Going to work is a momentous occasion, even on a normal day. But last Friday I had the pleasure of being a part of something big: There's nothing more thrilling than being THE INFLATOR. The bosses call it "Price Changes." But wandering around the aisles scatching off price tags and replacing them with (higher) price tags is actually what I'm doing. There's a sense of power and purpose in being a part of the global effort to reduce the purchasing power of the wages of the working class. Yesterday, one hour of work changing price tags could buy me $8.50 worth of insect poison, which translates into maybe 2 bottles. But today, that same $8.50 an hour (in the Bay Area!) will only get me around 1 3/4 bottles of poison. Now, mind you, there is no second clerk wandering the store bumping up mine or your wages. Those shall remain stagnant. The economists say that this phenomenon has been occurring consistently since the early seventies, if I heard correctly. The idea being that the real value of our paychecks has been going down not up. Apparently regi-slaves like me have been wandering the stores attacking our own purchasing power for DECADES!
I like to picture myself as a tiny little cog in the vast, and barely fathomable global exchange of goods. I examine and admire the Chinese newspapers, brightly colored paper, and Korean shoe sole scraps crammed in between the pottery that we pull off the trucks. Are these newspapers from Beijing? Or maybe Shanghai? Come to find out they're from San Leandro. If their warehouse is similar to our store, there's a trully transnational proletariat cooperating in broken languages to bring these pieces of shit from East Asia to the East Bay.
The "products" are all inscribed with their place of origin. The pots say China and Viet Nam. Yet one can only speculate on the origins of the people who make these items, pack them full of newspaper, ship them across the sea and over the highways. Each worker a product and agent of global pressures.
I asked my boss why the prices of the furniture were going up. He replied that the supplier is charging more for anything made of steel. The boss said the Chinese economy is using so much steel that the price of steel is soaring globally. Now given that this guy is management I take anything he says as a manipulative plot to chisel me on the price of my labor power. Regardless of that fact, what if he's on to something.
What if everytime the capitalists feel economic pressure placed on their privileges they attack the working class? Last Friday, I was the end of the line. I was the final end of this particular form of attack. Well, at least the customers are mainly Piedmont mansioneers, so the price changes affect the people who deserve it.
