The face of labour has changed considerably in the western world. In Canada, the United States and even Europe, a movement is afoot that is gradually eroding the contract between a labourer and their employer. The original contract, dating from the early Neolithic, probably went something like, "I'll give you this big hunk of bloody meat if you go out and pick the potatoes." This contract has changed little over the centuries except to become slightly more formalized and abstract: "I will give you said piece of meat substitute in order that you may purchase a hunk of bloody meat if you will grow, fertilize and harvest potatoes."
What the careful reader of the new contract will notice almost immediately, especially if they are on the hungry side of the potato harvester, is that the definition of what potatoes they must gather has become unclear. While the potatoes in front of the cave were obvious enough, the work in the latter contract seems to spread over many potatoes and over an unspecified amount of time.
This corrupted contract has grown even more perverted in the last twenty years. Taking advantage of mass unemployment and recent legislation, employers have changed the original contract until it is almost unrecognizable.
Any Neolithic proletariat reading the fine print now might wonder how they benefit from it. The new contract reads something like this: "In order that your ability to pick potatoes might be examined more closely than an interview can give credence to, in order that you might gain the experience necessary to get a potato picking job in the future, in case you are too young to be a serious potato picker and are therefore not worth wasting the effort of a generous boss in training you, I ask you now to pick some potatoes."
The Neolithic readers, with the quick eyes that starvation lends the eager, would notice right away that they are in the field picking potatoes for an unspecified amount of time with no hope of a hunk of bloody meat anywhere on the horizon.
In fact, this is the employment situation in the western world. Although this is a problem that is for the most part limited to the middle classes, the labour market is moving more and more towards free labour. In short, "you work now, maybe I'll pay you for work later".
The methods by which this system gets installed begin at the interview. People turned away hear the same tired refrain that they require work experience. Although this failing at one time was compensated for by working at a less desirable job, now it is supplemented by training periods and volunteer experience.
Many organizations, either parsimonious or feeling the oats of funding cuts, run almost entirely on volunteer labour. Ostensibly, these positions are filled by bored stay-at-home moms and dads who wish for something meaningful to do that doesn't involve diapers or box lunches. But that situation is also changing. Because more and more of these under-funded organizations need volunteers, especially since their administrators are living high on wages many times the poverty line, they turn to the generous public to make up the slack.
The generous public is already overtaxed, however. Volunteering has become an entrance requirement for many occupations. Budding teachers and social workers, applicants for medical school, and even Myra at the liquor mart, can boast a substantial section of resume devoted to unpaid work. We are told that Myra is all the more prepared for her tired cashier job, just as the status-seeking doctor is a better caregiver, for having worked for nothing at a local community clinic.
Schoolteachers have long known of the hidden requirements of their jobs. Along with their already considerable duties, they are expected to coach the hockey team, or tutor tenth grade math students. This unspoken requirement lies outside their contract hours and is essentially extra volunteer work they must do merely to maintain their position. Welfare recipients find themselves in the same situation, beside the highway, plastic garbage bag in hand, looking in vain for "on the job experience". They are paid no wages whatsoever; their only salary is their welfare cheque. This "workfare" likely adds up to something much less than minimum wage and skirts illegality.
Festivals and concerts, outdoor meetings and dance troupes, local churches and political offices, all have sipped and then slurped at the trough of free labour. They derive a large part of their value-added labour at the expense of young people who would much rather see some return on their work in the form of cash or goods. Since experience is necessary for their eventual employment, these people trod out to the fields, buckets in hand, to gather potatoes, even while somewhere someone is rubbing their hands in glee. The amount of free labour is growing, and there is no end in sight. Those making money without any capital investment must be a very happy capitalist.
The tight employment market, especially in desirable middle-class jobs, means that employers can ask for and receive workers willing to slave for half their wages or, in some cases, even free, over ridiculously lengthy training periods. My friend applying to work the blackjack tables at a local casino was told that she needed to be trained. Luckily, she learned, this was on-the-job training. But her initial dismay turn quickly to anger when she realized that she must pay the dues of six weeks of unpaid labour at the blackjack table after ten minutes of real training. Soon she marched out to another job, which only requires a mere four or five weeks of a training period at half pay.
With the installation of probationary periods, the unpaid worker must outperform their peers in order to be considered for the holy grail of paid work. After months of free labour, they may still be turned down for fulltime minimum wage labour. If they are young and in Europe, the case is just as dastardly. In Europe, laws were at first proposed and then established that meant no job security for any youth under twenty-six. This was meant to be a measure that saved an employer the grief of the unstable youth who might suddenly tire of a job, and thus might have to be paid benefits. Only the mass protests in France in 2006 made the EU rescind much of these unfair practices whose only purpose was to hand over more power to the employers.
In Canada, a few of the more corporate invested provinces, such as British Columbia and Ontario, have in place or are considering a "training wage" law which is significantly below minimum wage. In the case of British Colombia, the training wage is two dollars less, and in Nova Scotia the training wage is $6.70, some 45 cents below the standard minimum wage of $7.15. Ontario has different levels of minimum wage for students ($7.50), liquor servers ($6.95), homeworkers, and hunting and fishing guides.
Even once the labourer has found fulltime work, they are by no means safe from legal exploitation. Many jobs are artificially enhanced after the employee has settled into their contract. Probably the most common form of this abuse would be the co-worker who is on leave and whose fulltime job is now thrust upon a colleague. Rather than hiring someone to actually replace the absent worker, more than one job is merely made into one position. If the worker has left permanently, the new hire might find their job description covering three distinct areas of employment. Similarly, they will find that their salary does not come close to covering the extra work that is now expected for the same weekly hours.
Changes to the Canadian labour act mean that a disgruntled worker cannot quit and still receive the unemployment benefits that they have paid into. Essentially then, they are forced to remain subjects to a battery of unfair labour practices.
While so many hours are being poured into the public coffer, in offices far above the labouring minions, administrative staff at volunteer organizations count their many thousands. For instance, Larry Jones, the president of Feed the Children, an organization with an annual budget of 457 million, makes 115 thousand for his invaluable assistance in keeping them starving. Bernadine Healy, the president of the American Red Cross, DC, USA, runs a charity that nets 2,711 million while she takes home 308 thousand. Perhaps the most infamous case would be Ralph Dickerson, Jr., past president of the United Way of NYC, a popular charity with a budget of 133 million annually. Dickerson's salary of 420 thousand could not keep pace with his needs, however, for he embezzled 227 thousand for personal use.
Behind these greedy few who run these organizations, and far below those employers who demand hundreds of hours of volunteer experience, is the modern day equivalent of the Neolithic cave dweller. Lost in the jungle of lawyerese that is their new contract, they look at the paper blankly, trying to figure out how they got from picking potatoes for a hunk of bloody meat, to working for nothing. They are reprimanded if they eat potatoes while they pick, and, unable to earn their living under the present system, they die by the thousands in fields surrounded by food that can never belong to them.
Barry Pomeroy has been an instructor in English literature at a variety of American colleges and Canadian universities. He is responsible for the novel Naked in the Road, and his shorter work has been or will be published in magazines such as Treeline, Freefall, Cosmetica, Bards and Sages, Insolent Rudder, Tart, The Tiny Globule, Word Slaw, Shape of a Box, Willows Wept Review, Sonar 4, Writing Shift, Ulterior, Static Movement, 6S, Oddville Press and Word Catalyst.