book packing: shit wages

book packing: shit wages: I'm late, the reason is apathy, and that's because of shit wages. I hadn't planned this as provocative announcement, it ju...

shit wages

I'm late,

the reason is apathy,

and that's because of shit wages.

I hadn't planned this as provocative announcement, it just came out, caffeine intoxicated, feeling like a wage slave and tired from the other work I need to do evenings and mornings


I've just Googled the phrase 'wage slave' to decide whether or not I am one, and this is what I found;

wage slave

Is a person with little to no education who works for wages. These people are usually slaves to their employer and have to kiss butt otherwise they will be fired.

oops, as I wasn't apologetic for being 5 minutes late, I broke the 'kiss butt' expectation,

so I think I am a wage slave,

but I object,

a 'wage slave' is supposed to be uneducated.  What has education got to do with it? Education is a private matter like relationship status, it has nothing to do with a work agreement. My emloyment contract is an agreement to work in exchange for an agreed amount of money, simple as that, why should slavery apply here?

I can't anticipate the repercussions to my comment, but I've been told an email was circulated and it seems to have caused some reverberations, hmm ...

So, going back to being a wage slave, I'm certainly not getting a salary, a fixed income for a title and position in an organization with obligations laid out in a detailed job description.  I don't want a salary. My life is my career, that comes first, I don't choose to subscribe to an organization in return for a salary,
I work,
to get paid,
to fund my life.
It's a simple agreement, and has no relationship to level of education or an obligation to kiss my  employer's arse.

colouring pens for projects at the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem

Everyone loves Sharpies! 

I decided to spend the money donated by my fellow worker at the book packing warehouse on Sharpies, and to trust that somehow I'd figure out who to give them to.

On Tuesday, our delegation had a meeting at the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem.  We met people at the Lajee Centre who had grown up in the camp and now organize activities such as summer camps and workshops.

The Camp hosts refugees displaced from surrounding villages during the 'Nakba' (catastrophe), so they have been there since 1948.  Just across the street was a poster, marking the spot where a 13 year old boy had been shot by a sniper just 3 weeks earlier, outside the UN building.

Families living in the camp are waiting to return to their respective villages, they have been waiting now for 67 years. They use the symbol of a key to express the right to return to their villages, and keys can be seen painted on many walls around the camp.  Conditions are cramped, and the supply of basic services such as water and electricity is unreliable.  We saw bullet holes in water tanks. Schools and clinics are provided by the UN, but funds for refugees are also need to support the current refugee crisis in Europe, so there is less aid available for people in places such as the Aida Refugee Camp.

I hope the Sharpies will be useful.

There were many powerful images on the walls around the camp and the message was clear, they are living in knowledge that one day this injustice will be resolved and they will return to their homelands. The names of these 27 villages to which the refugees will one day return are marked on walls in the camp, and the people wait.  








My impression was that people living in the camp express themselves through writing and drawing,  I thought this one of a tiger was particularly striking, 'HERE ONLY TIGER CAN SURVIVE'.
 

cash for Palestine

In my rucksack is a brown envelope with £50 cash and a letter asking me to take the cash on my trip to Palestine next week and to give it to someone there.  The note said I can't help in reality but here's some money for me to give to someone in need. I didn't know what to do or say or think,  £50 is more than a day's wages. But mostly I was struck with a strong sense of inadequacy.

The trip is funded by UNITE and supported by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and I'll even be getting a living wage from the union for the shifts that I'll be unavailable to work.  My participation is perhaps motivated by the opportunity to boost my sense of purpose and for stimulation.  It also comes with considerable responsibility, to report and to use this extraordinary insight to become more active in the solidarity campaign.  And now I have the responsibility of finding the most appropriate recipient for this cash from my co-worker. It's a person to person baton of solidarity, shit, makes me stop and wonder. 

I am humbled.

And, I'm reading a very insightful book in preparation for the visit by Tom Sperlinger who spent a term teaching literature at Al-Quds University in the Occupied West Bank 'Romeo and Juliet in Palestine, teaching under occupation' ISBN 9781782796374.  The book is a series of anecdotes from the author's interactions with students in the Occupied West Bank, and it's a good read.

