more!
In carpel tunnel caverns
Til you break

We monitor you all
Every time you leave your chair
Or talk on the phone
One minute overtime
At the toilet
And you're fired

Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation

Only use we've left for you
Is burn you at both ends
Locked in the research triangle
Shirtwaist fire's flames
Lot's of people need your job

And you can be replaced

Replaced
Replaced
Unemployed and overqualified

Strikers who gave their lives
Fighting for basic human rights
That don't mean nothing anymore

Got you back down on the floor
Through the wto
Rich get richer
Poor get poorer

Factory or phd
You are all termites now
Laptop is your ball and chain
Til we downsize you away

Shop at home
Is your reward
Your best friend is a mouse

Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation

-- Bob Barnetson