Ponsonbies of the World, Unite.

Unlimited magazine, Feb 2012

1981 was a good year to be a slave in Mauritania. It was the year slavery was declared illegal in that country, the very last on earth to do so. 

Plus ca change. Slavery only persists now in a number of the world's most populous nations and blights the lives of only some tens of millions of people, if you count bonded labourers in India and Pakistan, sex slaves in Asia and Eastern Europe and shrine slaves in parts of Ghana, Togo and Benin, and some fishing crews off the coast of New Zealand. I suggest we should.

But is that the sum of it? Where do you draw the line? Who is free, who is in chains? Are there slaves in Ponsonby? Take a moment before you answer.  

Let's say you live in Ponsonby, or Grey Lynn or Mt Eden. You have your shiny new VW Golf and your thoroughly decent salary and your four weeks holiday and your Blackberry that rings day and night and the lanyard yoked around your neck, and the office politics that seem to get more toxic with each Monday meeting and the vague cloud of misery that sent you back to the doctor last week for more Prozac, and a mortgage with plenty of zeroes.  How free, exactly, are you?

David Graeber, the anthropologist, author and anarchist, has this to say about your life: if Plato or Aristotle were alive today they would probably say "slave". Their argument would be: is there really so much of a distinction between selling yourself and renting?

But this cannot be right, can it? You have bright prospects. You have innate talent. You have an outstanding work ethic. You have upward mobility.  You're not as rich as John Key; in fact you're not even as rich as John Key was when he was 30. But you're quietly backing yourself. You don't like to call yourself a worker, so let's call you Ponsonby.

Try this: you're not being flogged; you're not being chained; no-one is holding your passport as surety of your labour. But look around your office. If you didn't need the money, is this what you would be doing all day?

And if even if it is, let's get to the more thorny question. This pie you're helping to make: what's your slice? And the bigger pie that your enterprise is involved in: what's its slice of that? Is there someone farther along the chain and larger who is filling their boots? 

It's a rhetorical question. There is, and they are.

When the richest 1% of the American population own 34.6% of the country's total wealth, when banks are capturing more than a third of that economy's total profit, and when the other western economies are emulating that model, ordinary workers are getting a smaller share. And by workers I mean Ponsonby.

There is a question to be answered about the value of our ever greater productivity. When that productivity brings down the cost of production, where does the gain go? Into many hands, or few?

If only there were some organisation of people that could monitor the rights of all those Ponsonbies and stand up for their rights. Imagine what they could do! They could ensure that your working hours and conditions gave you enough time with your kids. They could ensure that your share of the pie was fair.

That would be just excellent, but what 21st century name would we give this guardian angel? 'Union' has so much baggage. Blame the sclerosis of Western economies in the seventies. Blame Reagan and Thatcher and their acolytes for exploiting that sclerosis and turning Unions into pariahs. Blame the free market that raised the revolution's children to believe they would prosper if only society would let every man, woman,  cripple and imperilled bank fend for themselves. And blame the unions;  too often their own worst enemy.

To some extent, this image problem holds true for the Labour party. But where there is branding there is hope. Where there is a Ponsonby unhappy in their work, there is a political need to be addressed. 

Consider a left-leaning coalition of Labour and Greens that is not dog-and-tail, but rather two equal partners, one principally communicating a message that is Green, the other conveying a 21st century workers' rights message. Of course you won't call them workers. You'll need a name with which Ponsonby will not 'have a problem'.  Something new; individualistic.  Not 'slave'; something more aspirational.

This is not to deny the toil and risk of every employer who ever took a deep breath and went into business. They deserve their reward. They need to be rewarded.  But as the man said: wealth, like muck, only works when it's spread around.