The Labour Day Pondering

Come the month of May and you usher the beginning of the month with the celebration of international labour day, kamgar divas, or whatever you may call it in your part of the world. But how much change has occurred in all these years, in terms of benefits to the working class... well you could argue and debate on this... but the truth be told, we laboured then and we continue to labour even today, it’s like going through contractions without delivering the baby.

Hundred of years back labourers stuck work and took out demonstrations for fair wage and humane working hours. In today’s world I wonder how fair are our wages or humane are our working hours. This holds true whether you are a white-collared, blue-collared or no collared labourer.

An eight hours work day is something which we can only dream of. So forget about working for eight hours, many organisations (read managers) expect you to work for a minimum nine to ten hours, often penalising you for not completing the required hours, but again this all depends on your manager. Considering we work for a global market, very often you find yourself working well beyond twelves hours, often bending over backward. Sometime with all these stretching and bending over I wonder if I would become a rubber band, elastic man, with superpowers to stretch beyond humanly possible, or would I become adept at belly dancing with all the bending over backwards.

The benefits are enjoyed by a privileged few. The upper echelons, the favourites, their minions. These are the ones who get to lick off the cream of the benefits, promotions, benefits, paid vacations. Very few deserving people actually get what they deserve. With so many chamchas and butt-kissers that it’s no surprise that there’s nothing much left for the rest. Sometimes i wonder if we could use these chamchas in the cafeteria when they fall short of spoons, or do the butt-kisser love to rim, the sexual act of stimulating pleasure by kissing, licking, the anus of the partner.

Appraisals and promotions are subjective, subject to the company’s performance, the company’s deemed performance, or your equation in the company. And if they are objective, they are pain to gather all the data and present them. Very often you are left trying to figure out where exactly is the raise, a great mystery, thank to the bell curve. And then you are awarded a zero percent raise for all your hard work and labour, thus clubbing you with non-performing resources, much to your charging, much to the selfish glee of your not so well wisher.

Well no matter how much we may rave and rant and bitch, to each other and on social media, nothing much will ever change, cause nothing really matters to such organisations. Like a duck’s back all this will just roll off them. And even if try to do something, it would be just for show. If one ain’t smart there are always chance of them being taken advantage of. 

In the end nothing has truly changed. We laboured then and we continue to labour even now, just we are now a more sophisticated labourers.