No Jobs in No Logo, by Leanne Ballinger

No Jobs in No Logo

Leanne Ballinger

Discarded Factory

There is degraded production in the Age of the Superbrand. The products are made in the factory but the brands are made in our minds. Machines wear out. Cars rust. People die. But what lives on are the BRANDS. This is all due to the decrease in production cost and the increase of the value of branding. For example, Nike began as "an import/export scheme of made-in Japan running shoes" (198). Now, Nike is using an on-the-cheap outsourced production structure. The effects of this business strategy meant job flight from North America to South Korea and from Europe to South Asia.

Companies such as Nike work with Free-Trade Zones. These zones are often tax-free and help companies keep a low profile in terms of labour relations. The manufacturing is concentrated and isolated inside the zone to squeeze out the maximum amount of production. These factories make sure the number of working hours is no less than 16 hours a day. The investors of these companies are likely those who own golf courses, executive clubs, private schools, and five star restaurants. The local worker is left working for less than one dollar a day and the investors are still fighting for lower wages to be paid to these workers. "The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer". The workers are generally female, and they must be young, before their mid-twenties. These people are left with no choice. "The choice is not between bad jobs and good jobs but between bad jobs and no jobs."

Threats and Temps

The major corporations that rule our economies are coming up with new ways of saving another dollar. According to Naomi Klein,"Factory jobs are being outsourced, garment jobs are morphing into homework, and temporary contracts are replacing full, secure employment". Even top-notch CEO's are only staying at a job for a short period of time before they start looking for something else. Welcome to "PART TIME AMERICA, WHERE EVERYTHING IS ABOUT BRANDS, NOT PRODUCTS!" All the major corporations seem to care about anymore is that they have plenty of workers to keep new marketing strategies "fresh". The most savvy of corporate promoters like to consider themselves as "organizers" of collections of contracts, as opposed to "employment organizations". Offering well-paid and steady employment is no longer in style.

The major industry that provides 75% of Americans and Canadians with employment is the service industry. Klein writes, "In the service industry, big brand employers have become artful at dodging most commitments to their employees, expertly fostering the notion that their clerks are somehow not quite legitimate workers, and do not really need or deserve job security." The service sector is filled with workers who have multiple university degrees, immigrants who are unable to find manufacturing jobs, laid-off nurses and teachers, and down-sized managers. Major corporate sectors treat their employees like children, apparently believing they do not have bills or rent to pay. Many of the workers in this industry are over 25.

Today, there are four-and-a-half times as many Americans selling clothes in specialty and department stores as there are workers stitching and weaving them. Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the world and the largest private employer in the US. A 1997 study found that 25% of non-management Canadian retail workers had been with the same company for 11 years or more; and 39% had been there from 4 to 10 years. But even though these workers have put a significant amount of time into this industry, along with the rest of society they are induced into thinking that theirs isn't a real job; it's only a hobby. Many employees feel they are just passing through this industry even though they have been at their current McJob for a few years. Borders clerk Jason Chappell feels that "so much of the company propaganda is convincing you that you're not workers...that you're not working class...Everyone thinks they are middle-class even when they're making $13 000 a year."

Large chains such as Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and the Gap have been lowering workplace standards in the service sector to fuel their marketing budgets and high-concept "retail experiences" by low-balling their clerks on hours and wages. Most service sectors only pay minimum wage. Wal-Mart has officially claimed that full-time is 28 hours a week. Kmart's wages are also low and their benefits are considered substandard. McDonald's and Starbucks staff make less money than those who work in single outlet cafes and restaurants. According to Klein, this "explains why McDonald's is widely credited for pioneering the throwaway "McJob" that the entire fast-food industry has since moved to emulate" (237).

A McJob is defined as being "a low skill, low pay, high stress, exhausting and unstable job" (237). The corporations who care only about their brand name have figured out a way to pay people less for a job they supposedly do not care about. The service industry is comparable to working in a sweatshop. The people in both sectors do not make enough money to live. Companies are constantly hiring younger people who are students over someone who is more mature because they cost less money. In the words of Naomi Klein, "[T]he economy needs steady jobs that adults can live on" (239).

Busting the McUnion

Branded companies are constantly fighting off unionization in their workplaces because they fear what may happen if workers have some power over what is done. Whenever companies feel a threat from workers trying to unionize, they simply shut down and reopen elsewhere. However, there is one McDonald's that has been unionized in Squamish, B.C.

Free Work: More Fake Jobs, Courtesy of the Superbrands

Corporations have this funny title for people they ask to work for free. They are called interns. Most interns work for free and go out at night and serve burgers at the local McDonald's or pump gas at an all-night gas station. Even our most beloved music video stations like MTV have been ruthless with their use of interns. If you look at MuchMusic's "Rick the Temp," you will notice how he is no longer a temp but a fully paid worker. However, by keeping his nickname of "Rick the Temp", he is basically a free advertisement for donating labour to the company.

This brings us to the next development of the new age worker: the temp. Naomi Klein thinks that temps need all the hope they can get. Since 1982, the use of temp labour has increased four hundred percent (247). And in Western Europe, the use of temps is even greater. Everyday, 4.5 billion workers are assigned to jobs through temp agencies in Europe and the US, but since only 12.5% of temps are placed on any given day, the real number of total temporary employees in Europe and the US is closer to 36 million people. There are a lot of qualified people out there with no jobs.

