The blog Organizing Work ran an interesting piece last week interrogating how worker organizing could have altered the trajectory of the story in A Christmas Carol (delightfully, using the Muppet version).
The post contains several astute observations, including that the workers manage to get a day off for Christmas from Scrooge by acting collectively and without the aid of supernatural forces.
What I enjoyed the most in the film was the overt shit-talking about the terrible character of the boss 9see the clip above). While it is easy to excuse a boss's behaviour as a function of structural pressures (e.g., the profit imperative), it is important not to lose sight of the fact that bosses have agency and could behave better than they do if they so wished.
So, we want to take anything produced by College Humour with a grain of salt. But this light-hearted examination of the history of sex work in the American west offers an interesting counterpoint to the typical portrayal of female sex workers in the western genre.
While you wouldn't want to cite this video in a paper, it does a reasonably job of highlighting the tension between exploitation and agency that lies at the heart of sex work. These themes are explored in AU's new course LBST 415: Sex Work and Sex Workers.
Netflix has recently released a new documentary entitled American Factory. This film chronicles the opening of a branch plant of Fuyao Glass America in economically depressed Dayton, Ohio by a Chinese billionaire. The location has previously been the site of a General Motors plant that was closed, putting thousands of workers out of a job.
The documentary (which notably includes no narration) tracks the first two years of the factory's operations and the clash of cultures that it entails. A trip to China for American workers--and the failure of the management strategies that they tried to bring back--was particularly striking. The vulnerability of the local workforce to exploitation and their awareness of their vulnerability is nicely captured.
The film explores the relentless work of employers to shed jobs and increase productivity (regardless of the cost to workers). It also does a nice job of exploring the tactics of both the union and the employer during a union drive.
This week’s instalment of Labour & Pop
Culture explores the issue of discretionary effort and the wage-effort bargain.
Basically, every job has components that are voluntary—where workers go above
and beyond what is required because they are intrinsically motivated to do a
good job.
Discretionary effort is one part of the
wage-effort bargaining—how hard employees will work given prevailing wages and
working conditions. When employers change wages or working conditions, this
often violates the psychological contract employees have with their boss.
The clip above (from Christmas Vacation)
humorously illustrates how workers view such violations. A violation, in turn, can
trigger a re-evaluation of the wage-effort bargain and perhaps a reduction in
discretionary effort.
Which brings us to today. Athabasca
University is being pretty terrible to its faculty members at the bargaining
table. There isn’t much individual workers can do in terms of withdrawing their
labour without engaging in an illegal strike. But we can individually withdraw
voluntary services.
For me, that is the Labour & Pop
Culture component of this blog. These posts have always been something I did on
my lunch hours to add some levity to the more serious posts I make about labour
issue (which stream into my courses for pedagogical purposes).
I just can’t justify doing extra work for
an employer that talks about respect and then advances proposals like company doctors. So I've decided to start actually taking my lunch hour. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have enjoyed offering
it.
Next Wednesday (Hallowe’en!), the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences is hosting a half-day symposium (entitled “Frost and Desolation”) as part of broader celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein.
One of the more interesting interpretations of Frankenstein is as a metaphor for the working class, one created by the bourgeoisie (in the form of Victor Frankenstein) which then tried to kill him. There are a couple of interesting essays about this available online—I like this one by Luisa Umana.
[T]he monster is a symbol for oppressed people. He is the proletariat that revolts against the bourgeoisie in class struggle. … [H]his very composition is symbolic of the laborers who were composed of many different types of people, larger in numbers, physically stronger, and less dependent on luxury than the upper classes.
I don’t think that there is much of a historical case Shelley writing with this metaphor in mind. Yet, as perhaps the foundational text of the sci-fi genre, Frankenstein’s framing of collectives as terrifying and monstrous (e.g., the Borg, Cylons, the bugs in Starship Troopers) may help explain the near absence of positive representations of collectives (e.g., trade unions) in the genre.
This week’s instalment of Labour & Pop Culture returns us to heady days of 1987, when hip-hop was beginning to penetrate mainstream American culture. “Paid in Full” by Eric B and Rakim explains the economics of crime. The song gave its name to a 2002 film about the drug trade in Harlem.
[Eric B]: Yo Rakim, what's up? [Rakim]: Yo, I'm doing the knowledge, E., I'm trying to get paid in full [E]: Well, check this out, since Nobry Walters is our agency, right? [R]: True [E]: Kara Lewis is our agent [R]: Word up [E]: Zakia/4th & Broadway is our record company [R]: Indeed [E]: Okay, so who we rollin with? [R]: We rollin with Rush [E]: Of Rushtown Management. Check this out, since we talking over This def beat that I put together, I wanna hear some of them Def rhymes, know what I'm sayin? And together, we can get Paid in full...
