We often are exposed to toxic work environments that we are required to endure as best we can. If any additional evidence is required for despair, late capitalist societies have the best work conditions in the industrialized and industrializing world. The oppressive conditions of labor in poor countries dominated by a desperate need to participate in industrial production are unimaginable to me. Nevertheless, it is important to note the privilege our society affords us to even consider a less oppressive set of conditions towards a labor of meaning. As one who enjoys a good salary, a pension plan, health care, and the benefits of union representation, I can only try to hope and work for a vision of a future that might afford a more radically democratic practice of labor rights on a global scale.
Work can be a site for subversion.
Yet, it often carries a heavy price. I have paid this price a few times, although I was able to afford it in part through the privilege afforded by my education, health, sex, race, age, and without the additional responsibilty of providing for an extended family. Others have less opportunity for resistance within the workplace because of a more restricted set of social and economic conditions and responsibilities. Others who could resist simply fear reprisal and maintain silence, even though they are aware that what they are part of is wrong. I have experienced economic hopelessness a number of times in my life, primarily due to working my way through thirteen years of university study.