I'm sick and tired of being told that businesses simply can't afford to pay workers decent wages and still make a profit. I'm sick and tired of workers being sacrificed to increase "shareholder value" or pad the pockets of CEOs. I'm so goddamn sick and tired of corporations shitting on workers in the pursuit of a couple of extra dollars profit.
About two weeks ago, it was announced that Fred Meyer would be outsourcing their cleaning crew work. Basically, every store has an overnight cleaning crew consisting of a few people who clean the store and prepare it for the next day. In many cases, these people have worked for the company for years. They're good workers and they do a fine job.
As of September 12, it appears most of them will be fired. It sucks. I work with these guys and I find this disgusting. What's worse is the way they found out about this. No boss bothered to come around, sit them down and explain the situation. No, they found out through a goddamn newspaper article. The cleaning crew workers read about their future termination in the newspaper. No one from the company bothered to tell them beforehand.
I'm so fucking sick of all this. It's happening across the country. Good workers are being fired because their jobs can be done by other people, for less money, because they need the work to survive. Paying ten dollars an hour and benefits to people to clean the stores at night is just way too much money when the job could be outsourced. There's no concern for the people that they are firing just before the Christmas season begins. Obviously, there's no concern for these people at all, since not a single person from the company could even be bothered to tell them about their termination before it hit the newspapers.
Fuck Fred Meyer. That's all I can say about it. I was leaving the store after my shift the other night and walked past the supplies room that the cleaning crew uses. They have a whiteboard up to specify cleaning routes for the night. In the corner was written, "Soon to be homeless. Donation cup." with an arrow pointing down to a plastic container.
It was written in good humor, yes, but it's depressing the same. Here are coworkers who have spent years working hard for this company and they are being unceremoniously thrown out on their asses. A couple months before Christmas, no less, and without even the common courtesy of being informed about it personally before reading about it in the newspaper. And why are they being tossed? Because they can be outsourced and a few extra bucks of profit can be made. There's no consideration for these people and their survival. There's no consideration for their well-being, their loyalty, their family or the job they've done for the company for years. Expenses can be lowered, so fuck you.
It's not necessary. Don't tell me it's necessary. Fred Meyer has existed for decades and they've managed to afford night cleaning crews. This isn't about a necessity to stay in business, it's about screwing over 300 good employees so that they can maximize their profits. And it's happening across the country, with jobs being outsourced and eliminated, workloads being increased, benefits being reduced and workers, in general, being screwed hard and fast. It's all done with little to no concern for what these workers will do. It doesn't matter that lives are being fucked with and maybe even ruined.
Yet we're told over and over that this is necessary for businesses to stay competitive. Well, bullshit. Workers can be paid a decent wage, given good benefits, and still work for a profitable company. If that's an impossibility, then I have no idea how America has built such a strong economy throughout its history. This goddamn country was built on the back of plain old workers, not CEOs and shareholders. This country is as great as it is because of millions upon millions of workers--blue collar, white collar, illegal. They put in hard days and nights of working, make money for other people, and go home to enjoy their lives, their friends, their family. They ask that they be paid fairly and be allowed the necessities to live. But apparently even this is too much to ask. Apparently the future is to work shit jobs for shit wages and shit benefits--and to be fired at any point for any reason, most likely so that a couple dollars more profit can be made.
Fuck it. It's disgusting. We need to step back and admit to ourselves that as great as Capitalism is, it has one major flaw: it has no ingrained morality. Capitalism is an amoral system in which the sole pursuit is profit and all other pursuits are considered secondary. Take twenty CEOs and ask them if the well-being of their workers and customers is as an important and pressing concern for them as the company's bottom line. If they're being honest, at least nineteen will laugh their asses off at you. Business today is making a profit; it has nothing to do with improving people's lives.
But it should. The well-being of workers and customers should be as high of a priority for every single business as profits are. Capitalism may be an amoral system, but that does not mean it has to be run as such. Ultimately, it is us humans who decide how the system functions and it is up to us, at every turn, to introduce morality into the workings of Capitalism. It is up to us to concern ourselves with our fellow workers, our customers, our friends and family and neighbors. That notion, though, has been mostly lost in business today and if it is not corrected it will haunt us. It will destroy us. The common workers are who keep America running and our economy will collapse in upon itself if businesses and corporations don't start showing them some goddamn respect.
(Originally posted on my blog, Nightmares For Sale)