THE LAST WORD
Leopold, George
THE LAST WORD George Leopold DEAD END It is exquisite boredom. We arrive for work at 8 in the morning and stuff envelopes until 4:30 in the afternoon. To help get us through a day of mindless...
...It is a rapidly growing class, and it includes many with whom I graduated...
...From the streets, these sentiments are being taken to the workplace...
...In my own workplace, such issues as job stress, intense boredom, equal division of labor, comparable worth, and respect for fellow workers are finally matters of open discussion rather than under-one's-breath muttering...
...George Leopold stuffs envelopes in The Progressive's mail room...
...At best, they will be added to the growing pool of cheap labor that can be exploited by management to depress wages and to demand additional give-backs from organized labor...
...Almost half a century ago, those who performed the mind-numbing work on industrial assembly lines rebelled and built themselves a mighty labor movement...
...What efforts might they initiate to improve their working conditions and their low pay...
...Even in 1978, according to a U.S...
...More young, better-educated industrial workers are entering union politics as they begin to perceive that the entrenched labor leadership is too often barely distinguishable from management...
...Thus, potentially half of all employed college graduates may today be toiling in dead-end jobs...
...That the job market is tightening for college graduates—what one observer calls "peaking baby-boom competition"—is, of course, nothing new...
...Many others inquired about the envelope-stuffing job but were turned away—there are simply too few jobs to go around...
...One friend traveled to the East Coast in search of meaningful employment and now seems permanently "between jobs...
...We are the class of workers whom the labor statisticians describe as the "underemployed...
...For many of us, it comes as a shock to realize we are stuck—compelled to settle for work that provides little income and less satisfaction...
...Another, a fine artist who has studied in France, now plays in a rock-'n'-roll band...
...Department of Labor study, one college graduate in four believed he or she held a job traditionally filled by someone with less schooling...
...The situation has undoubtedly grown worse since then...
...As college graduates claim more and more blue-collar, service, and clerical jobs, many of those who would otherwise have filled those jobs will end up competing for what is left of unemployment compensation or other forms of state assistance...
...So we keep stuffing the envelopes...
...Will they, perhaps, constitute the rank and file of a new generation of labor activists and organizers...
...The words to a Beatles song sum up mv situation: "Out of college, money spent...
...An enormous amount of time and money was invested in providing us with an education—for this...
...In the mail room, my predecessor was a seventeen-year-old high school student...
...At commencement, after the speakers congratulated us on our achievements and our bright futures, when the dean conferred on us the bachelor's degree with "all the rights and responsibilities" that went with it, I wondered whether those "rights" included a meaningful job at a living wage...
...The most obvious effect will be the displacement of less-educated workers...
...But even then I was apprehensive about the future...
...Sometimes the cramped mail room is pandemonium—the radio, the postage meter, and several conversations going at once...
...The result, labor analysts say, is that persons with some college education or even a degree are obtaining lower-paying entry jobs and finding it more difficult to advance—if they manage to find work at all...
...Since the 1973 recession, the economy has been unable to absorb the growing numbers of qualified candidates for professional, technical, managerial, and administrative positions...
...My co-workers and I are painfully, personally aware of the plight of the underemployed, but what does it mean to others— and to the whole economy...
...Though the work is repetitive and often demeaning, we are fortunate to be employed at all...
...On the slowest days, we vie for a chance to get out and run an errand, like hungry dogs fighting over a scrap of meat...
...Should we all have majored in engineering...
...Most of my colleagues in the mail room hold a degree...
...The study also concluded that only 49 per cent of the respondents felt they held jobs commensurate with their training...
...Three years and as many dead-end jobs later, I know they didn't...
...This is not what I would have guessed if anyone had asked me several years ago what I would be doing after college...
...In business administration...
...The media insist that we are less socially conscious and politically active than the college students and graduates of the 1960s, but some of us have begun to revive the themes of that era—and to relate them to our own situation...
...See no future, pay no rent...
...To help get us through a day of mindless labor, my fellow workers and I listen to the radio, discuss our personal lives and interests, complain about the lousy wages, and, by midafternoon, struggle to stay awake...
...Even those who chose the safe route— teaching—find their jobs threatened by declining enrollments and slashed budgets...
...Can envelope-stuffers do less...
...At other times we all fall silent, alone with our thoughts, and it is then I brood about the more rewarding jobs I've tried for without success...
...As increasing numbers of disgruntled college graduates turn to blue-collar work or service occupations, what impact will they have on the floundering labor movement...
...It's the only show in town...
...During a recent demonstration against American involvement in El Salvador, for example, the anti-war slogan was not merely "No more war," but also, "More jobs, no war...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
