Category: Living in Society

LAKE MACBRIDE— Today’s usage of the phrase “middle class” is meaningless. It is a marker for a world dreamed up while writing talking points for political campaigns. A middle class so created, never existed. It was as if we took the broken theories promulgated during the rise of mass society, and switched things around so that economic means was the determinant of whether one was or was not in the middle class. With the one percent of wealthiest people at the top, and roughly 15 percent of people who live in poverty at the bottom, the 84 percent in between are now dubbed middle class.

In our cultural background is the idea that we were all created equal, and have innate talents, some more so than others, that could and should be developed so that by application of native skills we can rise and fall in society. The so-called American dream is centered around this notion.

To some extent, the story is re-enacted as occasionally a mail room clerk rises to become chief executive officer of a large corporation. Such instances of rise in a workplace are limited in number, increasingly so, as businesses consolidate, on a global scale, under fewer corporate CEOs. In this world, the society of business is better served by increasing the number of people available to become mail room clerks, at the lowest possible wages, than by creating opportunities to get out of the mail room. Such stories are important to keeping people in their place in the economic pecking order, and I suspect that is why they are so popular.

If “middle class” is a meaningless phrase, “working class” is not. The long story of immigration to North America includes countless people who traded work for passage across the Atlantic and a chance for freedom and prosperity. I am thinking of my own ancestors and their cohort, who arrived in the 17th century in what would become the state of Virginia. They came, not as landed gentry, but as working people, delaying start up of their own farms to work for someone else who needed labor, and to secure it would pay travel costs to secure indentured servitude. This story is also part of the American dream— that through individual efforts and sacrifice, a person could become a landowner, and thereby rise in society. There were likely more indentured servants that rose to become landowners than mail room clerks that became CEOs, but their story is told less often.

Indentured servitude doesn’t exist in the same way in the 21st century, but it serves as an example of how people will make deals with the capital class to get ahead. Such deals include working for a labor broker to earn less than a living wage, in some cases, less than minimum wage, so that business can have sufficient low-cost labor to meet its needs. Without a sufficient working class, the capital class would be out of business. Working class rights, not middle class rights, should be the focus of our political leaders. It’s not, at least that I can see.

If one sits in lunchrooms and listens to working class concerns, the conversations are not about the minimum wage, unions, or much at all to do with the relationship between labor and capital. The discussions are about personal relationships, health issues, post-traumatic stress disorder of veterans, and addiction to tobacco, crack and sugary drinks.

While being a member of the working class doesn’t provide a pension, or health insurance, or security of almost any form, it is how a large segment of Americans live. We ought to be hearing more about it from the corporate media, from politicians, and from each other. If we believe in the possibility of social progress, our focus should rightly be on the working class, as it is here that the American dream was born. Neglected, it is where the dream will die.

NORTH LIBERTY— One of my work mates is an Iraq War veteran. Stationed in Tikrit, his military occupational specialty was fueling, although military contractors did most of the fueling work. He had a lot to say about war profiteers, including members of the Bush-Cheney administration. Locals he met did not like the American presence in Iraq. “Too many car bombs,” he said, something they experienced less when Saddam Hussein was in power.

Our supervisors discourage us from talking while we are in our cells (a.k.a. work stations), but when the computer network went down for about 45 minutes last night, we had a chance to talk. For me, that meant mostly listening.

I have been working as a temp in a warehouse in North Liberty for about two weeks. Not sure I could hack it— repetitive motion, standing and walking except during lunch break— my focus has been on staying healthy, and getting the work done as best I can.  My goal is survive, and beyond that, to learn everyone’s name and a little about them. Employees turnover at a rapid pace, so I haven’t yet done very well on getting to know people. Mostly, it’s nose to the grindstone.

It turned out that the Iraq War veteran found another warehouse where he can work through a temp agency for about two dollars more an hour. He is scheduled to start there on Monday. There was no surprise, as the discussion was overheard in the lunchroom the previous day. I wished him good luck with his new job, in case we didn’t get to speak to each other on Thursday.

Living paycheck-to-paycheck, and working poor was something I had not experienced until now. Measuring each week by the number of checks that will arrive, knowing it is enough to barely make regular expenses, can be a grind. I can see why my work mate took the new job— some might say, it’s a no-brainer. But a different view, is that temp work does not provide the means to earn a living wage in any case, at least temporary warehouse work. It was not designed to do so.

These jobs are part of the American outsourcing movement— clear evidence that the changes in a worker’s life regarding wages, and for whom we work, aren’t only happening when jobs move to Asia or Mexico. They are endemic to the Iowa experience.

My hourly wage costs the company $0.154 per kit I assemble. Add on whatever the temp agency gets for their fees, and it is not much. There are no paid benefits. In the context of the entire operation, the expense includes management, supervisors, equipment, material moving, overhead, supplies and external transportation. Inherent is the idea that there are cost savings to the principal manufacturer by doing business this way. And jobs are created, somewhere between 125 and 150 of them where I work.

