Common Dreams has reposted an editorial in which New York Times food writer Mark Bittman ponders the significance of Wendell Berry. My admiration for Berry is clear in my Sunday blog posts, which were inspired by and often feature words and ideas from his Sabbath poems. I’m also a big fan of Bittman, a great food writer who turned his attention a few years ago to considering the relation of how we eat and its impact on our health and the environment.
Bittman seems in awe of Berry’s “patience,” his way of understanding the world as something bound in nature and its cycles. He contrasts his city life with the rural community where Berry’s family has lived for 200 years: “He knows the land the way I know the stops on the Lexington Avenue subway line and, predictably, I begin feeling like the fairly techie city person I am and wonder if it could have been otherwise.” Even so, Bittmann cites Berryas someone who changed his thinking, an appreciation that is clear at several points in the editorial.
Berry could live in a university town and enjoy the comfortable life of the academic. Instead, he has chosen to stay where he was raised. While his home may be isolated, Berry continues to engage his fellow Americans about how we eat and, more importantly, how we live. His career is a gift to us and to the generations that will follow. May we heed his wise, patient voice.
Flexibility or Exploitation
Tags: Corporate Media, flexible schedule, hourly employees, hourly wages, New York Times, Susan Lambert, underemployed workers, University of Chicago
Writing in the New York Times, Susan Lambert, a Professor is the Social Work Program at the University of Chicago, explores the issue of women who work low wages and work “flexible” schedules. Flexible sounds warm and fuzzy. Everybody likes things that are flexible. The problem is that employers are using this word to mask the fact that employees will only work when there is work – on call.
Once upon a time, I managed a phone center that offered on call positions. My bosses called the position flexible. After about six months of lying to people, I put my foot down and started telling prospective employees the truth. An on call position can be a good thing for someone who’s working full time and looking for supplemental income. For someone relying on a job to pay their bills, an on call position doesn’t work. You can’t tell from week to week how many hours will be available. It is impossible to budget for rent, food, and other essentials.
As Professor Lambert attests, more hourly employees today are given no option. Their schedules are flexible. She suggests that the government must legislate a solution. I’d like to agree, but the idea seems beyond utopian given our current political climate.
What we need is real solidarity. When a company treats workers like dogs, it needs to be called out and boycotted. As long as consumers want cheap at whatever cost, the cost will be the exploitation of their fellow workers. We need to stop blaming the employer and the government. Look in the mirror. If you shop at a company that pays its workers wages that force them to use food stamps, you are supporting exploitation. Worse than that, you are saying its o.k. for your tax dollars to supplement what the employer pays workers, which is nothing more than corporate welfare.
American workers need to wake up. It’s not the fault of big corporations. We know their games, and we have to put an end to them. Solidarity.