The health of wage slaves

"The commercial benefits of taking action on workplace health are clear as healthy employees can be nearly three times more productive than those in poor health."

An ageing workforce and higher rates of illness and disease among employees will pose a serious threat to British business by 2030, a report warns. The study estimates that the average age of the workforce will reach 43, while 68 will become the average age of retirement by 2050.Musculoskeletal disease will rise by 8% to affect more than seven million people, while heart disease will rise by 11% to affect more than a million.Rates of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) and asthma are all likely to increase sharply.And rates of mental illness will rise by 5% to 4.2 million.

"Our report provides British businesses with an early warning of how the health needs of workers will change and, importantly, it gives them time to take action to keep their employees healthy, productive and at work..."

Note the emphasis being placed upon productivity , the same concern that a dairy farmer may have for the welfare of his prize milch cow . It is the same basic argument the SPGB have always claimed and to put it in Marxist terms - medical care is important for the reproduction of the forces and relations of production.To put it more plainly, it keep us fit for work so that we are forced to keep on selling the only thing of real value we own - our creative abilities - to our employers.

Needless to say the SPGB has sympathy for the contribution in the article by Professor Cary Cooper, an occupational health expert at the University of Lancaster who stated there was plenty of evidence that working was good for people - the problem came when they had to cope with a poor working environment.He said micro-managing, using punishment rather than praise, and fault finding all damaged employee health, as did the culture of consistently working excessively long hours.

Professor Cooper said:

"We have to make the working environment as emotionally healthy as possible..."

We can endorse such sentiments . In fact a recent post was on the question of work where we argued that:-

"A strong case can be made out for seeing satisfying, creative work not just as a desirable aim but as a vital human need."

But we very much deny that Prof. Cooper's aspirations are possible in present society

Work should not equated with employment. Work and employment are not the same. Work will be an essential part of life in socialism; it will be a part of the individual's development and a necessary, healthy expenditure of energy. In a socialist society, the distinction between work and leisure will diminish—perhaps even disappear.
Employment is wage labour (the ability to work is a commodity the workers are forced to sell ). To be employed is to work for someone else: to be at their beck and call; to be given money by them in return for producing values for them. Capitalists will only employ workers if there is a prospect of them making a profit out of us. They make their profit by receiving from us more value than the value of our wages or salaries. Without this surplus value they would not employ us .Employment is a form of institutionalised exploitation - or legalised robbery.

Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not some thieving parasite

Also read Creative Employment ?