The Perils of Privilege

At the college where I teach, I get free parking: prime spots right on the edge of campus. Should my designated places fill up, I can help myself to any student space. Nice deal. For me.

How is student parking? Well, I don’t know exactly. They pay for parking and it’s farther away, but I’m hazy on the details. Unless they speak up, I won’t know how often they circle for half an hour or how long it takes them to walk from class to where they parked. Even if they do speak up, might I dismiss it? Might I think they’re just complaining to cover up a lack of effort?

This, in microcosm, is the peril of privilege. Those with even small amounts of power, education, and wealth can remain ignorant and unmotivated to change an unjust situation. We owe a great debt to the privileged who seek out the truth and act on it and to the unprivileged who dare to step into the light and speak: canaries in the coal mine we all inhabit.

Entitlement, Self-Blame, and Injustice

What if the aforementioned students shrug about parking injustice and suck it up? Just another piece of crap from a huge pile. Expecting nothing, they say nothing. Or maybe they can’t take it anymore, berate themselves for their lack of toughness, and drop out. I see this happen more often than one would think possible. While UC executives threaten to sue for outrageously high compensation, those at the bottom sometimes take pride in stoicism or minimize injustice. Eventually, when we start to pay the piper, those at a higher level wring their wrists about retention and lack of skills and how our society and economy need educated, productive people. At some level, we know we share a common fate, yet we don’t always connect the dots.

The Crazy Elephant in the Room

Many of my family work service jobs – as hotel maids, factory workers, fast food clerks, Wal-Mart employees – and in recent years, I started hearing about only one week of paid vacation a year. That can’t be right, I thought. Isn’t it the law that full-time workers have two weeks paid vacation after a year? No, there’s no such law. Nor is there a law requiring paid sick leave (Family Emergency Medical Leave is unpaid, thus necessarily restricted to the better off). But perhaps this just the case with the few unfortunates that I know?

Not at all. The Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey 2003 tells us that “after 1 year, a 5-day yearly paid vacation was the most common among blue-collar workers.” According to their data, in blue-collar occupations, 60 percent received only 5 days of paid vacation after one year, and little changed after three years. That same study showed that those earning less than $15 an hour fared worse than others on every measure: health benefits, disability, life insurance, pensions, bonuses, and naturally, stock options. And yet, there are people who will post a comment like, “all the companies that I have worked for over 30 YEARS have provided paid vacation.” In other words, I’ve got a great parking spot, so what’s the problem? The peril of privilege again. The truth is, many part-time employees who work two jobs to survive, receive no vacation or sick leave at all.

So What if Fast Food Workers Get Only Five Days Off?

Bernie Sanders watching Burger King labor agreement

We may deny it, but we’re part of a web. Whatever we throw away is still right here, harming and polluting. As a friend of mine says, “There is no ‘away’.” We all benefit from conditions that encourage hope, stability, and planning. We all lose when we live surrounded by bitter or resigned people who’ve never had a chance to recognize much less realize their human potential.

A relative of mine working mandatory overtime at a factory six months of the year – ten-hour days and half of Saturday – said she liked church, but had so much to get done during her tiny fingernail of a weekend, that she just couldn’t muster the energy to attend anymore. This situation should alarm fundamentalist conservatives, certainly, but everyone else should be alarmed too that people have so little time to be full human beings, something other than someone’s employee. Too many lives, even privileged ones, hold nothing but work and shopping. Who are we when those are taken away? We don’t know. How many people have time to learn and vote on facts? Not so many it seems, given the eye-popping number of people who still believe Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. or is a Muslim.

After the Truth, Demonstrating That Change is Possible

Yeah, yeah, we all know about France and Finland, but here’s a jolt. Would you believe Estonia provides 28 paid vacation days a year? And Malaysia has 12 state holidays on top of 16 paid vacation days? Morocco gives three times our paid vacation. And this information didn’t come from some Communist in Santa Cruz but from Jeanne Sahadi, a senior writer for CNNMoney.com. These are facts we can offer to those who are genuinely terrified of change or believe they have a vested interest in our continued dysfunction as a nation. Unlike riskier, newer steps, we know for certain that we can do this. Sadly, workers right here once did better than they do now. How is this okay?

Sabbath, Shabbat, and Rest for the Weary

Every religion sets aside special times for celebration, prayer, fasts, feasts, or rest which encourage us to step away from daily routine and connect with each other in eternal time. Among “peoples of the book,” even animals deserve regular rest. Isn’t it interesting that as we deny ourselves and others time to restore, we also factory-farm, milking cows three times a day instead of two, forcing growth hormones into the livestock we’ll later consume, racing and pushing through a short life. Production, production. Consumption, consumption. The wheel never stops grinding. We never get a different perspective. Our life outside of work is emaciated, and unemployment hits us like a bullet.

Hope and Steps for Change: the Paid Vacation Act, the Healthy Families Act

8-hour day demonstration

If you’re one of the millions of unemployed, consider this: Former Representative Alan Grayson introduced the Paid Vacation Act in 2009, requiring a mere week of paid vacation after one year for both full and part-time workers. Senator Edward Kennedy, before dying, introduced the Healthy Families Act which would make paid sick leave mandatory for full-time workers. Both bills are stuck in committee. We can get those back on the table, and while we’re at it, work on the local level. Cities like Milwaukee and San Francisco have not waited for the nation to act. They’ve passed their own paid sick leave laws.

Let’s publicize these facts and get our organizations to support at least this bare minimum. Now is the time especially if you are one of those people harnessed to the millstone, but also if you live in the same world with them.

A number of serious organizations are bringing us knowledge about where we are now and where we could be:

Please share links to other reputable sites.


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