'WE ARE THE ROBOTS'

As a warehouse operative, I took a lot of notice of a recent robot apocalypse article by Stephen Hawking,

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15

so the article predicts that the current trend of robots replacing manpower in many industries could facilitate a future whereby many low paid jobs will be done by robots, this would obviously be advantageous to the corporations as robots will just perform their preset functions, with no need for tea breaks or wages, or locker rooms or canteens or an HR department.  The use of robots instead of a human workforce will undoubtedly make production more efficient and business more profitable.

Arguably, I think the human race has been on this track for hundreds of years, historians will agree that in Western Europe this has been the case since the industrial revolution and now it seems we have reached a point where scientists have an insight into where it's all heading and it's this scenario of the future, that has the been the nightmare of science fiction, is fast being realized.  We now have cars that drive themselves, mail delivered by drones, big brother is watching us and who are we in all this? And what is our purpose?  As citizens we are locked onto a cycle of production and consumption that creates wealth for the few and leaves the rest of us bound to serve.

But this is not the point I'm trying to make, the thing that struck me about the article is that as a worker I often feel like a cog the industrial machine, and actually that's one of the things I really like about warehouse work, I love it that humans and machines work together to fill the boxes and get them to the waiting lorries at despatch, there's some beauty in that, human effort and machine power, evokes the image that has become iconic of the age of steam engines a sweaty man shoveling loads of coal to feed the furnace that fires the steam engine to power the big machine, there's beautiful steampunk imagery, and in my experience work, sweaty work with machines provides a meaningful existence.

I'm just a number on a payroll and that's good and comfortable and predictable, I like it that I can work like a machine, I don't want to break free and assert any individuality, I'm safe as a drone.  I don't matter, because we don't matter, if I don't turn up someone else will, my input can easily be replaced.  Some people might like to stand out and make a difference, be realized as an individual, but that's not for me, I just want to work and get paid.

And we all have lives, private lives, some people that pack books, play guitar, others tend gardens and some like me use choose the flexibility of a 1 day/week contract to travel, I don't partcilulary want to travel but I have a teenage son living in another country and so I do, I make my self unavailable for book packing and go elsewhere, I don't really know how to make the connection but what I want to say is that I like being annonymous, I like being a worker, a grunt in the machine, it's safe, big brother is watching me, so I put my head down and I work, I put a smile on my face and I pack books, I'm a low paid drone.  But that's fine, give me a uniform and I'll work my hours and then go home and rest, I'll clock in and clock out, and over a hot drink from the machine I'll be free to laugh and play with my co-workers at tea break, then we'll take off our uniforms for 10 mins a day so that we can work to the end of the shift.

As I've been saying, I'm happy to work like a drone, to be number on the payroll, why? Well that might be because the alternative is terryfying.  What if for some reason you stand out and the state wants to get you? What if you've alerted attention? What if you're on their radar? What if they're watching you?  What if you're being followed? What if you stand out?  What if you're on a list? What if you find yourself in a Kafkaesque nightmare, they want you?

And what do they think I've done? What is my crime against the State?

No,
I don't need to assert my individuality, give me my uniform and I'll work. Humans can be robots, Kraftwerk did it beautifully,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-R7t-ihoT4

love that track.

So, I have a message to you capitalist greedy pigs that Stephen Hawking (and he's smart so we should listen to what he has to say) mentions, you pigs that are planning to increase profits by using robots to do our work, listen you, back off and  let people and machines work together, yes, I know we need be paid, and robots are more efficient but I'm a human and I want to live in a society where humanity counts, so be accountable and pay for human labour, let your brothers and sisters do the grind, we like it, it makes us feel safe.




















 

t shirt design, hand of Sean

This is the t-shirt design I"m hoping will be accepted by the union to support of our recruitment campaign.  Other people's responses have made me think my original design is probably too blunt, and that people would find it rude.  It also expresses my kick arse attitude to apathy that probably needs to be checked.

So this more polite design will be sent to the union rep today and I hope for t-shirts by the end of the week!!

