I know where I’m not buying furniture anytime soon:
Workers at the Danville IKEA plant say they are forced to work at a frantic pace, participate in mandatory overtime — possibly facing disciplinary action for not showing up — and raises have been eliminated. Six African American employees have filed discrimination complaints, claiming that they were assigned to the least-wanted third shift and forced to work in the lowest-paying departments. Moreover, while making a profit of $2.2 billion in 2009 and a 7 percent sales increase in 2010, the hourly wage in the Virginia IKEA packing department was slashed from $9.75 to $8.00.
Via ThinkProgress, which reports that workers in Sweden are paid more than twice as much per hour. Welcome to the new American sweatshop. Up next: child labor and peonage. Are there no workhouses? In the oligarchy, you can work to full employer demand for fifty cents more than minimum wage and count your blessings to have a job. Against oligarchy, there is only civil society — which is exactly what the oligarchy is busy destroying in the age of Citizens United and a high tea tide. It’s their world; we just feed on their sovereign droppings.
Jobless? Best just learn to pick cotton. As the Drive by Truckers put it, “to the fuckin’ rich man all poor people look the same.” This is why union rights are civil rights. Workers CAN organize! It’s in the First Amendment under petition and assembly. If you are not allowed to organize your workplace, then you are a slave. Such organizations are exactly what has always been best about America; De Tocqueville talked about them in his famous study of America; they are the check on American oligarchy.
When the oligarchs are the only ones organized, tyranny inevitably ensues. I’ve been rereading Aristotle’s Politics and Constitution over the weekend; oligarchy needs checks and balances for the well-being of the state and society. Oligarchy is one of Jared Diamond’s primary indicators of collapse. This story is the American dream being sucked through a vacuum like a dismembered fetus; the limbs and guts and brains are all gone and we’re just sucking middle-class fluid.
Think of it this way: all my life, Republicans have been telling me that unemployed people make too much money. But the truth is that unemployment pays slightly less than minimum wage, and American workers are always pressured not to organize. The deck has been stacked against American workplace organizing; you can work like a slave and make slightly more than the drudges in fast food. All of you are lucky to have jobs in this economy; at election-time, the oligarchy will do its best to convince you that the stratum immediately below you wants your cookie.
Remember: the worst crime in their America is poverty, followed by debt, followed by empathy. So sayeth your producer overlords!
