It being Labor Day and all, what better time to express some thoughts about those who exist to serve those who cannot help themselves, the infirm.  Certainly, there’s no fault to be found in those born with challenges that the able-bodied will never know or understand, and they depend on the kindness, the empathy, the labor of a cadre of workers who care for their needs.  Without this labor of love, who would tend to them and give them the care, the kindness, they so dearly deserve?

And then we have those whose toil somehow manages to be all about them.  Their politics. Their self-righteousness.  Their holding people who have been entrusted to their care hostage to their official prerequisites.  Where once laboring the field of healthcare was about serving others, there’s at least one official woman who appears to have no qualms about using her post to punish a patient whose needs don’t match her wants.

Meet Nyle Magi, who suffers from MS and paralysis.  And meet Adrien Vaughen, official woman.



How did we become a place where labor, the people we pay to perform a service and nowadays often referred to as “human capital,” a phrase developed to feign greater admiration for “our greatest resource” while simultaneously diminishing humans by relegating them to another cog in the wheel, believe that they, the ones getting paid to provide a service, are in charge of us, the dopes doing the paying?   If they don’t like the gig, they don’t have to do it.  Slavery was long ago abolished. Nobody puts a gun to their heads to do any particular job.

Yet, the ethic behind labor has evaporated.  I’m not (this time) talking about the work/life balance debacle, but about the regular, everyday sort of labor, where we are thrilled beyond belief when we find someone who happily does what they are paid to do, performing well and without complaint.  It doesn’t happen often.

This is as true of the lawyer as the fellow who digs ditches, though the consequences are obviously very different.  But the notion of hard work, service, responsibility has become foreign to the American dream.  Worse still, that harm befalls those who make the mistake of relying upon others, particularly when they have little choice in the matter, is a travesty.  A lousy paint job is a nuisance.  A man left to wallow in his waste by someone charged with his care is an outrage. 

While Labor Day was meant to be a celebration of the efforts of those whose perform the tasks that keep our nation running, there are too few of us remaining who deserve to be celebrated.  It’s not that the Wobblies were wrong, but that we’ve transcended the separation between labor and capital to the point where labor holds capital hostage rather than the other way around.

For all those who are struggling in this difficult economy, or raise the “Buy American” flag as if the fault belongs to the shoppers rather than the producers of crappy goods at too high a price, take a hard look at whether you earned your paycheck or skated by doing as little, or as poorly, as you could possibly get away with.

But if you, like our official woman, with smile intact as she condemns in the video, have chosen to use your petty authority to do harm, then I have a special Labor day greeting for you.  Suffer as you make others suffer.

This video implicates other issues as well, from medical marijuana to cluelessly hiding behind patient confidentiality to conceal abusive and ignorant harm.  But it’s Labor Day, and so we focus on happy holiday matters.  Happy Labor Day, Adrien Vaughen.  No yucky diapers for you to change.

H/T Balko