And I need to thank my buddy Sean for helping with the design, loving the 'hand of Sean' font, it's just right.

book packing: shut up or join the union

book packing: shut up or join the union: This is my message to all the people that moan about not getting shifts, I don't know why people make less fuss about the low wages, ...

shut up or join the union

This is my message to all the people that moan about not getting shifts,
I don't know why people make less fuss about the low wages,
it seems they are willing to do the daily grind
and get angry about  being denied the opportunity

(but guys, we need a living wage )

I was cancelled yesterday.
I designed a t-shirt to follow up on something I'd said to a fellow worker the other day;
"SHUT UP or JOIN THE UNION",
it was a red t-shirt with white writing, the delicious font was called yellow jacket,
anyway I got to the checkout and the price was £17 + £4.99  postage,
ooh, that would be about 4 hours' work,
er, I think I need another plan;
well I found a permanent marker and a plain top,
but I couldn't quite replicate the super-cool font,
anyway there it is ... and I'll wear it today, perhaps!

flexibility

No more holiday in June we were told (but come and see me if there are problems with that),  a couple of new titles are going to be released 'Grey by E L James the sequel to the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy by the same author and Harper Lee's new release Go Set a Watchman, so predictions are that the warehouse will be busy and in need of operatives.

But we are labour on 1 day a week contracts, the agency ensures we have one 7 and half hour shift/week, we get cancelled regularly on the morning of a day we've signed up to do a shift and are very often given inadequate shift and even if we are given a full week, the full time wage pack would be less than a living wage, so when I'm told I can't make my self unavailable for a shift it makes me mad, they are flexible but we are not supposed to be flexible

But I keep myself flexible, I do yoga, keeps my body supple and working for me, if I don't have time to do a full session at home (often I'm too tired), I'll use the bookshelves to stretch out after the bike ride and the constant bending and carrying books, I look after my body and keep it flexible, they are trying to put me in a straight jacket, no they won't they can't, if my body stops working, I can't work and that scares me - actually I had a kind of anxiety dream last night, big red swellings occurred in my body, the first was on my forearm then on my belly, another on my chest, huge red blobs that moved around under my skin, 'am I having a heart attack?I asked my sister, there were people around me, I wasn't alone, but I was scared, they made me lie down and I had a seizure I thrashed around (I wonder if I thrashed around in my bed in reality) when it stopped the swellings and what ever my body was going through then I asked what had happened, they said I'd had a seizure, then I noticed my mouth was full of thick white gunk that I had to expel it was vile, my mouth kept on filling up with gunk that I had to get rid of, when it stopped, I noticed half of my teeth were missing ...

So clearly I have anxiety about my body, it needs to work so that I can go to work, and I must be  flexible myself, Flexibility will be on my terms, not just to serve as flexible labour.

I think I'm an old feminist bitch

BEWARE LECH...

I was really satisfied with what I'd decided to write on a sticker to label the lech. I wanted to say "Don't mess with the women, useless wanker", 'I'm watching you, so beware, you revolting idiot"; I thought all this was expressed perfectly in the BEWARE LECH... sticker that I posted on the back of his high viz. He'd pinched her bottom as he walked passed, she's a pretty blonde Polish woman. It was disturbing, very disturbing and I'm quite sure they're not lovers. 

"Aren't you annoyed by that?" I asked her after we'd exchanged looks of disgust, "you could report that?", "oh no, it's OK" she said.  But it wasn't OK with me, so he got it.  I finally reacted to all the wrath that had built up over the years, all the times I'd allowed myself to be flattered by leery male attention, me and all the women on the planet who let their self worth be judged by male attention. So lech in the warehouse got it from me, I imagined him castrated there and then by the machinery of the line that carries the books around the warehouse - that his penis would get trapped and ripped off his body - he and all lecherous dick heads, they deserve it, it would be the beginning of the real sexual revolution, where men and women in all the imaginable variations of these stereotypes would just respect each other on equal terms ...

I'm angry at how women are objectified in this society, and mostly I'm angry about how women are so complicit, it's wrong, this is a sickness in society, there needs to be a clean up.  I watched a brilliant vampire/superhero film recently called  A Girl Walks Home Alone in the Night in which
a young woman wanders the streets of bad city and cleans up the place, eradicates bad men, she kills them by sucking the life blood and leaving them dead, to me the film fits in to the superhero genre, great film, I loved it, some reviews regarded it as comic but in my opinion that's shallow and probably written by a dickhead, I found the film deeply satisfying.  But of course it's only fiction.

