Standing in Solidarity: Music About the Plight of the Modern Worker
Songs: “Blue Sky Mine” by Midnight Oil, “I Need a Dollar” by Aloe Blacc, “Phantom” by Mr. Lif
2023 has been the year of labor movements. In May, 11,500 screenwriters walked off the job, followed by 160,000 film and television entertainers of the Screen Actors’ Guild. UPS narrowly avoided a crippling shutdown from their 360,000 drivers by conceding to Teamsters demands for higher wages and air-conditioned vehicles. Nearly 19,000 United Auto Workers union members have joined the picket lines over the past few weeks. Overall, ten times more Americans have gone on strike than last year. And for good reason: over the past ten years food costs have gone up 30%, rent has skyrocketed by 50%, and medical costs have soared by 30%- all while the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25/hour. The bottom 90% of Americans earn a household average of $36,000/year and it was significantly easier to buy a home during the Great Depression that it is now. The surprise #1 hit in the nation, yodeled by a former $12/hour Virginia factory employee standing in front of a deer blind, references “working long hours for bullshit pay.” So yeah. I’d say there’s a problem.
But low wages that haven’t kept up with the astronomical cost of living aren’t the only issues plaguing the modern worker. Here’s a smattering of other ones endured for that lousy paycheck to keep the lights on.
Corporate Negligence
Australia’s socially conscious hard rockers Midnight Oil might be best known for 1987’s “Beds Are Burning,” an anthem for Aboriginal land rights, but they spared no punches in this fiery critique of a mining conglomerate that knowingly exposed their workers to fatal doses of asbestos. The song opens with a searing harmonica solo from lead singer Peter Garrett before delving into some of the most damning lyrics of the decade:
My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token. . .The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They’re crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I’m caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won’t come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won’t save meWho’s gonna save me?. . .
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground. . .
“Blue Sky Mine” references the now-infamous Wittenoom tragedy, during which the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) maintained an enormous blue asbestos (crocidolite) extraction and processing operation from 1948 to 1966 despite repeated warnings from public health officials. Unlike coal, the effects weren’t limited to the workplace; Wittenoom, located in the absolute middle of bumfuck nowhere, was a close-knit company town of tropical-style homes clustered around the mines and the mill. CSR shuttered the doors in the mid-1960s, but not before the conglomerate had exposed legions of workers, visitors, and officials to a level of this carcinogenic substance that was one thousand times the recommended limit. The total number of casualties from mesothelioma and other lung diseases is estimated at 2,000. Even as late as 2006, environmental consultants hired by the Australian government rated the area as posing an “extreme risk” to human health. It remains the most heavily contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere.
Mass Layoffs
While the rest of the economic sectors may have teetered up and down in their hiring practices, the one rock of stability was the tech sector: they were ALWAYS hiring. That trend reversed in 2022, as firms cut over 93,000 white-collar jobs. It’s only accelerated with time; so far in 2023, over 170,000 tech jobs have been axed, with major players like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon shedding over 10,000 employees each in a push to “streamline operations.” Theoretically the U.S. has a low unemployment rate, but it’s measured with the same scientific rigor and accuracy as an Ouija board. It doesn’t differentiate between part-time and full-time positions and fails to count anyone out of work for a year or more.
In many countries such as the U.K., workers are given 12 weeks of advance warning prior to termination so they can search for new employment and prepare their finances adequately. The U.S. is not so kind and thoughtful- employees are sacked without any prior notice whatsoever. Worse, their health insurance is tied to their jobs. And even worse, in “right-to-work” states like Virginia, companies can fire you for no reason whatsoever. If the manager wakes up one day and decides he doesn’t like brunettes, well: according to my state’s labor laws, you can find sympathy between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. You don’t even need to sass back or Xerox your nuts or take too many smoke breaks by the loading dock.
I had a job, but the boss man let me go
He said I’m sorry, but I won’t be needing your help no more
I said please Mister Boss man, I need this job more than you know
But he gave me my last paycheck and he sent me on out the door. . .
