White Slavery

We all know what the term white slavery means, or do we? In Victorian times it referred to women sold in bondage in the illicit sex trade to provide income to certain privileged individuals variously referred to as pimps, procurers, and other less savory terms. Sometimes, as in Chicago in the late 1800s, the white slavers formed corporations and distributed dividends along with certain “special” favors to their members.

It should come as no surprise that there has been an increase of this filthy trade over the years with absolutely no interference from our elected officials, I am, of course referring to the white collar slaves of America. This form of slavery is indiscriminate and is based on the need of people to work for a living. In a way it affects women more than men, since they are usually paid less to do more for more hours that their male counterparts. The scam, and it is a truly North American scam, works like this:

As you work your way up the career ladder you go from an hourly rate to a salary rate. You leave the protected environment that masses of workers before you have staked out and secured and plunge into the open world of the white collar wage slave. Regardless of how much you are paid, it is loosely, very loosely, based on the forty hour week. That forty hours a week is a standard that slowly, and usually brutally, brought the working class into a more humane environment from the upwards of twelve to sixteen hour workdays that were the norm for the serf and miner of yesteryear.

That same movement gently pried our children from the sweatshops, protected women in the garment trade and finally forced society to recognize that humans, qua humans, had rights and dignity.

The salaried man escaped those constraints, his work day increased, sixty hour work weeks are the norm for young aspiring lawyers, and I myself have worked twelve to fourteen hour days to meet company imposed deadlines.

The interesting thing was that we did it gladly because we were career oriented people, and we gave up vacation time, we travelled on weekends and redeye flights because the company did not allow travel time. What society praised was our spirit, our good nigger adaptation to harsh conditions, burn out and loss of identity within society. We penalized our families for no compensation and if we considered that our hourly rates were so much higher than the simple wage earner, we never stopped and considered that with the extra hours we manfully put in, we were earning less and less

In fact, we became slaves, working up to a quarter of our time for no compensation, no benefits and certainly with absolutely no loyalty from the slavers. The reason was that we had become our own slave drivers, happy to whip ourselves for the good of the masses.

We still have not learned that our jobs were never the reason for our living, they should have made it possible to live better, and they eventually destroyed us, our society and our morals.

You want to know the difference between here and everywhere else? Simple, they stopped being slaves, demanded protection, organized and took back their lives from their companies. Pension plans travel with you from job to job, health benefits come from the collective, not the drivers, vacation time is plentiful and needed, sickness is treated as a serious threat to the individual and to all around him.

Maybe the white collar slaves could learn a lesson from the freed blue collar workers, or from their brothers in more civilized cliamates.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

Comments

Peter said…
Time to rethink the value of our time and take it away from those who have been stealing it with impunity for centuries

Popular posts from this blog

A cleaner world vision beyond Triple A battery powered transportation

Newtown Connecticut