Feminist writers are saying we are currently in the fourth or fifth wave of feminism, they can't seem to define these waves, they blur into one another, the point is that feminism gains momentum and then crashes, over and over again, without any real impact.  What society needs is a feminist tsunami.  We need a catastrophic shake-up that will override this deeply entrenched misogyny  once and for all and create level a playing field , where there is real gender  equality;  putting a sticker on someone's high viz in the warehouse isn't going to have much impact on the master plan, but I reacted, and women, all of you, please let's try, allow yourselves to envision a society that values female productivity as well as its form.

NB This post has certainly been inspired by a book I've read recently, it was one of those books that as soon as I'd reached the last page I went back to the beginning and read it all over again, just to make sure I got it OUTDATED why dating is ruining you love life by Samhita Mukhopadhyay ISBN 9781580053327.

book packing: on being cancelled and the PLC

book packing: on being cancelled and the PLC: Shift cancelled today, 10am tomorrow please reads the test message on Monday morning. It’s a mixed reaction. I think I want to...

on being cancelled and the PSC

Shift cancelled today, 10am tomorrow please reads the test message on Monday morning.

It’s a mixed reaction. I think I want to go back to sleep but don’t. I see the day ahead as a glorious opportunity … well that’s the notion I console myself with to get over the sense of rejection, and the rejection is real, I'm not needed today.  That raises some self evaluation questions …

Maybe I've been taking too many days off and now I'm marked as unavailable? 

Was I caught on CCTV checking phone messages in my locker – not at break time?

Maybe a team leader saw me chatting with Ditsy Blond and Boy Racer ... we were laughing ...

I did some good yoga stretches on the shelves in B loop last week, are there cameras there that I don't know about?

Did I spend too long in the toilet?

Of course I do understand that the real cause for being told that I've been cancelled that day is that book orders were less than estimated, and as I am part of a flexible work force, I'm not needed, so I get cancelled and the company increases it's efficiency (all looks good on  graphs for the shareholders) but us packers on the line we need to recover a sense of self worth after being cancelled.

So when the Union invited members to go to Palestine in support of the Palestine  Solidarity Campaign, I didn't hesitate to nominate myself, motivated by having an opportunity to be useful.

When a worker's shift is cancelled it makes a person redundant for the day, even when the sun is shining that rejection is a bad start, there's much talk among workers that goes like this;
"How many shifts did you get this week?", 
"Didn't see you yesterday, were you cancelled?"  
"Have you been cancelled?" 
"Yes I got cancelled, I was cancelled 2 days last week, and I've done 2 shifts so far this week, so I expect I'll be cancelled tomorrow"
 ... these are the terms people use to discuss our precarious and unstable work. We are available for work every day, but on days we are not needed, when orders for books are lower than predicted then we get cancelled; annulled, made void, invalidated, abolished, neutralized.

Of course I can empathize with Palestinians, they have experienced decades of systematic cancellation on a national level under Israeli occupation.

it's not cricket

I was in the toilet one day last week and overheard men talking outside, the snippet of conversation I overheard went like this

"it's really not on. It's just not cricket."

I scribbled on my arm "it's just not cricket", not sure why I did that at the time, I guess it was just something I'd wanted to think about, what does that mean? Firstly, I wonder what had happened, what wasn't on, and then why it wasn't cricket and what was cricket anyway .... all very confusing, so I guess I'd written it down to try and figure out what it all meant.

And this is what I came up with;

It's really not on, someone had done something that wasn't on, then was it off, er, if it was off, why was that problematic? Not on what? On their agenda, what was their agenda? They both seemed to know the agenda but it seems that the person whose behaviour seemingly didn't  match, was not on the protocol list. I know that having sex during working hours in the first aid room is not allowed because 2 people got fired for that.

And what's cricket got to do with it. Cricket is a game played by men in white trousers with a crease down the front and Imran Khan, a quite hot Pakistani turned politician, cricket is a game, it has rules and takes all afternoon, and women make the tea, they make cucumber sandwiches and fruit cake to serve in the pavillion at tea time, 'it's not cricket'... most activities aren't cricket.

