A CELEBRATION WORTHY OF SAMUEL SMILES

We were celebrating an achievement the night before last, myself and some ex work mates. One of us, Sherry, had managed to score something remarkable and rare. We were very excited for her. We all agreed that it was well deserved, and she had worked in a painstaking fashion for it for some years. She was jubilant, talking about how this would impact on her life and that of her children.

So what had Sherry achieved? A PhD from Harvard? A partnership in a prestigious law firm?

No. Sherry had gained herself a job. An actual job. A permanent, 8 till 4.30, Monday till Friday job with sick leave and annual leave and all the trimmings. She has worked on the qualification for this for two and a half years. She has worked in places where you can get fifty hours a week or twenty, where you can work for thirty six hours straight, counting the sleepover shifts, where split shifts wreck your day, where you are away from your kids in the evenings. Managers can decide suddenly that you are working less than 20 hours a week, in which case you lose your child support and your Working for Families top up for those on low wages with children.

Sherry's new job pays just on the Living Wage, estimated to be $20.20 an hour in New Zealand in 2017. The Living Wage is an amount that covers not just the basic expenses, but enables people to participate in society. It is $5 above the minimum wage. Sherry has benefited from ferocious union activity in her industry, resulting in a pay equity claim that forced the government to subsidize the largely female work force.

I have written before about life in the precariat, the new class that experiences income precarity and often accommodation precarity as well. We talk about 'hours' not jobs. Getting enough hours this week. Losing hours. Our jobs may be permanent on paper, but how much we work is subject to the 'just in time' economic thinking that gives us the split shifts and the being called at no notice. Even professionals work like this. Teachers, for example, are employed term by term.  You may have a good income for now, but you can't plan and you can't have a stake in your work environment. Precarity keeps us edgy, a little hungry, a little worried, and leads to short term decision making. There is no long game. We discount the future. We dissipate our scarce energies. We are depoliticized.

As we partied, drinking cheap beer and cider and eating ice cream in a chilly kitchen, I took a moment to think about how Sherry had achieved something that used to be common. A steady, full time job was once considered almost a right, especially for the family man. It was certainly the norm. Maybe it wasn't great back then. It was stultifying and monocultural after all. Now, we have the opposite problem. We are grateful for anything that gives us stability and enables us to separate leisure and work and spend time with our kids.

So, go Sherry you good thing. And we raise a glass for you, and your kids who will now see you regularly every evening whether they like it or not.

A Note on searching for images - if you google 'Working Hard Images' you get a heap of stock images of
a) men sitting at desks
b) quotes about how you must work harder
I can't begin to describe how little this means to the working class woman.

FIVE TREES - A POEM

This is a poem in an old Norse style where the last sound of the line goes with the first sound of the next line. It came very directly to me while meditating on nature spirits in Australia.

Five trees grow from one who died
Abide in loving unity
Family dig deep
Sleep not for knowledge gained
Pain for love of Yggdrasil

A TALE OF THE COMMONPLACE

A TALE OF THE COMMONPLACE

Janet injured her foot a few weeks ago. This was a minor injury, but it was too sore to walk on for a few days, and later on when she tried she discovered her leg could no longer bear her weight. This distressed her. Actually, distressed is too clinical a term. This frightened her. She became scared of moving and falling, and gradually her mind just seemed to fall apart. She went from rambling a bit, to a kind of word salad, peppered with loose associations, and from walking with a frame, to being hoisted into a wheelchair.

In the rest home where she lived, Janet was part of a group of fierce and witty women who always lunched together. One lunch time, I was called over to their table because Janet couldn't manage her eating. She couldn't organise her utensils and she didn't seem able to find her mouth. I assisted her to eat the softer parts of her lunch, forking food for her.

All of this is commonplace and unremarkable. (I love the unremarkable!). It happens every day in a rest home near you. Most interesting was the responses of Janet's friends. It was they who called me over, and as I assisted her they were all watching my every movement with the intensity of birds. And they critiqued my actions in detail.

What was this about? I spoke to them, and said, it must be hard to watch this, because Janet is your friend. They all agreed emphatically. They know how this one goes. Janet is assisted to eat from now on. She is moved to the ridiculously named ‘feeds table’. She no longer sits with them, no longer socialises as much, spends more time in her room. This has happened to other friends. It will happen to each of them, in one form or another. They feel for Janet and they want the best for her. They feel for themselves, too. And they want to know some important things, which they learn by watching me and critiquing me. When this happens to them, how will I care for them? Will they be safe with me? How will they get their needs met, when they are no longer able to express them?

The responsibilities of those caring for the elderly are simpler when the elderly are unable to speak for themselves, when they are really ill. Then the responsibilities are great, but simpler. Caring for the elderly who are their own advocates is less straight forward, but just as great. Honouring their sense of selfhood is not just an immediate, day to day task, it is a very tangible insurance policy for uncertain and frightening future.