My work mate and I worked well together. Probably because of our common military experience. At the end of the day, that may be all we had together, as our logistics process, like any in the transformation of the American workplace, could easily be changed, eliminated or improved. In many ways, logistics is a facilitator of the transformation of business. Wage workers have to take it how they can, and sometimes that means switching jobs for another $80 per week.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Sunlight fell into the bedroom, crashing around the blinds to wake me about eight o’clock— the latest I slept in years.  I’ll get through the physical adjustment to my new job— getting off work late and falling asleep later— but sleeping until eight is concerning. Half the day is gone.

Last night I soaked my feet in an Epsom salt bath after work— a workingman’s remedy for sore dogs. Wearing steel toed shoes for a nine hour shift has been like lifting a three-pound weight with each step. A friend posted on Facebook, “who needs a gym? You are multitasking weight training at work.” I don’t know about that, but my feet were less sore after the soaking.

Snow remains on the ground this morning, holding off spring yard and garden work for another day. It’s 16 degrees and a slight breeze is blowing, bringing with it remembrance of my non-office work life.

Working class artifacts surround me today: a beater of a car, steel toed shoes, special work clothes, a brown paper lunch bag, Epsom salt, pumice-based hand soap, bandages for cuts and scrapes, and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (in the event I need one). These are things my dad had when he worked in the meat packing plant— like father, like son… sort of.

A workingman’s standard issue belies inner tensions. One strives to make it through each day without injury. There is risk in production settings, and a dynamic of managing that risk while striving for productivity. If we are paying attention, our humanity is evident to us in each moment as we navigate through a shift’s existential reality.

When work is repetitive, like operating a work station, or loading a truck, the mind tends to wander— to home, to family, to a host of worries of living in modern society. Distractions can be dangerous. To survive, a worker must focus on the task at hand, blocking everything else out. Doing so is a key to achieving productivity targets, and to making sense of why we work as an employee of someone else.

As the sun’s rude awakening recedes, consider its warming influence on the seed trays in the dining room. They are beginning to sprout. My day worker experience confirms long held beliefs. That every kind of work has value, whether it is paid or not.

What I hadn’t considered enough was how performing work requires our attention and an investment of our humanity. Work can inspire us, but mostly, it can be a furtherance of the pursuit of happiness— ours and those around us. That often gets lost while doing the work.

LAKE MACBRIDE— It was in Oklahoma where I learned about Sumitomo Corporation. Maybe it was in Arkansas, I’m not sure ten years later. We were making a sales call on the U.S. headquarters of one of the hundreds of companies Sumitomo owns. We did not get the business. However, I learned a lot from the company about how to manage my post-transportation career. To be successful, we must live as a scaled down version of the largest of corporations.

Sumitomo Corporation began in the 17th Century with a book and medicine shop in Kyoto, Japan. The history is on the company web site and worth reading. Their corporate mission is to “achieve prosperity and realize dreams through sound business activities.” While corporations are not people, who doesn’t want to achieve prosperity and realize dreams? The notion is at the core of my quest for a sustainable life on the Iowa prairie. How to do it? Follow the chart.

The key element of Sumitomo’s management approach was to assign every business they owned into one of four quadrants on a chart, using the representation on the chart to guide management of their entire business enterprise. To read more, click on the link. However, there are four ideas worth mentioning, one per quadrant, that could be applied to any business or life: reinforce, cash cow, wait and see, and prepare for withdrawal.

We all have things we work on. Family, health, economic activities, avocations, risk management and necessities. I think of each area of work as Sumitomo thinks of each company— having risk, return on investment (tangible and intangible), resources, intellectual capital, and financial investment. The idea for my post-career life is to assemble a portfolio of activities that will facilitate prosperity and realization of dreams. When I consider each of my activities, some are doing better than others, and that is okay.

For example, my work as a proof reader for the weekly newspapers takes 4-6 hours per week, and the financial return is steady and predictable. It goes in the wait and see quadrant. Is there more work available at the paper? What is the risk of holding this job, in lieu of using the time to search for a better one? Can I find additional, similar work with other area employers that would increase my compensation and standing as a proof reader? Should I cut bait and find another, better paying position? From time to time, the newspaper work, and each endeavor in which I participate requires some reflection, analysis and attention. The Sumitomo approach provides the paradigm.

One of the precepts of sustainability is diversity of effort. With a one-paycheck career, the risks were too many. My transportation career was a cash cow, in which I prospered while advancing into middle age. I left a low risk situation, producing substantial results for the company, in order to realize the maximum value of more than 25 years of work.

What is next is uncertain, or in Sumitomo’s lingo, we’ll wait and see. I am prepared for the challenges— but more— prepared to realize my dreams.