The world of suits and cufflinks has obscure regulations, book packing is straight forward, books in boxes, the book needs to the title identified by it's ISBN number put in to the box with the right carton ID all written down on the piece of paper in the box.

The cufflinks do other things, maybe they make the pie charts displayed in the warehouse that present a visual display of information on performance to the warehouse, how many books were dispatched that week, the picking rate of us packers, how may packers did it take to send out how many books ... and then the information is used to guage efficiency of the warehouse,  sometimes this information is passed on to us in the meetings.

Last week we were on a go slow, in response to some of the full time warehouse staff receiving a bonus from the £69  million profit, they each get a bonus of £600 but not the agency staff, we are just pushed to work ever more efficiently, so we went on a go slow last week ...
is that cricket?

book packing: 20p/hour is an insult

book packing: 20p/hour is an insult: Still not a living wage Well it has been announced that there will be a 20p rise in minimum wage taking effect in October 2015 ...

book packing: I feel like an idiot

book packing: I feel like an idiot: Yesterday I arrived, a little late for the start of 10-6 shift, but that's not the point I want to make here, as I walked in my team l...

I didn't ask the CEO ...

A a presentation by the CEO, all warehouse and office staff on the site were there, sitting on wedding style chairs as we were subjected to a speech by the CEO about how the merger has been successful in maintaining the company's position in the changing market of book publishing.  He announced higher than forecast profits of 6% (for which word has it that the full time staff will receive a bonus) and that the company made a profit of £69 million and that this was good as it would strengthen the company in terms of ... he listed some areas of business that went over my head the but one resonated loud and clear and set off a massive siren in my whole body was that this level of profit would serve to enable job security among the company's employees ...

well did he realize he was addressing warehouse staff working tenuous contracts for minimum wage?

I formulated a question in my head, ' Mr Well Done, please explain how this £69nmillion profit relates to job security for warehouse staff on 7 and half hours/week contracts at a rate that is below a living wage?'

I sat there formulating just the right phrasing to make my point direct and articulate, which was pretty straightforward, I have to say and then I talked myself through a motivational exercise along the lines of, only regret the things you haven't done, just take one small step at a time, the first is simply to stand up and gesture that I have something to say, the rest would just follow:

the moment for questions came and one person asked about working with 2 computer systems and then the meeting wound up, people clapped, I didn't, and neither did those sitting around me,

I hadn't moved.

I hadn't moved.

I hadn't moved.

I didn't act.

I was dumb.

I was mute.  I was inert.

Damn me, damn me damn damn me, I let that opportunity pass, the moment when I had a chance to speak out, to make a difference, I had the chance of an audience with all the staff on the site and someone in management and I just sat there on the golden chair clutching the goody bag.

The goody bag had Nigella Lawson's book Nigellissima, ISBN 9780701187330, I love the way Nigella writes so candidly about food and eating, not that I can really afford to by the ingredients to actually practice her recipes, it's a diet of lentils and boiled eggs for me, but the book is suitably aspirational and I like the pictures, she doesn't mess around with mixing colours on the plate, the food in most of the cooking books we pack looks to me like a plate of vomit.

Fuck them.

And their bloody core values the most celebrated of which was HEART-

HEAVY EXPLOITATION AND REAL TYRANNY - corporation halfwit fuckers, bunch of idiots wearing cuff links and serving the stakeholders and investors.

20p/hour is an insult

Still not a living wage

Well it has been announced that there will be a 20p rise in minimum wage taking effect in October 2015 ...

and quite frankly that is insulting, just like it’s insulting in the warehouse when they tell us that there will be sweets available to us at meetings that are targeted to making us work more efficiently …

Is it me? 

Am I just too sensitive?

There is a big drive these days for efficiency, and of course it’s the workers that get pushed for greater productivity,

So we’ve mostly we've reacted by slowing down, and the offer of sweets and meetings is simply condescending, extremely condescending, makes me want to react...

