The ILO, a UN agency that advances social justice and promotes decent work, has reported that 2.6 million people die from work related injuries and diseases every year. They also estimate that an additional 395 million workers worldwide sustained non-fatal work injuries.
Corporate media’s under-reporting of this, aids the global war on working people and the poor.
Here in the States, I’ve taken to nicknaming our two major political factions the, “Toil and Drop Dead Party”. Democrats offer a slightly softer landing, while being a bit nicer to drop outs and never-ins. The GOP is simply toil and drop dead and then you get your literal retirement heaven.
It’s not much better with small parties or “independents”.
Too many faux libertarians are mediocre sociopaths who use liberty as cover, and while they’re good on warnings of government centrality, they forget that lesson when it comes to corporate centrality. Greens and their ilk offer nice perks on the surface… but only if you toil and don’t mind “expert” social engineering. Socialists – the real left, not middle class lawn sign liberals – offer the most to labor, but again it comes with toil and utopian prophecy, and quite frankly, a cringe worthy propaganda style.
We suffer for not having a viable labor party in the States. But then again, if their message would be, “toil and be saved” then it’s stale milquetoast neoliberalism, rebranded. I suppose a labor party might give you a free beer with that, but then shame you on the digestif cigarette if any bumper sticker liberals migrated to the new party.
If we’re being philosophical and “rational”, even “scientific”, we’d look at these disastrous and inhumane numbers and think that maybe “jobs” aren’t the be all, end all. Then we can discuss what the value of work really is… for profit or not, volunteer, homemaker, caretaker, employed, unemployed or self-employed. Questions of class or “status” would naturally follow. If we had our collective and individualist guts, we’d want freedom from work and advocate for its various offspring of sabbaticals, shorter work weeks and hours, and more leisure time (real leisure, not a corporate retreat). We’d reject quantification of the worker for the evil it is. We’d certainly, at least, question policies that institute master-servant (slave) dynamics and rational self-interest as the guiding principle to economic governance.