not polarize people
Brigitte Gynther
junior
It frustrates me that people are engaging in ridiculous behavior such as waking people up at 4 a.m. to bother them about political views. Serious, what on earth are you doing? Not only is it rude, but I have only one thought: If you really care about social justice, stop waking people at 4 a.m. and instead use your time to actually address the issues that you like to spout about.
I am in the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), and that is not what I go there to do. Nor do the majority of PSA members I know. It maddens me that anybody would profess to care about social justice and then blatently disrespect someone. It goes against everything we believe in.
Just an announcement to everyone: Personally, I don't run around having strange thoughts about chopping white people or business men up with a hacksaw or imposing some kind of weird socialist system that wouldn't work anyway.
But ask me yourself, or talk to the people in your classes and dorms who are truly concerned about workers' rights. We won't eat you.
It does seem to me that there are many problems stemming from corporate greed and policies that facilitate it, such as the lack of benefits and poverty-level wages that often subsidize enormous profits.
Wal-Mart has been sued in 38 states for forcing workers to work off the clock so as to avoid overtime pay. Twenty-five percent of people who work in the United States earn poverty-level hourly wages, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Without even getting into the international garment industry, the U.S. Department of Labor found that 100 percent of poultry plants and 50 percent of restaurants in the United States to violate wage and hour laws.
But this does not make me hate CEOs or think that all business is bad. Nor do I think rich people are evil. I am sorry if some people do.
I think we need to work together to change problems, not polarize people. We need to hold businesses accountable for the way they treat our fellow humans. And we need to support their right to a voice at work, to get problems addressed without being afraid of losing their jobs and to negotiate for fair wages and conditions, which is often found through unions.
What has come to my attention most recently is what is going on at Notre Dame, not the statistics of the rest of the world. For instance, many people here are feeling extremely overworked and simply don't know what to do because it seems that nobody is listening to them. Other workers have been made to feel afraid of ramifications if they talk about unions.
Often unions can provide a voice and representation on the job, a way to negotiate for fair wages and conditions and to ensure that troubles are addressed. I, along with many others, am simply asking the University to agree not to in behavior that hinders workers' attempts to unionize, but instead to voluntarily recognize a union if workers vote to join it.
What do you think? I'm not going to hate you if you want to talk about it.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, November 19, 2002
