The Price of Labor
The new refrigerator is a joy. In my previous life, where, you know, I lived in the house that I was paying for every month, I was never really happy with the refrigerator. What I really want in a refrigerator is one where there is a space right on the door to press your glass and see it fill with ice. That is my nirvana: a full glass of ice in seconds without ever opening the door. Imagine what you can do with that joy in your life! That bliss seems far away, however, so I am happy with the most basic of refrigerators where we fill the ice trays with water and wait twenty-four hours for it to freeze. Perhaps Michigan is meant to remind us of the the basics: the ice and not how it is delivered.
Michigan also reminds me of the price of labor, of what it actually costs people to work, not with currency but with their bodies. Most recently, the fellow who delivered the refrigerator reminded me of the price of labor. He was missing part of two fingers. His middle finger and his ring finger stopped at the top knuckle, no nails, just missing tips. It reminded me of my grandmother talking about work at Lufkin Rule. She worked on the line producing rule or measuring tapes. When she described to me what she did on the line, she showed me working with her hands, moving machinery and parts, but there was also some part of the machinery that she operated with her feet. My grandmother worked at Lufkin in the 1950s, so over sixty years ago. Her memory of the work is in her body; her verbal descriptions were less concrete. Still she remembered the foot operations were dangerous; one woman she worked with lost a foot. She quit working at the factory afraid that she too might lose a foot.
Michigan has people who have paid the price of labor: people missing fingers and toes, people who have been burned in plant fires, people with eye injuries and ear injuries. Plant work is labor that can endanger the body. Certainly there have been improvements through legislation and oversight over the years, but the fact remains, physical labor takes a toll on the body. In Michigan, that toll is visible. If you live on the east coast, when is the last time you saw someone missing a part of their body, lost in a work accident?
Of course, the labor of office workers hurt the body, but it’s visibility is different. Sweet Honey in the Rock sings about this in the song, “More Than a Paycheck.” Labor has a price. Here in Michigan it is visible.
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