I like to write about work and equality in our society. For many years, on into my late 20s, I believed that manual labour was inferior work. In my view, any work that involved your hands and physical effort, and getting dirty, was brainless and low class. Those jobs were acceptable only as summer jobs. The smart people, I thought, went to university and went on to work in offices. Office work was respectable, and the most respectable were the managers. Managers ran the business and deserved to get paid more than all of the other workers. I believed in inequality among people.

Well, I turned out to be wrong. From my late 20s into my late 40s I worked primarily as a manual labourer to support myself. For several years I worked in various factories, performing a variety of tasks. Then I moved into housekeeping and custodial work. While I functioned as a supervisor in housekeeping/custodial, I still had to do a lot of physical work, and learned much about this vocation. Two and-a-half years later I moved into the field of warehousing, and spent the next ten years developing a broad knowledge and base of skills. All of that manual work was challenging.

My understanding of skilled labour broadened substantially. These manual labour jobs required concentration, analysis, memorization, organization and imagination. One had to operate equipment such as forklifts and computer-operated saws. We received and shipped out large amounts of freight. In some positions there was brutal physical labour and injuries, and in other positions the need to mentally withstand the monotony of repetitive labour. Working conditions were also something that I learned to take into account, such as working in the cold or excessive heat. Communication and teamwork was essential every day, as was an awareness of the different hazards in the industrial workplace.

Also during this long period of work, the position of management became much clearer to me. First, I saw that the primary function of a manager, from a supervisor up to a CEO, is to push the workers hard. Second, the manager pays the worker shit and justifies it by saying the work is unskilled. Third, I came to question just how much skill and knowledge was really involved in a manager’s job. Is their job really so much more demanding than what the rest of us do? Do they really contribute more to the operation than the rest of us? Do they really deserve to get paid more?

From my new observations and feelings towards work, I have written many articles. These articles examine the work itself, the joy and teamwork, and the tension between the workers and the managers. I start at the ground-level and build up to a larger political argument about oppression in our society, using a style of writing that blends stream-of-consciousness and the academic form of writing I learned in high school and university. Also, I examine how much inequality on the job distorts our personalities and relationships with other people, making us much less than we could be as human beings, and making for a less fulfilling life.

Some of these articles have been previously published in magazines such as Our Times: Canada’s Independent Labour Magazine, Humanist Perspectives, and on the Canadian Dimension website. I have published some book reviews as well. However, many more of my articles remain unpublished, as have two of my books, one of which is on homelessness, and the other about a clash over unionization at a factory. The attempt to get into mainstream journals or magazines, and get on with a book publisher has been discouraging. So I have built this website as a means of publication. Why don’t you read some of my stuff and let me know what you think.

You may also consider submitting an article that you have written on the broad subject of work and class relations in society. I feel certain that there are other writers out there that are struggling to get published as much as myself. If you feel you have a reasonably strong and coherent article, preferably no more than five thousand words, send it through to me as an e-mail attachment. I will get back to you as quick as I can about the possibility of publishing it as a Guest Article. If my website can support other writers, maybe even those that disagree with me, I would be very happy.