However there’s a nice bloke Freddie, we both have 14 year old sons, not exceptional really but my son lives in Tehran so I only get to be with him a few times a year, I often consult Freddie to get an insight in to the world of 14 year old boys.  This started one day as we were both browsing Sam Stern’s cookbook, Cooking up a Storm, ISBN 9781844287741 and wondering if it might be suitable for our respective sons, as a Christmas present for his son and for me to take on my impending visit to my son in Tehran.  So the conversations have continued and recently Freddie has been very concerned about getting enough shifts because he hasn’t been able to save enough money to cover his boy’s bus pass for the term ahead and payment is due at the end of the month.

I don't see Freddie every day, he isn't getting the shifts he needs, during the winter slump in book sales we've all had to take a cut in the number of shifts we get offered each week and this can be very problematic in terms of covering living expenses, in Freddie's case, he's struggling to save for his boy's bus fare to school, but he's been saving gradually and when asked him last week he told be that he's getting there, £70/term is what he's needed to save.

Bloody hell.

Yesterday  there was a book sale, I chose novel that I thought might be a good read for my boy, I asked Freddie at the sale what his boy liked to read ... but I've forgotten his answer, may be because I was in awe that he could tell me with such accuracy, I felt like a voyeur to an intimate parent child relationship, so I blanked it immediately, not that I'm jealous exactly, just that it's another world, one from which I've been excluded. My boys have grown up with paid carers or family of their step mother, while I've been excluded so this domestic insight was  somewhat tittillating, and definitely   problematic. My conversations with Freddie about our teenage boys allows me to play at being a parent again, takes me back to the school gate and banal conversations about lost PE shorts and costumes for the Christmas play, I'm role playing of course.  The reality of my parenting experience is pounding the streets of Tehran.

At lunch time Freddie approached me as I was sitting among the group telling silly stories and they were all wondering if I would actually be able to eat the bucket load of cooked beetroot I'd brought in for  my lunch!!

Freddie asked if my boy likes football ... no I said, he's into skateboarding and magic tricks.  Later back in the warehouse, Freddie told me he's seen a book on football and thought that my boy might like it because boys all over the world are in to football (I'd made an aside at lunch table that my boy was far to cool to be into football), and now I really regretted this, ouch, he'd actually bought a book for me to take for my boy and I'd rejected it, God, I'm and idiot.

Shit, he's saving for his kid's bus fare and bought a book for me to take for my boy, ouch, I need to accept this and cover the cost.

About £1, he accepted.  And I will take the book to my boy and tell him about Freddie, who struggles for save money for his boy's bus fare.

And the point of telling all this is that his struggle will not be relieved by the insulting gesture of minimum wage set to rise by 20p rise/hour.

I feel like an idiot

Yesterday I arrived, a little late for the start of 10-6 shift, but that's not the point I want to make here, as I walked in my team leader was there with his clipboard, the usual greetings were exchanged and then he  told me that I was the only agency worker on the later shift today - fine, aren't I the chosen one - was the greeting I received throughout the day from the other warehouse operatives all full time staff on almost double my wage. 

The thing is, and this is a something that really bothers people, there are 2 types of warehouse operative, those on permanent contracts and those employed by an agency on 7 and half hours a week contracts  (and more labour is hired during busy periods, and people are working on a totally as hoc 0 hour agreement).  I am on a contract for 7 and half hours a week, as are most warehouse workers.

In the team meeting that morning our team leader was handing out pieces of paper to all the permanent staff, he didn't look at me as he announced that this was an outline of the new benefit package awarded to staff,

'ah is that the benefits' package for the (...) staff?'

It was a subtle protest I thought later on, but I was glad that I at least I'd made some response, better to have reacted than not to have reacted.  There I was standing around in a meeting with my co workers, we are all warehouse operatives and collectively responsible for moving the books around and getting them dispatched on to the lorries for distribution, on one level and on another I am doing this job on minimum wage and everyone else around me is paid considerable more/hour, in fact they get about £10/hour and now this updated benefit package waved under my nose, right in my face ... I don't know ... am I expected to just stand there, an exploited worker in dumb acceptance of such blatant inequality?  

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." George Orwell, Animal Farm

And we in the warehouse are at the bottom of the pile, low down on the hierarchy, working in conditions that are profoundly inhumane ...

Later on I was packing alongside Jim, who told me that if I'd been at the meeting last Friday, a special meeting with the warehouse management staff, he said it would have made me furious - the importance of teamwork was stressed - during the meeting.

