Never Surrender
I’ll be the first to admit that I have sold out. I have a corporate job rife with all the classic corporate bullshit. Petty politics, corporate ladder maneuvering, client ass-licking, never-ending overtime etc. I accept this shit as part of the game. This is the way you must play the game or you’ll find yourself out on your ass. However, there’s one thing I won’t take sitting down. I am at a job to get paid. There is no other reason for my presence other than the paycheck they slap in my hand every two weeks. Working doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t make me feel more “productive”. I don’t feel lazy if I’m not working. If someone would hand me a check for sitting there and doing nothing I would gladly accept it. So when my employer does something to decrease my pay I get pissed. Do they think I’m there for some other reason and I’ll accept getting paid less because I like being there? Apparently so.
Recently myself and my fellow peons were notified (retroactively) that our company no longer counted paid vacation, legal holidays, sick days and personal days as part of your time worked, stating the “The Industrial Welfare Commission Order 4-98,” which they still have failed to produce a copy of on my request, as the reason. If you’re not familiar with overtime laws it works like this. You count up the hours worked that week and once you pass 40 you get paid time and a half. My slave-driving company has most low-level employees putting in 2-3 hours of overtime a day so you pass 40 pretty quick. It’s sort of worth trading away all personal pursuits as you are paid your hourly salary plus half more. Still, after doing it 5 days a week (sometimes coming in on weekends) for a few months it gets old. Now imagine a paid vacation day or holiday being in a certain week. According to this new law your work hours are subtracted from the week as you are not “working” even though you are paid for the holiday or vacation day. So now you’re missing 8 hours from the week. The company still expects you to do the overtime so that you can finish all the extra work that downsizing has left in its wake. Now if you do your normal overtime you will not be paid for 8 hours of it that week as you did not “work” that day. You are missing 8 fucking hours of pay! Imagine working a full day for free!
When I think of working for free for a capitalist scum corporation it makes me fucking puke! These guys worked through a loophole to deprive the peons of their only compensation for their slavery. I found myself so outraged I could hardly contain it. I went around to my fellow slaves and tried to rile them up about it so we could complain in a group (to save my own ass if I was the lone whiner!). Everybody just kind of said “yeah, that sucks” and went back to work. I couldn’t believe that not only are these people willingly taking it up the ass but they are spreading their cheeks to take it even harder! These fucking spineless pukes eat whatever shit the company feeds them. I’m sure if the company said they were no longer paying employees half the people would stay! Still, I’m not much better. I’m too scared and too dependent on the money to fight it alone. I’m trying to start my own little union as there is safety in numbers but I think the anti-corporate sentiment is just too weak. Still I think that by requesting the law at least I’m showing that I’m not going to take this without a little fight. If I see something fishy there’s going to be a phone call to the labor relations board (tax dollars at work!). Somehow I think that this can’t be true. How can the wage-slaves get fucked even harder? Yet in my heart of hearts (and the subtracted overtime from my last paycheck) I know that this is all too true. This is a fucked up world we live in. Its unbelievable how much control big business exerts over our “freedom” and how much we accept it. As for me, my battle lines are drawn and I’m not going down without a fight (at least a little one) even if no one will join me.
(Note: of course I lost this battle and ended up giving up but it was fun to talk some shit before getting in line with my fellow peons for the ass raping.)
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