The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

UK

An account of a worker's experience

Joe Attard, 11 April 2019:

Debenhams is biting the dust: the capitalist crisis claims another high street staple.

My first paid job was at Debenhams, I was there for two years, and I'll be lying if I said I'll be sad to see the back of it. 

They ran the restaurant on the cheap, mostly with casual labour, much of it made up of under-18s, and we were always understaffed. I remember double-dosing over-the-counter stress relievers to get through my shifts, where I and one other person had to cover a 200-seat dining area between us, for eight-hours, with a half-hour break. 

We were always moving, always covered in crap, stinking, and totally exhausted. Both of us were 16, working a child's minimum wage (about 4.00-an-hour) but an adult's hours (half the lunch-break, earlier starts etc.)

Once, my manager came up to me, beaming, and told me that I should be proud because "in light of my good work, I was getting a proper contract". It was a zero-hours contract. She didn't actually explain to me what that meant. 

If this seems rather 'woe-is-me', I should stress that, as teenage part-time jobs go, it wasn't the worst: far from it. And unlike less-privileged kids, I didn't *have* to do it to survive. Plus, on the positive side, it probably had a hand in shaping my political views today. 

But all the same, it was miserable, degrading and I hated every second of it. And the genuinely depressing thing is, under this current crisis - with the shrivelling job market, higher burden of student fees, and crumbling high street - such shitty shift work is now bitterly contested, by more kids, with fewer options, and almost certainly on worse terms. They're literally fighting to sell themselves to a shrinking pool of bastards. 

It puts me in mind of something Marx said in Wage-Labour and Capital:

"The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital.

"Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. 

"Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production.

"Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease."