Latest News• Add My News • Search Old News Gippsland › Latest news › Howard S. EmanuelOur Jobs; Our Lives! :: (Howard S. Emanuel)How many times are we asked in general conversation "what do you do"?....
Our Jobs, Our Lives! How many times are we asked in general conversation "what do you do"? Often I’m tempted to reply that I do a great many things, I partake of a whole range of activities, either in my work, with my family or friends, or on my own. I feel I have an interesting life, one of diversity, challenge and most of all, hope. Hope for a better world for my children, free of the barriers, misunderstandings and division of our times. When people ask, "what do you do"? I know they really mean, what do I do for work, what’s my job, my profession. Regrettably our jobs consume our time and our lives to a point where we can think of nothing else to discuss. Perhaps because in a real sense, our lives have become our jobs. When we meet and interact why is it that we don’t greet with a question such as, what are your interests, what are your beliefs, your values, what do we hope for, how do we feel about one particular issue or another. In one sense I get the feeling we don’t ask these questions because we don’t really want to know. We have become disinterested in the lives of those around us, partly because we are so caught up in what we’re doing as individuals, and that, to a large degree is our work. So much of our time is spent "at work", a great many hours of each week. Monday to Friday and often weekends have become for many, a repetitious drudgery as we struggle to overcome constant feelings of tiredness, a deep seated sense of frustration that life is nothing more than the pursuit of wealth and power, even when we have demonstrably enough. If as community members we only give time and energy to one function, our lives take on a rather tasteless and uninteresting theme; we fail to stimulate ourselves outside of our work interests. This leads to lack of personality development in a fulsome or spectrum sense, where many of us fail to reach our potential, fail to use our gifts for the benefit of those around us, and never really understand just what, as individuals we are indeed capable of. Therefore many of societies questions remain unanswered. As I believe each and every one of us has an important role to play, and if we fail to make that contribution, the societal picture, that sense of balance if you like, remains incomplete. The typical working week can involve little opportunity for recreation and family activities. Many come home from work tired and under-stimulated, knock up a quick meal and bunker down in front the TV, where no opportunity for a cross referencing of our day exists. Just when do we make time to broaden our interests? Saturdays are spent recuperating from the previous week, and Sundays spent holding back the sense of anguish that Monday is just around the corner. The frustration that comes from a sense that our lives are nothing but work, releases itself in stress and anti social behaviour, as we rail against that feeling, that life is an uninteresting tedium. The captains of business, the economic rationalists are pushing us in a direction many of us don’t wish to go. Many in society are overworked, often required to work overtime or long hours against our wishes, and against our better interests. Juxtaposed to this we have entrenched unemployment, where many have no apparatus to earn an income, to participate in an activity, that in the right measure can create a sense of achievement and balance in our lives. Currently too many work too hard, and far too much, but just as importantly these actions deny even a basic work opportunity or job to another community member. And we honestly wonder what it is, that is driving social division, despondency and the sense that For several years I have lobbied inside the Australia Labor Party to promote the development and implementation of genuine job sharing policies. Not feel good notions that pay lip service to this ideal, but real structures that ensure that some in the community do not take more than their fair share of opportunity, by denying access to work, for others. Perhaps it is time when we may need to actively encourage some to give up their endless pursuit of wealth, to support and enact the hitherto mythical notion of a "fair go" for all. Up until now we have relied on the goodwill of the individual to recognise and support a notion of equal access to work. Alas there are now a great many two income families who tell us that an income of around $60.000.00, $70.000.00 a year, and often more, is not enough for them to meet their needs. Is it not true, that the needs of some of these people are more about establishing themselves as the social elite, rather than ensuring they can meet their financial commitments, and live a comfortable if not affluent life? Too many families have no income apart from that offered by the government by way of income support, that struggles to keep pace with the costs of living, stimulated and supported by the actions of those who constantly seek more and more. Indeed the greed of many high income families and individuals, is costing the community in real terms, as we are obliged to fund income support for the unemployed, and as ever the burden falls on the less