“I Need a Dollar” is a soulful, piano-and-horns driven number reminiscent of a young Gil Scott-Heron, released in 2010 as part of a critically acclaimed debut album and featured as the theme song for an HBO show. While never a U.S. hit, it peaked at #1 in several European countries, boasts 105 million YouTube views, and has been sampled by the likes of T.I., Mac Miller, and Machine Gun Kelly. The video shows forlorn, penniless bluesman Blacc trudging down a lonely black-and-white Depression-era highway with only a suitcase and a bowler hat. At one point in the song he pleads for help from anyone who’ll give it; a few verses later, he ponders drowning his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. It’s a tribute to Aloe Blacc’s astounding genius that this multiple-scholarship recipient, Laguna Hills native, and former Ernst & Young consultant managed to concoct such a universally appealing tune about hard times. The true mark of an artist is someone who can empathize with others and write works that speak to the shared human condition; from that perspective, Blacc is one of the finest ones around today.
Invisibility
There are plenty of songs about shitty work or being broke, and they’re pretty blatant; nobody’s ever listened to the Johnny Paycheck hit “Take This Job and Shove It” and wondered, but what does it really mean? But Mr. Lif- one of the best rappers on the stellar Def Jux roster- examines a more subtle aspect: the sinking, wrenching feeling of being unseen and unacknowledged. As a privileged White girl, I was blissfully unaware of this until I started an $8/hour retail job as a teenager. At my high school, I was captain of the tennis team and editor of the literary magazine, but the moment I donned my starchy oversize work polo with the “FYE” logo emblazoned on the upper right, store customers looked right through me. It was like I didn’t exist. I used to drive home feeling like a kicked puppy.
If you’ve never heard this song before, don’t blame yourself- it’s a bit difficult to find. “Phantom” was the last track on Mr. Lif’s 2002 EP Emergency Rations, a concept album about the ills of modern society- including what one awed A.V. Club reviewer described as “the dehumanizing effect of capitalism.” Here’s where it gets tricky. A few months later, Mr. Lif released his debut studio album entitled I, Phantom. The original “Phantom” track isn’t included on this one, nor is it on Spotify, iTunes, or Amazon Music; as far as I’m aware, it’s only on YouTube or in the original CD format at a site called Discogs. The Def Jux label folded in 2010, and it’s a damn shame that this profoundly sobering masterpiece isn’t more widely available.
“Phantom” is anchored by the dissonant production of the prodigious El-P, which gives the track an uneasy, harsh tone until settling into a troubled melodic background. There’s no chorus here, no respite from the stifling heat of stress and poverty and fear of failure- until Mr. Lif brilliantly turns the tables on the oppressors and the elitists who won’t look him in the eye.
You won’t hear me because I got no loot
You don’t hear me because you don’t compute
I’m docile, psycho, have you heard of such?
I’m invisible and impossible to touch. . .
But the tour de force is the ending, a chillingly powerful call-and-response to the marginalized:
Single mother, who are you? (I phantom)
Office worker, who are you? (I phantom)
Caught up in the system, who are you? (I phantom)
Tryin’ to earn a living, who are you? (I phantom)
Depressed and uninspired, who are you? (I phantom)
Hard-workin’, broke and tired, who are you? (I phantom)
Seekin’ education, who are you? (I phantom)
Can’t get ahead no matter what you do? (I phantom)
I wish I could say that working conditions will improve rapidly, but the system is notoriously slow to change. An overwhelming number of studies have shown that living wages, a four-day week, and work from home options lead to greater employee happiness and productivity (as opposed to Pizza Hut once a month.) I attended the University of Virginia for a year of my Master’s of Nursing several years ago, where we learned about the value of “data-driven decisions”; implementing these solutions would be an example of that methodology. The 40-hour workweek was standardized by Henry Ford in the 1920s and tradition is a stubborn, recalcitrant beast. But when a plethora of scientific evidence showed that hand sanitizing between patient visits reduced COVID transmission, nurses incorporated this practice into their daily routines.
The 40-hour workweek was standardized in the 1920s by Henry Ford and I understand that tradition is a stubborn, recalcitrant beast. But refusing to consider a landslide of contemporary research would be like the nursing department saying, “Well they didn’t have Purell 100 years ago, so why should we start using it now?” (Also not present at that time: insulin, antibiotics, or the polio vaccine. Ooof.) Over the past century, medicine has changed; why shouldn’t labor?
Hey hey! Thanks for visiting- your presence is warmly welcomed. Please correct me if I accidentally got something wrong. If there are any songs, artists, or genres you’d love to learn more about, I’m always down for recommendations! This blog is free to read (and always will be) due to a fair amount of academic traffic, but you can always buy me a coffee (aka put a tip in my jar) if you enjoyed this article.
