"...there is an understanding among all employers,
and all of them resemble one another. All are almost equally irritating, unjust, and harsh."
--Mikhail Bakunin, ~ 1870's
"The Capitalist System"
Your boss will never do the same work as you do. And if they do, it will never be as much or for as long as you. This is the unbroken rule for all industries and all businesses.
Your boss will never be able to appreciate your eight-hour days -- your endless toils and pains. If there was a point where they were in your position, it was many, many years ago. And all the ladder-climbing they've gone through gives them a sense of superiority over you.
Bosses will always preach about all the sacrifices they've given to the company. Then they suddenly believe this gives them a moral right over you. A right to judge, to examine, to monitor, to interrogate, to suspend, to demote, to warn, and finally to fire you. This is the mentality of your boss and supervisor.
They don't do the job, but they'll judge you about it; they can't stand the labor you do, but they'll still criticize you about it. This is your boss, and it is the same in all businesses.
"...each man has a right to live. And what does that mean? It means that he has the right to make his living. It means that he has the right to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands the equal of every other human being beneath the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor -- the labor of his hand and of his brain."
--Robert Green Ingersoll, 1876
"Centennial Oration"
If their business isn't going well, your boss will have to take a pay cut. That means they'll have to give up the caviar and the trip to Europe. But when business isn't going well, the worker is laid off. The common worker, responsible for all of society's wealth, is called "a redundancy." Your boss worries about the next luxury item; you worry about rent and your family. Do you really have the same interests and understanding?
Your boss can leave work whenever they want, but you are there eight hours a day. Sometimes, ten or even twelve hours. They will take two or three hour lunches on occasion It is as though the business is simply a toy they pick up and leave behind when they like. It is because they worry about their vacation and luxury expenses; not because they have to worry about feeding their family.
Only your co-workers know about you and what it's like to work. They share the same fears about their families and their income. Workers are employed exactly for this reason. But if we want to have control over our income, or being laid off, we need to organize. Just one of us can't change things for themselves very much. But all of us, organized and ready to strike, can control our work environment -- the thing our families and livelihoods depend on.
"These two classes, consisting of relatively few capitalists who own tools in the form of great machines that they did not make and that they cannot use, and of a vast army of wage workers who did make these machines and who do use them, but who do not own them—these two classes' tool-owners and tool-users; that is to say, masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited; to put it into perfectly plain terms, robbers and robbed-these two economic forces whose interests ceaselessly clash, are pitted against each other in a mighty struggle for the mastery."
--Eugene Victor Debs, 1905
"Class Unionism"
Punkerslut,
