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What I Learned from My 9 to 5
And what I lost
On Labor Day weekend, I’m usually at Dragon*Con, a massive gathering of fellow geeks replete with B-list celebrities, extravagant parties, and people-watching galore. This year, I’m too broke to go.
In March of this year, I gave up a salaried position with a great benefits package to pursue a new opportunity in a bigger city. My new job was a contract position with partial benefits, but it paid a higher wage and was promised to have opportunities for promotion and growth.
Four months later, I learned I’d been lied to: there was no opportunity to move up in this workplace. A month after that, the door was slammed in my face by a petulant supervisor.
This Labor Day, I’m reflecting on what it means to be one of the American workers we’re supposed to be praising. As we celebrate the achievements of unions, I’m reminded that I’ve never had the chance to be part of one. I’m reminded that I live in an at-will state in which I can be fired because someone doesn’t like the color of my shirt. I’m reminded that wage growth has not kept up with cost of living, and that I, as a millennial, will likely never recover from my years of lost wages.
Labor Day essentially began as a long strike on the first Monday of September 1882. New York’s Central Labor Union was seeking to…
