The
Face of the American Worker:
In
praise of my building’s custodian
Come,
labor on.
Who
dares stand idle, on the harvest plain
While
all around him waves the golden grain?
And
to each servant does the Master say,
Go
work today.
A
troubling context
Yesterday was Labor Day. For most Americans it was a
holiday. For some, it was an opportunity to make time and a half working on a
national holiday. For others, it signals the end of summer with its beach vacations
and the beginning of Fall and back to school. It is also historically the height of
hurricane season in the northern hemisphere.
I find it sad that among the things that Labor Day
represents to the average American, what is missing from that list is the labor
it was designed to celebrate. Labor Day was created to be a day where the hard
work of the average Joe and Mary was recognized and appreciated. This year’s
Labor Day occurs amidst a downward spiral of anti-labor sentiment not seen in America
for a very long time. It has become fashionable to pillory unions today, to
demonize workers and to loot the pensions of retired workers even as corporate
executives, wealthy stock holders and the irresponsible citizens whom workers serve
become ever wealthier off their often poorly compensated labor.
There is a word to describe this relationship: exploitative.
I long ago recognized that my life was made possible by
the hard work of a lot of people I would never know. I learned from my short
stint in the fields of Central Florida’s truck farms that my daily bread only
came to me via the hard work of farm workers, many of them denied the living
wage their tireless efforts deserved and subjected to work conditions which
would ultimately shorten their lives. I learned from my short stint selling
shoes in a now-defunct big box store (J.M. Fields) that consumerism fostered a
contempt for the very workers whose labor made it possible to buy the cheap
goods that consumerism has hoodwinked us into believing we need to make us
happy.
Lessons
from unheralded teachers
One of the wisest lessons I learned in my internship
prior to beginning teaching public schools some 40 years ago was that there
were three groups of workers you wanted to keep on your side. They included the
clerical staff in the office, the cooks and servers in the cafeteria and the
custodial staff in your hallway. It was good advice that proved invaluable when
I began teaching. But it was also an invitation for me to see workers as
individuals, real human beings with real lives, families and dreams, not simply
caricatures expressed in reductionist, functionalist terms.
There are no essential waitresses, secretaries, garbage
men or plumbers in this world. There are simply human beings who work in hourly
jobs to make their humble livings. Without them our society would collapse
within hours.
A major reason I ride the city bus system to work is
because I am inevitably surrounded by people whose life circumstances are
different from my own. Call it a rolling Margaret Mead experience if you like. I
sit among workers, some of them a bit whiffy after long days working outside in
construction, day laborers carrying rented tools back to the hiring office to
insure they get all of the meager paycheck coming to them, human advertisements
who have traded the giant signs they twirl on highway shoulders in the sun all
day for 8 ounce beers in brown paper bags from which they not so
surreptitiously sip on the ride home.
On the bus I quietly work my crossword puzzles or simply gaze out the windows. Most of all, I listen. And I learn a lot about people whose lives are very
different from my own. On the bus, it is the working class headed home after a
long day of work who are the teachers and the professional middle class
academic who is the student.
A
surprise revelation
Come,
labor on.
Claim
the high calling angels cannot share;
To
young and old the Gospel gladness bear.
Redeem
the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The
night draws nigh.
This past week I was stopped dead in my tracks by the
revelations of one of my students. This woman had been in my class two years
ago and suddenly disappeared. This is not terribly unusual among undergraduates
who are living on their own for the first time and often find themselves
blindsided by events they never saw coming. I sent her an email after a couple
of weeks had passed to remind her that the engagement portion of the grade
could not be met by missing class.
A couple of days later I received a response. The student
had been advised by her doctor to remain in bed during what proved to be a high
risk pregnancy. She ultimately was required to drop all her courses, sending me
a note thanking me for my concern and promising to return to school once the
pregnancy was completed.
Of course I hear promises like this all the time, many of
which are never kept. The fact this student actually lived into her promise to
return to school is somewhat unusual. She picked back up where she had left off
in the humanities program sequence two years later bearing pictures of her now
two year old healthy child. But it was her revelation in a break between
classes last week that stopped me in my tracks.
I teach two classes back to back in a rather foul old barely
functional classroom on the top floor of the original Engineering building, a
site a colleague lovingly dubbed “the armpit.” There is a ten minute break
between the classes. My student is taking both classes from me and often brings
her supper with her to class and gobbles it down in the ten minutes between
classes.
Last week one of her classmates remarked on how good her grilled
chicken salad smelled and how she was making everyone hungry. “I’m sorry,” she
said “but I have to eat my supper now.” I asked her if she was headed for work
after the class. “I work until midnight,” she replied. Where? She smiled, “I
clean the building your office is in,” adding, “then I go home to be Mom to a
two year old.”
My two classes are the only two classes this student is
taking because the university only pays for two classes a semester for its
employees. She and her husband switch off child raising duties and work
schedules to keep the lights on and the food on the table. In the middle of all
that, this student manages to study and produce high quality work in her two classes.
“I
admire you”
Come,
labor on.
Away
with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No
arm so weak but may do service here;
Though
feeble agents, may we all fulfill
God's
righteous will.
This is the face of American labor that we who benefit
from their labor so often and so quickly forget. This is the human being whose
labor makes our lives of privilege possible. I can barely keep my own house
respectably clean. I can only imagine trying to keep the building where I work
clean in addition to teaching and attending to the ever growing list of
non-teaching duties imposed upon me by the university.
I hope I did not embarrass this woman when I stammered, “Wow.
I admire you.” It was an honest response to the revelations of an unusual
student. She evidences no sign of the entitlement that too often afflicts so
many of her classmates. She cheerfully leaves my class to go work an eight hour
late night shift in custodial work that many of us would quickly pronounce as
beneath our dignity. And she comes to class prepared, somehow managing to
juggle her duties as mom to a toddler and responsible student in the humanities
program with aplomb.
She is one of the many faces of American workers today.
And while I did not take a lot of time yesterday amidst my own recreational
activities to reflect on my gratitude to them, their day should not pass
without some kind of recognition. And so to this hard working young woman and
the millions like her across America on this day after Labor Day, I say “Thank you for all you do. And I pray that I
and my fellow Americans will never take you or your labor for granted or fail
to respect you as our fellow citizens.”
Thank you, all of you. And Happy Labor Day.
Come,
labor on.
No
time for rest, till glows the western sky,
Till
the long shadows oer our pathway lie,
And
a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
Well
done, well done!
(Hymn 541, The Episcopal Hymnal 1982. Lyrics, Jane
Bothwick,
Thoughts
for Thoughtful Hours. Edinburgh, Scotland. 1859)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino
Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy
of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
If the unexamined life is
not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or
political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound
bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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