Jim told me he was looking forward to April when he'd turn 55. He'd then start getting pension repayments from the 30 years he'd spent working for a bank,  and then he would no longer be totally reliant on the wages he got from the 2 jobs he was doing; book packing like me, and  delivering Chinese takeaways.  I asked him what he planned to do when he didn't have to spend so much of his life working, his immediate response was

- to spend more time with my wife -

 that was the most beautiful thing anyone could ever have said, spot on, I thought.

He is 55 years old, looking forward receiving his pension repayments, and the big change would be more time with his wife, wow, wow, wow, that was very humbling for me.  Partly because I don't have a wife or a husband or any one person in particular that I share my life with, so I was in awe of that, and that such a basic and fundamental human condition was being denied because of the time spent working to cover basic costs of putting food on his table; that was shocking, he's worked all his adult life and just wants time with his life-long partner,

this doesn't really add up.

Seems very wrong.
 

the white Lamborghini

At lunch break today I took my usual lunchtime spot in the canteen, and was joined by another regular and his cheese sandwiches (he eats cheese sandwiches every day, has done for the past year at least,  it used to be Marmite, then one day he announced the change, a cheese sandwich, and it has been cheese ever since), anyway, we started talking about cars because someone was selling his Jag. and the youngster had wanted to look at it (purely aspirational he confided).

A bloke in a blue shirt with cufflinks put down a plate of chips and a plastic cartoon of canteen food on the counter and planted himself opposite us, highly irregular, the bar that divides the canteen is usually only occupied by warehouse staff, those that like to natter and get a good banter going as we refuel during our short and unpaid lunch break, who's this then?

"I've counted the chips so don't think of helping yourself", then he went off to get a fork and soon returned, 
" I wouldn't eat chips without ketchup anyway" was my response, bloody hell I thought, he thinks we want to eat his chips, they looked good, but helping myself certainly hadn't crossed my mind,

then I turned to Ned to resume our conversation about cars, the cufflinks butted in some comment about not being concerned with car brands any more and that he'd lived in Toronto where he owned  a Bugati and lived in an apartment in a location that would be the London equivalent of  Mayfair but that in Toronto it was 2000 meters square, and that he doesn't agree with the overinflated cost of cars in this country, so he doesn't have fancy cars any more,

"well I'd like a Lamborghini"

"I have a friend who has a Lamborghini",

long silence from Ned and I,

and the memory came to mind of the ridiculous challenge I'd set myself in an Essex nightclub on a recent night out for cocktails with my nieces that had just turned 18; the quest was to pick up a guy with a Lamborghini,

I couldn't help myself, and although my voice was confident and I looked him straight in the eye as I urged myself to say it aloud, but I might have been  blushing when I asked,

"is your friend single?"

Ned, "you couldn't resist that could you?",  also blushing,

"he's gay",

"oh,
actually, I'm on the look out for a boyfriend with a Lamborghini, you see, I get around on a pushbike, but sometimes think it would be lovely to be picked up in car and taken out at the weekend, and then it occurred to me that if I was to be driven around it shouldn't just be any car ... and that got me thinking about what would be my ideal car to be driven around in, and I came up with Lamborghini, they are wonderful machines, and that's why I'm looking for a boyfriend with a Lamborghini."

"What about a Ford Fiesta?"

"No, absolutely not, why would I want to travel in a Ford Fiesta?"

"On a recent trip to the Bertelsmann Head Office  ..."

"What, you mean the head office of the corporation?"

"Yes"

"You meet the staff there?"

"Yes"

"Well, I have a message for them, can you pass it on?"

A concerned look from the cufflinks as he shoveled fork loads of dripping brown noodles into his gob,

"ask them if they are aware that there are workers in the UK distribution warehouse working on minimum wage, and don't they think this might be bad for the reputation of the corporation?

Can you pass that message on?"

"Well actually I think a cap on wages is not such a bad thing",

"I would agree if the cap was set at the rate of a living wage, but the current minimum wage is below that of a living wage",

"Ah yes"

Ned looking as if he's thinking - oh here we go another living wage rant -

"well actually the people I meet are in IT; I am just a contractor ...

so how is the Lamborghini driver going to go with the minimum wage?"

