The 10 Commandments of the Modern Worker

1. Don’t trust your boss. He hates you and would outsource your job to Siberia if he could get away with it. Or even better, he would vote for legalized slavery so he wouldn’t have to pay you at all. If possible start up your own business, because no one will take care of you like yourself.
2. There is no loyalty. It’s all about you. If you get a better deal, don’t think twice, your boss won’t hesitate to lay you off, when things get tough.
3. Always keep your resume up to date. You never know when you are going to need it.
4. Always be on the look for another job. You never know when you are going to need it.
5. Take everything management says with a grain of salt. f they say the company is doing fine, start updating your resume. Remember what happened at Enron and Goldman Sachs?
6. Befriend your competitors. When things go belly up your services could be mighty useful.
7. Back up all your personal contacts and info. to the Internet or your personal computer. When your boss asks for the work computer back, all your contacts go with it.
8. Network on the job. Pass your business card out at conferences and remember all those contacts. They’ll come in handy when you get pink slipped. Look at your job as an opportunity to enhance your earning power and business contacts.
9. Unionize if possible. There is strength in numbers. Management hates organized labor because they make it harder to drive down wages and bully workers.. Weak or non-existent unions means, low pay. Low pay means more money for management. In the absence of a union, familiarize yourself with labor laws (available at the Department of Labor web site), you’d be surprised how many laws your boss is breaking.
10. See no. 1.

Is the Shock Doctrine Being Used on American Workers?

If you are one of the millions of Americans currently unemployed, you are facing one of the worst job markets in more than 50 years.

Randi Rhodes, a liberal talk show host, has said that the economy was deliberately crashed as a way to drive down the wages of American workers. That might sound like a conspiracy theory, but that's currently happening.

Since there are so many unemployed people, workers are willing to take huge pay cuts. So the person who used to demand $50,000 is now willing to work for $30,000. In many cases employers are laying off mid-level workers and replacing them with fresh college grads, who will work for almost half the pay. In many career fields, wages has been devalued.

Left-wing journalist Naomi Klein describes this practise as the "shock doctrine." She writes about this in her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." She came up with this theory after reporting on the Iraq war and witnessing how many corporations profited from the chaos left after the war. Klein also writes that since the Iraqi population was still reeling from a lightening-fast war, they were too cowed to protest.

Klein says that interrogators in Iraq also used the same procedure on prisoners. Keep them in state of shock and disorientation so they are more likely to be compliant. The same thing has happened to American workers. We have been pummelled by the near crash of the stock market, terrorism, the crash of the mortgage industry and the housing market, and the failure of several auto companies.

This economic chaos has left the American worker scared, dazed and confused -- essentially in a state of shock. So now desperate workers are willing to work for half the pay and no benefits, or work for nothing at all. And who profits? The corporations because they are getting the same work for half the pay, which means more profits for them.

poll by twiigs.com