[Rakim] Thinkin of a master plan 'cause ain't nuthin but sweat inside my hand So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent So I dig deeper but still comin up with lint So I start my mission- leave my residence Thinkin how could I get some dead presidents I need money, I used to be a stick-up kid So I think of all the devious things I did I used to roll up, this is a hold up, ain't nuthin funny Stop smiling, be still, don't nuthin move but the money But now I learned to earn cos I'm righteous I feel great! So maybe I might just Search for a 9 to 5, if I strive Then maybe I'll stay alive So I walk up the street whistlin this Feelin out of place cos, man, do I miss A pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of Me and Eric B, and a nice big plate of Fish, which is my favorite dish But without no money it's still a wish Cos I don't like to dream about gettin paid So I dig into the books of the rhymes that I made To now test to see if I got pull Hit the studio, cos I'm paid in full
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture examines the new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story. The film reveals the origins of the Han Solo character. This post contains some spoilers so you may want to stop reading if that bothers you.
The film introduces Solo as an orphan on the ship-building word of Correllia. Orphans are made to steal for criminal gangs in order to survive. This premise a very 19th-century, Dickensian feel to it.
Solo’s only way out is, ultimately, to join the Imperial Navy. Taking the king’s shilling was historically a common pathway out of poverty for lower-class British males
Solo eventually hooks up with a criminal gang but a botched heist puts him in a debt bondage to a bad guy. Relationships within the criminal gang (and between gangs) turn out to be very all-against-all and serve as a nice metaphor for the competitive individualism of capitalism.
Action eventually shifts to the mining planet of Kessel where slavery and ecological destruction are evident. While a heist is underway, Lando Calrissian’s robotic co-pilot triggers a slave revolt, which causes the destruction of the enterprise. It was interesting how quickly control slipped away from the mine’s operators.
More hi-jinx ensue and we eventually get to the climax of the story. Solo only manages to get out of the resulting jam he’s in by working collaboratively with others who are seeking to overthrown the corporatist fascism advanced by the Empire. Overall, some interesting commentary on labour and work in a galaxy far, far away.
Last week, I spent a day in Banff at the AUPE labour school. Chatting with union members, activists, and staff, several commented on the Alberta’s 2018 Speech from the Throne. This passage caught everyone’s attention:
The people who work across our public sector are integral to the services Albertans rely on. We have already reached practical agreements with no raises and better job stability with many labour partners, including teachers and nurses, and a tentative agreement has been reached with our allied health professionals, such as paramedics, lab technologists and X-ray technologists.
The government has sought (and achieved) wage freezes as a way of reducing the cost of government. As a result, most public-sector workers’ wages will decline by the value of inflation for the next two years. For some workers (such as teachers), this will mean they have taken wage freezes in five of the six most recent years.
Wage freezes are often unpopular because they can have big implications for workers. Continuing with the teacher example, for example, these workers saw the real-dollar value of their salaries decline by more than 7% over the past six years due to un-addressed inflation. These losses affect their wages forever (due to lost compounding) and there is also a knock-on hit to their pensions.
Unions undoubtedly make gains when taking zeros (e.g., workload limits, better contract language) but forgone wages represent a significant transfer of money from workers to the government. Essentially, workers are subsidizing the operation of public services.
Several workers in Banff went further, noting that what the New Democrats (like the Tories before them) were doing was taking money from workers and using it to subsidize rich people and corporations (through income and corporate tax rates that are inadequate to pay for public services).
This was a pretty astute observation (many of my PhD-holding co-workers struggle to grasp this dynamic). And it raises interesting political questions. For example, what is the ND’s electoral thinking behind telling your supporters that “you gotta take a freeze so I can get re-elected”?
Probably it goes something like “you can be mad, but Jason Kenney will be worse so who you gonna vote for in 2019”? Now certainly Jason Kenney would be far worse for public servants. Personally, I loathe him.
I also loathe Dracula. But I don’t think it follows that, just because I hate vampires, I’m necessarily going to be a fan of Frankenstein’s monster. ("Better dead than undead!") And I’m certainly not going to cheer as it throws the public service into the lake to drown.
The anger about what amount to a betrayal of public-sector workers was palpable. I wonder how it will affect the ND’s electoral support come election time. Will public-sector workers fall in line? Or, will they be pissed enough to get out their torches and pitchforks?
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at the 2005 film North Country. The film is a fictionalized account of Jenson v. Eveleth Mines (1984), one of the first successful sexual harassment lawsuits in the US.
Jenson endured harassment from male mine employees beginning when she commenced employment in 1975. Jensen’s 1984 efforts to gain redress from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights were unsuccessful and she faced further harassment in retaliation.
In 1988, she and 14 other women at the mine filed a class-action suit against their employer. As the suit progressed, Jensen resigned due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite an invasive discovery process, the women won. The 1995 judgment, however, was profoundly damaging to the women and they appealed the miniscule damages award. The company eventually settled in 1998 for $3.5 in damages.
It has been awhile since I’ve seen this film. But, given the recent profile of harassment in Hollywood, it might be worth watching again. Interestingly, the only other block-buster style films I could find about sexual harassment were 9 to 5 (1980), the wretched Disclosure (1994), and Horrible Bosses (2011). The latter two reverse the usual power dynamic to portray men as the victims.