HA, YOU'RE ON MINIMUM WAGE and you think you can pull a guy with a Lamborghini?

Fuck, now I'm red with fury, what is he getting at? where's the connection? Well Yes I do actually, I don't have status issues, but it seems that he and the rest of the world does.

I looked at Ned, I need back up here boy,

so I tried to get back to the relatively uncontentious issue of the car and asked what colour his freind's Lamborghini was,

white,

oh yuk, that's no good I said, to regain some dignity,

and then I got twitchy and felt I needed to go, I can't remember what he was saying as I was putting the lid back on my lunch box (it actually never fits properly anyway, all I wanted for Christmas was a lunchbox with a properly fitting lid) but I recollect the words Lamborghini and minimum wage being repeated and restructured in each phrase, in between mouthfuls of drippy noodles and chips,

I left,

I got back to the warehouse and realized I was actually 2 minutes early; no one is ever back from lunch break early.

                                                     ----------------------------------


On reflection, cufflinks completely missed my point, I'm thinking aesthetics and all that idiot  could see was an impossible scenario of a warehouse operative on minimum wage aspiring to having a boyfriend with an expensive and high status car, got me thinking that people really do have issues about status, that it really means something to them, that some people really do construct opinions of others based on their perceived income, so he assumed I must be very poor and clearly thought I must be deluded to think I could hook a guy that drives an expensive car.

This bothers me.  Let's put aside the notion that I do want to catch a guy in the first place in order to focus on the status problem. I am beginning to realize that it matters to people, that as a warehouse operative doing a manual job on minimum wage I that I am somehow excluded from an association with people with better wages, is this what cufflinks was getting at??

This got me thinking about a book I'd browsed once by Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, ISBN 9780375725357. And then I found a film based on the book, it's on youtube, it was a great comfort, I placed myself as highly evolved in terms of the complex problem of status that is a major disorder in contemporary western societies, in that I must have reached the enlightened state of being a 'bohemian' and cufflinks - matey was still confused with status issues.

My fury has subsided and my equilibrium returned, thank you Alain de Botton.

letter to director of distribution

Today our representative is meeting ... the director of Distribution .....
we were invited by the rep to write down our concerns and that he would then present them in the meeting, which is today!!!

So this is what I wrote:

                         Dear ....

Operations Director - ............

I work as a warehouse operative at ... that is under your management. The people working as warehouse operatives do the physical work of moving stock in and out of the warehouse, my job involves packing books in to the boxes and get the boxes ready to meet the lorries arriving at their allocated time slots.  I’d like to take this opportunity to communicate to management that warehouse operatives are people and that these people deserve the dignity of being paid a living wage for their labour.

The fact is that the warehouse at ... is mostly run by people earning less than a living wage, let me take this opportunity to explain what it’s like living on a low income– I avoid the expense of running a car or using public transport and I cycle to work, last week I needed a front light for my bicycle with enough power to enable me to see the road, this was expensive, it cost £36, I earn £6.50/hour so I calculated that I worked 5.6 hours to pay for a light for my bicycle – you see, the return I get from my labour is really quite inadequate.  I could go off on a long rant about inequality and the cost of living but that would be inappropriate in this context. However I hope the above example illustrates the daily struggle of living on an inadequate income, it’s challenging.  I can however recommend you read one of our titles ‘The Nearly Almost Perfect People’ by Michael Booth ISBN 9780224089623, it makes the point that Scandanavian societies are based on principles of equality and that this produces basically happy people – that was an aside.

So back to the main issue, we made a request for a living wage to our employer ... through the staff forum; the response was that the hourly rate of £6.50/hour was legal.  Point taken, the warehouse operatives under your management on the ...  site are paid the legal minimum set by the government.  But the government does not pay our wages; we are working for a large and profitable corporation.

 I have a question.

This company is part of a large and reputable coporation and a globally recognized brand, so surely this status carries with it some social responsibility.  Considering the financial success of the company that runs in to 100s of millions of euros and growing profits for the stakeholders don’t you think that it might be damaging to the corporation’s reputation that workers in the distribution warehouse at ... are paid less than a living wage?