Across the country I heard people complain that Americans don’t want to work hard any more because Mexicans were filling the jobs at meat-packing plants. Though we actually work longer hours than forty years ago there may be some truth to not wanting to work hard, depending on what you want to consider as work. Much of our society has come to see work as a necessary burden which must be endured as a means to greater ends. Should that be true?
My second most favorite job of all time was haying on a farm. Those days featured long hours out in the field, working together to load and stack the bales, using your muscles lifting and throwing bales of hay. We sweated, itched and sometimes ached, but I think doing nothing but haying would be a great career. I believe most people, Americans included, are willing to work hard if hard work means enduring discomfort and burning mega-calories for socially and financially rewarding jobs. I did not become a farmer because haying is not the only task required and there are other more lucrative yet still satisfying options.
My favorite job was one that few people consider work at all. As I walked across the country I gave talks about the things I write and sing about. I did research along the way for paid public speaking gigs once I got home. The 5,000 mile walk was the means I was choosing to support ourselves. I burned more calories at my work than anyone reading this does at theirs; I went through more discomfort than you do for your work. Yet others were more likely to view what we were doing as a vacation rather than work. Seriously now, how many of you would hike in 132 degree heat, put in 20+ mile days or spend 16 hours of darkness in a confined tent for a vacation? The grass is always greener …..
Admittedly we enjoyed what we were doing, a departure from what many consider as “having to work” these days. I also was contributing something of value to society, raising awareness for community virtues. Where is it written that making-a-living should not be enjoyable?
I doubt many people enjoy meat packing, nor does it pay much better than haying in the fields. The wages are fourteen dollars an hour, a better wage in Kansas than in Connecticut, but still requiring more than forty hours of work from a household to pursue cover the costs of housing, health, food, clothing, utilities and education without severe debt. A meat packing household either needs to be single, content with a lower income lifestyle, or sacrifice family/community time for work time among two wage earners. There is a fourth option. Hispanics often have wide familial networks by which a better living can be achieved while still not sacrificing community and/or family.
Truth be told, I worked much harder with much greater discomfort than that wealthy and famous entertainer I started this series with, who used his “hard work” as a badge for lodging a litany of complaints about our political and economic systems. For that matter, your average meat packing household works longer and harder. If we want to overturn welfare trends or reluctance to work at places like meat packing plants one of two things need to happen. The forty year stagnating trend of wages could be reversed, so that a forty hour meat packing job can sustain the basics of living without large debt. Or we could focus on the social and financial benefits delivered by community-style economics, rather than complaining about how paternal economic and political systems should be indulging only those who “work hard.”
