They keep Homer on, of course, because, according to Smithers, they will need one human employee to oversee the robots and serve as “a scapegoat in case of a meltdown.” (Homer promptly accepts the job when Mr. Burns assures him he will have a reclining office chair.)
In reality, when workers become a
nuisance--by striking against low wages or unjust working conditions, for
instance—employers don’t need to turn to futuristic automated staff to run
their company. They just shut the place down.
This is precisely how Hostess
responded to a nationwide employee strike (which included the factory in
Biddeford). The Associated Press reported Friday the snack-maker will liquidate
its remaining stores, laying off over 18,000 employees in the process.
Hostess predictably blames the union and the
striking workers for the company’s closure. In a memo posted on the company’s
website, CEO Gregory F. Rayburn singles out “union wages and pension costs,” as
the driving factors in its bankruptcy. What Rayburn does not mention—and the AP
story conveniently relegates to the very last paragraph—is the fact that
Hostess, maker of such high-fat desserts as Ding Dongs and Twinkies, has fallen
out of favor in recent years as Americans increasingly become more health
conscious.
Could it be that Hostess was brought down, not by greedy, demanding
unions, but by basic supply-and-demand, free-market capitalism? Nah, it’s got
to be the unions.
Either way, readers need not waste time
worrying about Rayburn and other Hostess executives. They will likely sell off
their assets and remain financially set for life. The same, unfortunately,
cannot be said of the bakers who are now unemployed because they had the
audacity to demand better pay and working conditions.
The greatest irony of democracy is our constitutional
freedoms of speech and assembly do not extend to the arena we spend the
majority of our waking lives: The workplace. Indeed, your office can at best be
described as a benevolent dictatorship. (And I have had plenty that were not
even all that benevolent.)
As a result, much of the progressive
gains of the twentieth century have been aimed at democratizing the workplace.
The struggles of early labor organizers lead to common-sense worker protections
like the eight-hour work day, weekends off, child labor laws, the minimum wage,
collective bargaining agreements and the right to organize. In fact, most of
those agitating for these laws were socialists—another bit of irony given the
rancorous tone historically illiterate Americans have toward anything remotely
resembling the dreaded “S-word.” Like that 30-minute lunch break your boss is
legally mandated to give you during a regular work day? You can thank a socialist
for that.
Any business—large or small—that cannot
afford to pay its employees what they are worth does not deserve to be in
operation. This is not a radical statement or something only “fringe” Greens
believe. It is basic economic decency and is as American as apple pie.
I quote Abraham Lincoln: “Labor is prior
to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could
never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of
capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” So much for Ayn Rand’s
dismissive view of working stiffs as “parasites,” mooching off the exalted “job
creators.”
So why does it seem business is often
contemptuous of its own work force? It was not always so. It used to be
employers viewed a competent, well-paid workforce as a vital investment in
their business. Managers understood a content, appreciated staff was the key to
their success. Pay your employees a decent wage, offer them necessary health
benefits and treat them with basic human dignity, and they will be happy at
their job and increase work production.
But somewhere along the line,
profit-driven employers came to view their staff as another burdensome
expenditure. Industrialization, globalization and the 2008 economic recession
have all contributed to an extremist, almost sociopathic form of corporate capitalism
that places profit over human lives. In the current economic climate employers
are increasingly selective in their hiring practices because they can afford to
be.
In fact, capitalism, by its very nature,
necessitates a certain permanent level of unemployment (what Marx termed a
“reserve army of labour”). This way, when workers begin agitating for higher
wages, managers can promptly point to the hundreds of desperate unemployed, and
snidely remind the staff how easily they can all be replaced.
And, as I have pointed out numerous
times, business tax rates are in no way related to an employer’s unwillingness
to hire an adequate, full-time workforce. The idea that small business owners
cannot “afford” to hire people (or, conversely, are forced to lay workers off)
in order to “cover” their taxes, is a deliberately misleading right-wing lie.
It is in no way grounded in any economic reality.
“Capital is dead labor,” Marx wrote in his
1867 economic treatise, Das Kapital,
“which, vampire like, lives only by sucking living labor and lives the more the
more labor it sucks.”
By the conclusion of the aforementioned Simpsons episode, the robots become
sentient and rebel against their human, slave-driving masters. Perhaps we
should take a page out of their book before we, too, are all replaced by
machines.
Join Wal-Mart workers this Friday, Nov. 23 ("Black Friday") when they initiate a nationwide strike on the busiest shopping day of the year. Click here for more information.
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