Microsoft developed a mythology called Silicon Gold regarding the use of stock options to compensate for low wages and internships (249). They wrote the manual on temp work. Even today's high-tech jobs are unstable. Silicon Valley is swarming with part-timers and temps. The percentage of temps in Silicon Valley is three times the national average (249). An average temp works alongside a worker with full-time hours and benefits. The Internal Revenue Service has challenged Microsoft, but they have gotten away with their free labour strategy because they have set up a process where microtemps are hired through an agency that acts as the official employer. And in 1998, Microsoft introduced a new policy requiring temps who have been on an assignment with the company for a year or more to take a thirty-one day "break" before they can take another "temporary" post.

Breeding Disloyalty

At this time, our society is faced with the endless hunt for a good job. We are faced with the constant worry of what our degrees will do for us, what jobs offer full-time, and what jobs offer benefits. Unfortunately, there are no longer many jobs out there that are going to provide us with the type of life we desire. Constant fear is plaguing us. When the recession hit, jobs began disappearing faster than our heads could spin. Our jobs left, and when they returned, they had drastically changed. The same jobs that our parents were working at were now worth literally nothing. Benefits were lost and pay was cut. Today, people in the workforce are fighting just to receive a pay stub at the end of the pay period. During the recession, UPS workers were faced with this problem. They banded together and fought against the new regulations. In the end, the UPS workers were able to come to an agreement with the company that allowed them to have some sort of liveable wage, although it was not as good as before.

Naomi Klein writes, "For the past three or four years, corporations have stopped hiding layoffs and restructuring behind the rhetoric of necessity and begun to speak openly and unapologetically about their aversion to hiring people and their exodus from the employment business." Job creation, especially those with full-time positions, decent pay, and full benefits are taking a backseat in many major corporations.

According to the ideology of free markets, "Good jobs are bad for business, bad for the economy, and should be avoided at all costs." There is no room in the economy for the next generation to squeeze in. Instead, we are left with a great education and no where to put it to use. We will have to work two jobs in the service industry to make ends meet. According to Klein, people who live in poverty are "ticking time bombs waiting to go off." An example of people in poverty becoming hostile was found on page 263 of Klein's text: "A Punjabi woman is so afraid of an insurrection of her own household staff that she keeps the kitchen knives locked up, leaving the servants to chop vegetables with sharpened sticks."

Hostility is lingering in communities everywhere. It is hard to find a contented town where the citizens do not feel the local corporations have in some way betrayed them. Klein says that "rather than dividing communities into groups, corporations are increasingly serving as the common thread by which labour, environment, and human rights violations can be stitched together into a single political idea". We live in a culture of job insecurity.

Many of these insecurities are experienced by Generation X. They have been brought up on the concept of self-reliance. This generation has been taught to provide for themselves because there is going to be no one there in the end to help us out. There is little confidence that there will be such a thing as Social Security or pensions when the people of this generation reach retirement age. Studies have predicted that Generation X'ers will be greedier, tougher, and more focused. According to Klein, Generation X will "Just Do It!"

Commentary

Naomi Klein does an excellent job expressing the despair of becoming a member of the working world. She shows us that finding a good job is difficult. People are faced with bigger bills, higher mortgages, and an inability to pay for them. Our dignity and self-worth are being stripped away. I find myself looking for a job that would be suitable for me and as I scan such sites as Monster.com or Workopolis, I feel afraid. Everyone is looking for experience. How do I get experience--become a temp? I do not think so.

Instead, here I am, with a degree already in my hands, ready to enlist in the forces. There I know I will have benefits, steady work, and respect. I am putting my life on the line for what used to be offered in every job. Hopefully, with the pay I receive working for the government, I will one day be able to be an entrepreneur of my own. I have dreams of being able to pay my employees above minimum wage, offering them benefits, and keeping them from being hostile. I will not run a "sweatshop" and I will make them feel their job is worth something. It appalls me to think that there are people out in our world who make literally nothing and are forced to live in the most unbearable conditions. And I find it weird that not everyone recognizes this injustice. I realize that there are charities and some people are doing what they can to help these people, but really, is it enough? I had little knowledge of any sweatshops until I read No Logo and it made me really sad to know this happens in our world.

I think that corporate leaders are selfish and full of greed. They have lost respect for their own kind. They need to go and we need to resort back to being a society dedicated to the common good. We were not put on this Earth to rule it; we are here to share it. It makes me sick to my stomach knowing that I am nearly out of the secure hands of university, and into the real world of finding a way to pay my student loans and finding a job that will give me respect.

I know that Naomi Klein does not offer any solutions to the problems she has puts forth, but at least she opened our eyes. I think that is the first and most important step for drawing any conclusions. People need to be informed, and they need to be informed properly, not with fancy advertisements we see on billboards and television, but by word-of-mouth and flyers and protests, or even just a gathering of concerned citizens.

We need to do something; before we know it, we will be wrapped up in the "image". I could care less about "keeping up with the Joneses" but really, am I going to have a choice? I love my country and I have no intentions of ever leaving it, but I do not want to be bombarded with slogans telling me that one thing is right while I know it isn't. I am frustrated even today, working at a "McJob" dealing with stress and low pay, but I do it because I have to. I receive no respect and I am treated like a robot. To them, my mind does not matter. I hate that. Klein is right--there is no choice anymore. I know that I will lead a tough life of finding a job that is suitable for me and I will probably struggle until I am happy. I just hope that the children of the future are not faced with the same predicament.

Works Cited

Adbusters: www.adbusters.org/home/.

Klein, Naomi. No Logo:Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2000.

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