job + job

[carneiros]

I have a job stocking shelves at a retail store. I spend a lot of time thinking about global capitalism and how this job connects me to millions of impoverished sweatshop workers around the world. I was stocking hideous plastic christmas trees on a shelf and wondering what the woman worker from China was thinking about when she assembled it. She

Comments

[blindaurora]

I think about retail/Xmas alot too. Mostly I wish I was set up to make my own candles (out of wax... from my own bees...) and that I had acrage from which I could sustainably harvest some ever-greenery to decorate my house with. And that I had the time to hand make my presents... from wool I spin myself... from my own sheep. And of course, I'd want to dye the wool (and linen, I'm thinking) from herbs and wood I gathered myself... from my own land. However, I'd need a copper pot, and you just can't mine a pot worth of copper out of the Tennessee hills. And I'd probably buy the ribbon I'd want to go with the greenery, and even if I grew, thrashed, spun, wove, and sewed the linen myself, i'd want cotton cloth and thread too, and I'd probably have to trade for that

[blindaurora]

The way we currently celebrate this holiday REQUIRES the sweatshop labor of poor women in countries all across the world who work exhaustive jobs for very little money. The turn over rate for a woman factory worker is about two years. After that they've become so physically worn out that they can no longer work at the rapid pace needed in the assembly lines and they are fired. They are literally used up and thrown away, just like the plastic crap so many of the customers at my store buy. The way our economy functions is environmentally and socially unsustainable. People who normally SEEM to at least give a damn during the rest of the year abandon it all when they step into a retail store to buy Christmas presents