Funnily enough, the idea for this post had been floating around in my brain for the last week or two, when I came upon a post at fee.org, “Thoughts On Work and Working“. As the post’s author, Sarah Skwire writes:
The economist Dierdre McCloskey says the way that we as a culture talk about things like work and business and money changes how we feel about them. She says, in fact, that the biggest push to bring us into the modern world was a change in the way we spoke and wrote about work and business. That means that what we say when we talk about work matters. It matters if we think and say that work makes you “a slave to the man” or “a cog in the corporate machinery.” It matters that we think and say work is degrading. Or fulfilling. Or creative. Or deadening. It matters that I just called it the engine that drives the free market.
For some time now, the engine of human advancement, the free market, has been attacked relentlessly in American culture, media and academia. As Skwire notes, that attack, in some respects, frames the way we think about work. One of the most popular terms of late has been “wage slave”, usually in conjunction with low-paying jobs in any sector, although, at least within an American context, you see it most often linked to fast-food workers, or Walmart employees. Heck, just yesterday, agitators in the Seattle area were filing police reports for “wage theft”:
Fast food workers at Sea city hall. Several are filing wage theft complaints with the police department. http://t.co/OEjRqadNxS—
Ian Sterling (@IanSterling100) July 25, 2013
Regardless, the wage slave appellation is especially dishonest. It’s a cute word trick that falsely frames the situation. By using the word “slave” instead of “earner”, those who use the term are able to conjure up the most horrific scenes in people’s minds of subjugated peoples throughout time.
But, you see, it’s pure malarkey. And here’s why.
When you apply for a job, you make a choice of where you want to try and apply to. Your skill set, past work experience, and personal preference all relate to that choice, and lead you to say, Yes, I will take the time to fill out this application, and also make the effort to turn the application in. In essence, by filling out and turning in the application, you are announcing to the potential employer that you are aware of what the job is, what it pays, and would like the chance to have the job.
Great!
Now, you filled out your application, and the company calls you back and asks for an interview. You, once again, of your own free will, agree to the interview, or you don’t. If you do, you go in, do your thing, and then wait. If they finally call back and offer the job to you, you are, once again, in a position of choice: Whether you want to say yes to their offer of employment, or say no.
If you say yes, then you’re an employee of the company *you* chose to apply to, and, in essence, your decision to say yes was an acceptance of the job, the pay, the benefits and so on.
Never, at any point, were you coerced into making a decision, and as a new employee, your labor is not free, unlike actual, real slaves.
And again, the “wage slave” appelation is still untrue, even after being gainfully employed. Why? One simple reason: You can choose to walk away from the job at any time. You are not owned by the company, they have no right nor the ability to compel you to work for them.
Skwire completes the point by writing about Studs Terkels’ 1972 book, “Working”. In it, Terkels interviewed a variety of people from all walks of life who found pride and pleasure in their work:
Wheeler Stanley, who worked on auto assembly lines before being promoted to foreman, begs to differ. “I could stand back, look at a job and I could do it. My mind would just click.… I enjoyed the work. I felt it was a man’s job. You can do something with your hands … [It was] far from boring. There was a couple of us that we were hired together. We’d come up with different games—like we’d take the numbers of the jeeps that went by. That guy loses, he buys coffee.”
There’s Babe Secoli, the grocery store checkout clerk whose pride and satisfaction in her expertise shines through in her words, “There are items I never heard of we have here. I know the prices of every one. Sometimes the boss asks me and I get a kick out of it.… On the register is a list of some prices. That’s for the part time girls. I never look at it.… I don’t have to look at the keys on my register.… My hand fits.”
And then there’s Elmer Ruiz, reminding us that “not anybody can be a gravedigger. You can dig a hole any way they come. A gravedigger, you have to make a neat job. I had a fella once, he wanted to see a grave. He was a fella that digged sewers. He was impressed when he seen me diggin this grave—how square and how perfect it was. A human body is goin’ into this grave. That’s why you need skill.”
The other odious part of the term “wage slave” is the implication of the phrase itself. It’s essentially allegedly “educated” elites asking people “Y U SO STUPID TO WORK THERE?” And, like always, with the elites, the *only* solution is interventionism, either through the State and minimum wage laws, or through the State’s little brothers, unions.
In short, I guess the point of all of this is the fact that the choice is always ours: Our work empowers us, or our work defeats us.
