Yesterday I was as sick as a dog. I have been working as a chef in Manhattan since early October, and in that time I have not been sick or even late to work. Of course, if you are sick you should NOT be working with food, so I called in sick for the first time yesterday. Today, I was let go.
I was originally hired to be a LINE COOK, but shortly after my hiring the Executive Chef was fired (the day after Thanksgiving) and many of his previous responsibilities fell to me. The irony in that was that the Executive Chef who lost his job was a Rush Limbaugh parroting dittohead who hated socialism and unions. Now he is collecting unemployment. That is pretty much the definition of irony . . . .
Next the owners of this restaurant fired their prep cook and dishwasher. Now it is the MOT show, where I prep, run my station, oversee the rest of the staff and wash dishes at the end of the night, as well as take care of all of the ordering and inventory control, on top of setting daily specials, all with no pay raise, all while the ownership gets to pocket three salaries worth of cost and convert it to profit. This is austerity on a micro-economic level, and it SUCKS for working class people.
So I KNOW this business just saved at least $70,000 on labor costs by letting 3 employees go. Now they are getting rid of higher paid employees in favor of lower paid employees who have no citizenship and will NEVER demand better treatment or higher wages. Three cheers for Capitalism, eh?
More below the fold, plus Senator Bernie Sanders!
Ever intent on cutting even more costs, my employment was terminated today, and I have no doubt been replaced by cheaper, less qualified labor.
(NOTE: I do not begrudge the working man/woman who replaced me. Yes, that person might not be working here under legal citizenship, because, let's be honest, this is the NYC restaurant industry. I do not blame my fellow worker for that. I blame a greedy management and ownership who would rather pay for sub par labor on the cheap. I blame the owners who want you to work harder and longer hours for less. I blame the people who would sooner EXPLOIT illegal labor than pay qualified Americans to work in America. I do NOT want to blame people who are willing to work for less than I, for they have mouths to feed too and cares of their own. I blame the rich bastards who will squeeze every penny out of working class people so they can have another ivory back-scratcher for themselves.)
I had been training other cooks at my job because the location where I (used to) work could never seem to hang on to people. Maybe their 6 day work week with no overtime had something to do with that, or maybe the fact that they have been cutting staff and making the other remaining staff work harder to compensate had something to do with that. No matter. Either way, I had been training people who don't really speak English, and now, suddenly, I find myself unemployed, while someone who is clearly less qualified and is paid less then myself now has my job.
You know what I say to that?
GOOD RIDDANCE!
That job SUCKED. I worked 60 hours, six days a week for roughly $500 a week. There are other jobs out there (at least in NYC there is), and after traveling the country last year and moving back to NYC this was the first job I got after 2 solid weeks of looking all day and night. I WILL get another, better job.
But that is not my point.
In this economy we can clearly see the push to send good paying jobs overseas while using high unemployment to bust unions and push working class people into jobs that pay less and offer no benefits. This is NOT helping. Oh, it's great for business owners and the other wealthiest 1-2% of our peasant herding ownership society, but it sucks for the working class people who have to struggle to get by. A few years ago I made good money as a business manager in retail. Now I have to compete with people who are willing to accept slave wages for manual labor jobs.
But hey, the stock market is doing great! So there is that.
I wanted to leave this mini-rant/venting experience with some words spoken by the sagacious Senator Bernie Sanders, who ranted on the Ed Show yesterday about what the rich, the powerful and the greedy REALLY want from America. I experienced this greed and callousness today in first person.
Bernie Sanders: End Game for Wealthiest in America is the Destruction of Social Safety Nets and of the Middle Class
SANDERS: What we have to understand is this is not just Wisconsin. This is part of the concerted attack on the middle class and working families of this country by the very wealthiest people in America, the Koch brothers and many others. And you're also right in suggesting that if you look at the end game, what are you talking about?
You're talking about the end of Social Security, privatization of Social Security, massive cuts and privatization of Medicare, major cuts in Medicaid. You're talking about over a period of time, the end of unemployment compensation, the end of the minimum wage or lowering the minimum wage.
What these guys want is to return us to the 1920's when working people had virtually no rights to organize or to earn a decent living. Bottom line today is the top 1% earn more income than the bottom 50%. The top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider.
And what the wealthiest people in the country are doing are using their resources to make the attack against the middle class even stronger. They want the destruction of the middle class and almost all wealth in this country to go to the people on top.
GREED!
The wealthy have BOUGHT our democracy out from under us. They are Too Big To Fail. That means everyone else is screwed. And as Mike Lux at CrooksandLiars.com points out, the super rich no longer require a middle class anymore.
The reason we are seeing such wrenching, brutal fights today is that the people with money and power who make and sell things know there is a worldwide market for their goods, and the most wealthy and powerful of all — the Big Six Wall Street banks who control assets equal to 64 percent of our economy — make their money mainly by financial manipulation and speculation. I mean if you can make money by securitizing subprime mortgages, selling them as AAA rated, and then take a short position so that when they blow up for your clients, you make billions, who needs a middle class?
Bold text added by the diarist
When you are Too Big To Fail you no longer need a thriving middle class. When fraud becomes institutionalized as it is on Wall Street and many other Big Industries, the last thing you want is a secure, informed middle class.
This IS class war.
The owner of the restaurant I worked at up until yesterday is a MILLIONAIRE who owns several restaurants. I wonder what his "shared sacrifice" in this economic turmoil is?
Either way, thank you for letting me vent. If anyone knows of a good job that is available in NYC, please let me know.
Peace and love to all
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca