{"article":{"id":77645,"heading":"The Degrradation of Work in Long Beach","author":"Angelica Balabanoff","created":"2003-08-19 01:14:12","modified":"2003-08-19 01:14:12","last_modified":"Tue, 19 Aug 2003 08:14:12","article":"

Several decades ago Harry Braverman wrote a very influential book entitled The Degradation of Work in America. It describes how capitalism and the authoritarian \"management\" methods that are inseparable from it deprive workers of independenceyself-esteem and human dignity.i Capitalism has not been abolished in the years since it was published, and the degradation of work and of workers has continued, both in the private sector and among those public sector bureaucrats who want to imitate their corporate counterparts in giving workers the shaft.

A case in point is the City of Long Beach, which is suffering a severe financial crisis due to the crisis in Sacramento, the national recession, Bush's reactionary policies, and a local tax cut engineered by corporate and real estate interests that left city services deprived of essential funds. What has been the reaction of city administrators - outrage? Demands that essential services be properly funded? Forget it.. The bureaucrats are asking the city's workers to provide not only the same level of service that they provided before the budget cuts, but to increase the services offered in an attempt to make department managers in Long Beach look good to the new City Manager.

Workers are being told that they must provide these services with a smile (yes, that is right, they are ordering people to smile) in the fashion of 1958 airline stewardesses or perky high school cheerleaders. A case in point is the overwhelmingly female workforce of the Public Library. Recently the library, which is supposedly on the point of being broke, brought in a corporate trainer at considerable expense to inform library workers that they are from now on to emulate the behavior of retail clerks at such places as Walmart. No mention, of course, was made of the fact that Walmart empoyees are among the most exploited in the nation - miserably paid, many with virtually no benefits, fired at the whim of some petty supervisor, forced to work \"off the books\" for free, and required to maintain the humble demeanor of a Medieval serf.

The woman who ran the workshop, a first class bitch

if there ever was one, said that she had visited several branch libraries as well as the Main Library at the Civic

Center and complained that workers at these libraries had failed to run up and greet her as she came in and had also failed to tell her goodbye when they saw her heading toward the door. Not surprisingly, she reported these serious crimes to the library administration at once. She also stated that book shelvers, who are mostly young women in their late teens or early twenties, should go up to library \"customers,\" smile at them and offer to take them personally to obscure parts of the library to locate books.

When one of the people at the workshop (a male) pointed out to her that these women have not been trained for this kind of work and that books on most subjects are scattered in several different areas due to book cataloging practices over the years she had no reaction. And when he pointed out that a large number of paroled sex offenders are known to hang out at Main Library she shrugged it off with the observation that the book shelvers must \"know their customers\" and develop a \"professional attitude.\" Nedless to say, she did not suggest that these part-time empoyees be paid salaries at the generally accepted

rate paid to \"professional\" workers in the United States.

It should be mentioned that at an earlier workshop this woman had denounced the fact that many bank tellers are protected by bullet proof glass that could save their lives in the event of a bank robbery. By her reasoning, the glass interfered with the task of these pampered workers of sucking up to customers so they won't transfer their accounts to other banks. No mention was made of the fact that a better way for a bank tokeep its customers would be to pay higher interest rates on savings accounts or charge loweri interest rates on loans.

This workshop was a direct insult to the library's workers and a bald declaration that the city intends to solve its financial problems at their expense. Campaigns like this are going on in public and private workplaces all over the country; this absurd event was only a particularly crude and clumsy example. It is part of a general campaign by employers, reactionary politicians led by Bushy Tail himself, and vicious corporte consultants to destroy the working and living standards of working people in order to lower the already absurdly low rate of corporate taxation. It is an attempt at workplace fascism, and it has to be fought.

























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