well off to fund these benevolent structures, as the wealthy find more and more ways of avoiding their tax responsibilities. We should as a community seek ways of moving toward a four day working week for all employees, perhaps based on a 9 hour day at first, to allow our economic structures time to adjust, then move toward a full 32 hour, four day working week. This will free up job opportunities for a great many and allow participation in the work force of a greater percentage of the population than is currently the case. In some ways perhaps this simple mechanism may act as a brake on the growing habit in Of course our business leaders will find all sorts of reasons to ridicule and denigrate such initiatives, likely to be based on an economic argument. Why wouldn’t they, they have been doing exactly that for the last 20 / 30 years, and look at the mess were in. The business world will find many reasons why they cannot offer support to this initiative; well frankly I’m tired of their narrow, self centred agenda, stimulated by their need to advance their own personal circumstances, and entrench their power bases. I’m sure they attacked the idea of the 40-hour week when it was introduced, as vigorously as they attack a reduction in working hours now. It’s cheaper for the employer to force an employee to work constant overtime, rather than create a new position. And haven’t they right under our noses, the business bosses eroded the notions and pillars of the 40-hour week, and reset the model that best suits their own purposes. Push the worker harder and harder, for their own ugly agenda of greed, and at the same time sponsor widespread family and social breakdown, shame. High unemployment as we have now is supported and affected by the rich and powerful, as a mechanism to keep us subservient and demeaned, to keep us in debt to them, to work unnecessary and unfair hours in an effort to ward of the threat of the sack. High unemployment allows bosses to dictate the terms of employment, and they have taken to this role with vigour. We have regressed as a nation to the later 1900th century, to a time before the 40 hour week was legislated as a mechanism to ensure that In the name of decency we must wrestle back the ability to shape our society into a fair model, away from the movers and shakers of the economic world, who have presented us with a society deeply divided, chronically ill, sprung from the wombs of their right wing think tanks. The only beneficiaries of the move toward full time duel income families is the child care industry, certainly our children do not benefit. And yet the pursuers of wealth will glare in the face of damning statistics to the contrary, and tells us that leaving your child in a day care centre from A four day working week frees us up to live a more balanced life, where we have more opportunity to spend time with our children in their formative years, the years when life long bonds are forged, the years where nurturing and affirmation of their sense of self by a parent is so important. A child has an inherent need to be with its parents. Our communities benefit when we work less by way of our ability to give more freely of our time to community groups, volunteer bodies and the like. The current promotion of voluntarism is a worthy notion, but struggles to become active as many of us feel constantly tired and weary and barley able to meet our own commitments, let alone those of broader society. As the public dollar in I believe we are moving toward widespread societal breakdown, based on the fact that we cannot give sufficient time and energy to fulfil our inherited role as the custodians, and invigorators of our society. Plainly we work too much and fail to give the necessary time to ensure our communities are well managed structures, that include input from all of us, are resourced by all of us, not just the faceless wealthy who drive us harder and harder in pursuit of more power. We have lost the ability to say enough is enough, we have become rampant in the pursuit of individual and group need, based on a notion of liberalism. Our society in Australia is being stretched in every direction, trying to meet the needs of the individual, driven by a misguided and sad notion that fulfilment is about material gain, instead of being structured around a principle of equality, and the opportunity for all to participate and realise their true potential. Less work does not necessarily mean more time idle, it means the ability for all of us to have the opportunity to participate in the building of a society that recognises the right for all to be actively engaged, in a life that is personally fulfilling, and a life that contributes to the common good. If we as Australians cannot find it in ourselves to voluntarily construct a workplace that has as its basic tenants, an ethic of equitable access and an identifiable cap on working hours, then it would be proper I believe, to ask our governments to legislate to entrench these principles, for the benefit of all of us. The 40 hour week was about exactly this type of advancement, it is now time for Sincerely, Howard S. Emanuel Mobile: 0400 158 896 E-mail: howard@howardemanuel.com
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: howard-emanuel@hotmail.com
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