Labour Day What is Labour?

The ‘22 Labour Day is on Monday, making it an appropriate time to define what labour is. It has always been about soiled hands: to pull spinach from the ground, mine gold, sift riverbeds for diamonds, or throw nets into the sea to catch fish.

We can also define labour by identifying who wakes up at five a.m. Men who bought the land and built the factory wake up at 9, go to the dining room where someone has cooked breakfast. After that, they sit at the back of the car while someone drives them to the office.

Labour on the other hand, woke up at five to catch two buses or two trains to work. The lunch box holds both breakfast and lunch. By the time the boss arrives, labour has made half a million dollars for him in three hours.

Labour changed. In some continents, men still mix cement and pour concrete. In other countries, they use prefabricated walls, pipes, roof everything, which diminishes the number of men on site.

Then came technology, which changed everything about work. Government workers use it, which means there are few of them in offices now. There is internet banking, so few tellers. There are self-serve cashiers at the grocery and drugstore.

Technology upsets the apple cart in many ways. There are men and women who decided not to wake up at 5 anymore. They are ‘the boss’ thanks to their laptop computers. They use their hands like traditional construction workers, but can we call them labour?

Labour Day protests will take place in Canada and U.S. as usual, but tech workers, won’t be carrying placards. They are still in bed because they worked the whole night, chasing money across time zones.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.