WORK ‘TIL you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.
Work. Underpaid? Bereft of
benefits? No job security? Work. Be thankful to be working. Work harder.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up. Do it again.
Give quality time – not to
the growing children, but all to work. Keep bills paid. Years pass. Chances
pass. Lucky, work you have. Be glad. Thank God.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up. Do it again.
Get older. Get scared to
work less hard. Work harder. Prove you still can.
No time for neighbors,
community, friends, or the laziness of leisure. No riches. No home left.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up. Do it again.
No savings. No pension.
All spent staying barely healthy enough to work harder.
Holidays a time for silent
desperation. Of work deprivation. Why stop?
Work. Don’t stop. Drop.
Get up. Do it again.
Or maybe go to sales at
the stores where workers are working ‘till they drop, reminders of just another
working day. Don’t be sorry for them. They work. You don’t. Envy them.
No job here. Work
somewhere – sweat to your last drop in Saudi, Dubai, Bahrain, even in war-torn
Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Work in any way – nanny in Singapore, caregiver in Israel,
nurse in London, factory worker in Incheon, domestic helper in Hong Kong, duped
to be drug mule to Indonesia. Do anything. Stay alive. Keep the family back
home alive.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up. Do it again.
Rich people and bosses
have no guilt about holidays, no fear in a nap.
Workers have no need for
holidays, all fear in a wink.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Do it again.
Pay your taxes. Pay your
bills. Pay their taxes. Pay their bills. You’ve lost everything that you valued
anyway. Loser. Loner. Lazy. That’s how the power class sees us all. We are
tools of their greed, and the fools who lost all dreams. They are far, far
smarter than we. Whoopee.
Labor Day?
Why are you not working?
No job? Lost it? A day off? Why are you not working? At least, with the little
left in your pockets – if any – go buy something that will swell the profits
and power of those who find us all so pliable, so pitiful, so useable, so
exploitable, so workable. Listen for the call. It may be the need for profits
calling. If so, get up. Now.
Work ‘till you drop. Stop.
Drop. Get up. Do it again.
Then stop. When you
finally expire – literally and figuratively. Unless the wealthy and the
powerful figure out a way to prolong our lives a little longer to make a few
more pesos as they inject us with pain killers and tranquilizers so we cannot
even scream on the way out of their profit-making schemes. Physically,
emotionally all spent. No savings. No pensions. No hope.
Labor Day?
That’s all day, every day,
in every way.
The Philippines is a
country of holidays – special, national, local, working and non-working. But
certainly not for workers or those who wish they were. We labor for the wealthy
and the powerful to have their holidays, every day.
Our labor. Their day. Aye, we are their
holidays.
(By Donna Smith,
executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado
Foundation. Published on September 05, 2011 by Common Dreams.org. With
minimal alterations/additions by this columnist to fit into Philippine setting.
First published here on May 6, 2015)
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