yet another glimpse into how empires feed on starvation

[sophiaserpentia]

A while back I commented on the connection between Empire and starvation: the Empire keeps us all starving because we are more pliant that way and less likely to look up from our struggles to apprehend the bigger picture.

This is the first thing I thought of when a friend on FB linked to this story:

With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they're willing to work for free. While some businesses are wary of the legal risks and supervision such an arrangement might require, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative," says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business."

In the last three years, Fallis has used about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations. She's convinced it's the wave of the future in human resources. "Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm," she says.

from Unpaid jobs: The new normal?

So, basically, we can expect more and more that companies will string people along without pay for as long as they're willing to go along with it, because they're disposable and replaceable and there's someone else starving and desperate waiting in line for the opportunity. They will hire just enough of these people to make it seem like other than a con.

Fortunately at present there are still laws protecting people from being used like this. Wanna bet that's going to change in the next two years?

Comments

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Whereas, I say people like her will be obsolete. She does not have the right to define reality for all of us. I say "don't listen", and firmly, powerfully, assert your own vision of what a future could be without this kind of stupidity. Personally? I'd hex the bitch, if I went around doing that kind of thing. I don't, so the ritual would more likely be one to bring her to Justice for such abhorrent abuse of the economy and people's vulnerability. I don't know that I have it in me to do a huge ritual at this time (gotta lot on my plate, speaking of starvation and lack thereof), but I would be willing to do a personal ritual or one lead by someone I trusted to do one right--if for nothing else, to help folks who could change our communal dreaming become aware of this nastiness.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It's not just her, though. I'm not opposed, in principle, to interning/volunteer/'spec' work, especially as activism -- I'm opposed to the potential here for companies who are well-off and already profitable to get free work out of people they increasingly see as disposable.

IMO profit margins are going to become narrower and narrower as the global depression deepens. An answer to that concern would be networks of friends/family supplying mutual aid, and more cooperative ventures. And rituals or art that help bring about different ways of thinking can certainly make a difference.

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

I think it's unfair that the only work that deserves to be paid is soul-sucking capitalistic shit. We should be paid well to do good in this world, too.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Even sundances are more humane than what she describes, and folks are well-trained for it...