Respect Work - Respect Workers
Do you respect the work you do? Most work really is respectable if by "respectable" you mean of some merit or importance. I hope the work you do is respectable and, if so, you respect the work you do.
I bring this up because some of us have had to work at jobs we weren't so keen on. A good example might be a sales position where the tactics used to sell whatever product or service your company provides are, let's just say, less than savory. For example, I remember my father telling me about a time when he took a job as a life insurance salesman. He took the job at a time when he had been laid off and simply needed work. As he described it, he was asked to sell insurance to people who could barely afford the monthly payments required, if they could afford them at all. Although desperate for money to support his family, he just couldn't push such people to buy the policy. He really couldn't stand what he was asked to do. He felt the sales tactics he was taught were high pressure and just didn't like being in the position of trying to force people to do things they didn't want to do. He didn't respect the work he did. Fortunately he found some work he did respect before too much time passed. But that experience of doing work he didn't respect stuck with him his whole life. So much so that he told me the story of his brief encounter with life insurance sales a number of times, and it was clearly a painful time for him.
So if you've got work like this, work you don't respect, just do your best - for your own sake - to get another job. You should respect your work.
Now let's now turn to respecting workers, specifically workers who produce products that you buy who may be working under conditions that are - how to put it - less than enviable. Let's use the example of workers who make athletic shoes. While the media hasn't spotlighted this lately, once upon a time Nike was targeted by the media as a company that exploited workers in third world countries. These poor folks worked long hours for low wages. The indignant media endlessly reported the great injustice of poor folks working long hours for low wages to produce products sold at high profit margins by companies like Nike. Opposing this view were some political conservatives, even more so libertarians, who posited the theory that if not for the opportunity to work for Nike, these poor folks' prospects for employment would be dismal, even non-existant.
What do you think? Do you think these workers are grateful to have the chance to earn money to support their families? I suspect some of them very well might be. I suspect that, given the choice of long hours at low wages or no wages, they'll choose the former every time. But I would ask you to consider whether such an arrangement is just. Yes, I know that libertarians might take the position that the market dictates both prices and wages, and so the wages paid to these worker are fair. and therefore just, simply because those wages were correctly determined by the market. The idea here is that the market is a better "dictator" of wages then other choices - like for example a political dictator.
Catholic social teaching addresses the issue of wages and considers some wages less than "just." We don't have time to get into details here, but exercise a little thought and imagination and you can probably come up with the idea that if the market - for whatever reason - dictates a wage that is so low that a man or woman can't earn enough to provide the basics - food, clothing, shelter - for their family, then maybe that wage isn't just. I don't think your analysis needs to get more complicated than that.
Next time you buy products manufactured in a country where the workers must work long hours for very low wages, think about what we've just discussed here. Some say we shouldn't buy such products, some say we should because, without our purchases, the workers would have no means of earning a living of any kind. I can't offer an easy choice here as to which opinion is right. On the other hand, if people recognized and understood the virtue of justice, and paid people in a manner consistent with justice, more of us might be able to arrive at a just choice regarding whether or not we should buy such products.
I bring this up because some of us have had to work at jobs we weren't so keen on. A good example might be a sales position where the tactics used to sell whatever product or service your company provides are, let's just say, less than savory. For example, I remember my father telling me about a time when he took a job as a life insurance salesman. He took the job at a time when he had been laid off and simply needed work. As he described it, he was asked to sell insurance to people who could barely afford the monthly payments required, if they could afford them at all. Although desperate for money to support his family, he just couldn't push such people to buy the policy. He really couldn't stand what he was asked to do. He felt the sales tactics he was taught were high pressure and just didn't like being in the position of trying to force people to do things they didn't want to do. He didn't respect the work he did. Fortunately he found some work he did respect before too much time passed. But that experience of doing work he didn't respect stuck with him his whole life. So much so that he told me the story of his brief encounter with life insurance sales a number of times, and it was clearly a painful time for him.
So if you've got work like this, work you don't respect, just do your best - for your own sake - to get another job. You should respect your work.
Now let's now turn to respecting workers, specifically workers who produce products that you buy who may be working under conditions that are - how to put it - less than enviable. Let's use the example of workers who make athletic shoes. While the media hasn't spotlighted this lately, once upon a time Nike was targeted by the media as a company that exploited workers in third world countries. These poor folks worked long hours for low wages. The indignant media endlessly reported the great injustice of poor folks working long hours for low wages to produce products sold at high profit margins by companies like Nike. Opposing this view were some political conservatives, even more so libertarians, who posited the theory that if not for the opportunity to work for Nike, these poor folks' prospects for employment would be dismal, even non-existant.
What do you think? Do you think these workers are grateful to have the chance to earn money to support their families? I suspect some of them very well might be. I suspect that, given the choice of long hours at low wages or no wages, they'll choose the former every time. But I would ask you to consider whether such an arrangement is just. Yes, I know that libertarians might take the position that the market dictates both prices and wages, and so the wages paid to these worker are fair. and therefore just, simply because those wages were correctly determined by the market. The idea here is that the market is a better "dictator" of wages then other choices - like for example a political dictator.
Catholic social teaching addresses the issue of wages and considers some wages less than "just." We don't have time to get into details here, but exercise a little thought and imagination and you can probably come up with the idea that if the market - for whatever reason - dictates a wage that is so low that a man or woman can't earn enough to provide the basics - food, clothing, shelter - for their family, then maybe that wage isn't just. I don't think your analysis needs to get more complicated than that.
Next time you buy products manufactured in a country where the workers must work long hours for very low wages, think about what we've just discussed here. Some say we shouldn't buy such products, some say we should because, without our purchases, the workers would have no means of earning a living of any kind. I can't offer an easy choice here as to which opinion is right. On the other hand, if people recognized and understood the virtue of justice, and paid people in a manner consistent with justice, more of us might be able to arrive at a just choice regarding whether or not we should buy such products.
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