~a column by Colleen O’Brien
My daughter “acted her wage” and didn’t even know it.
She worked in “corporate” for a decade and a half. She liked it – the challenge, learning new ideas and looking at old ways with a questioning viewpoint that she attacked with fresh ideas. She liked the camaraderie of the women and men she worked next to and managed, and they reciprocated because she, as middle management, made a point to take care of them. She told them she had their back, and they found that she was true to her word. She was fortunate to have a female boss; the woman was a bit older and sympathetic, a mentor. All was well.
And then from up on high – i.e., corporate headquarters – the phrase “bottom line” reared its head one fiscal year. The panic of the major bosses became “change” in all departments And the change-up was telling. The mood of the hierarchy affected the mood of the whole place. No one felt sure of anything. She lost her female boss to a male who had never worked in accounts receivable/payable, which complicated everything she and her workers did. There was no educating him on how things had been done; he laid down arbitrary orders and timelines that made no sense in the department and increased the time spent on balancing. . . which before had been straight forward and satisfying.
She received a 25-cent raise that year.
The following year, her long-time male colleague and friend working in her office, left for a position at headquarters, and she was given no new colleague to work with her, so she managed two jobs with no extra pay and was on call each evening.
The stress of the job piled on everyone, and soon her underlings trusted her as management about as much as they trusted the higher-ups. When a woman below her was promoted above her, the stress got to her full force, but it took her a year of hesitation and weighing income versus no job at all before she had the audacity to quit.
“Not one of the bosses said a word when I gave notice,” she said. “And on a Friday, I walked out as usual, never to return. It was a hurtful experience.” She gave me a perplexed face; I thought she looked close to guilty, as if it were her fault. “”I feel used and abused,” she continued. “And vulnerable. I don’t have a job.”
“Acting your wage” is a phenomenon that started after the lay-offs and at-home jobs of the pandemic. People began to understand that being a 40-hour-a-week employee had to mean just that. No e-mails after hours and no working on Saturdays without pay.
Slowly, the behavior has taken hold.
My daughter was not aware of “acting your wage,” but the facts behind it were her facts, and she had to take action, go crazy or work on to become a little old lady working for corporate until she retired. They usually do not get pensions anymore; maybe a severance package of a few thousand dollars. Teachers across the country don’t necessarily make as much money as a corporate employee, but their pensions save them when they retire with their Social Security.
“It (acting your wage) means you aren’t on call or on the hook for company problems 24/7 the way a CEO or executive director might be,” explained career coach Gracie Miller in a January Reader’s Digest article. “It’s recognizing that you were hired for 40 hours of work and not doing overtime you aren’t being paid for.” It means that in the workplace, the workers control the conditions of their working lives.
So, the Millennials, the majority of these folks who are taking stock of one of corporate’s greed behaviors, are looked down upon and dissed by the general public as lazy. The press has used corporate press releases to further this fallacy. These workers and ex-workers will not take jobs that don’t pay their worth; they won’t work overtime if they’re on the clock.
If we want to diss anyone, why is it that we don’t diss corporate, the wealthy, the politicians who protect them, the people who do not work by the hour or have their taxes removed from their paycheck before they receive it? Of course they don’t receive paychecks per se – they own stocks, they get bonuses, the are given more stocks. They either do or don’t pay taxes, depending on the keenness of their lawyers.
Howard Zinn (1922-2010), a history professor, philosopher, author (You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train {1994/2002} and A People’s History of the United States [1980/2009}), wrote for and about us – hoi polloi. The People’s History explains from the point of view of the working class, the poor class, the have-nothing class, the Black and brown class – not from the rich class, not from the generals, not from the politicians, from which all our former histories flowed.
It’s refreshing how he explained the glorification of war, the exploitation of young men, the manipulation of the general public by the elite in order to gain rubber, sugar, oil, minerals of all kinds. Our wars have not necessarily had anything to do with making a democracy out of former kingdoms or dictatorships; our wars have been about gaining wealth for the wealthy.
It’s refreshing how he looked at the working stiff and told it like it was, like it is – they are mostly being used and abused, unless they work for a corporation that is humane and believes in that simple ideal – social justice.
Acting our age is something we all forget now and then, no matter our age. Working our age is something we need to pay attention to . . . and do it. Or at least support it.
