Compare and contrast

In order to keep your mind working, dear reader, please compare and contrast the following;

 

1.  Consider the following job description which recently appeared in my emailbox:

 

"We are seeking an active and engaging Substitute ESLInstructor who loves to teach and doesn't stop thinking about the job when class ends." 

 

"Substitute"==That means part-time--and the worst sort of part-time, part time with no predictability.

I suppose part-time means: without benefits. (E.G. no health insurance)

 

And you are supposed to think about your job even when you are not paid to do so........

 

(I am a teacher.  I've been a teacher for all of my adult life.  I know what it means to think about the class outside of class........And I know what it means to be fair, responsible and professional toward students.  But I can't imagine spending every minute of my waking hours thinking about a part-time job. Yes, I know the ad. didn't say think about the class all of the time, but it's moving in that direction.)

 

2.  a selection from Milan Kundera's novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being":

 

He did things which he didn't care about at all, and it was beautiful.  Suddenly he understood the happiness of people (who until then he had always felt sorry for) who practiced a profession to which they were not compelled by an inner "it must be", and who could forget about it in the moment when they left their workplace.  Until then he never understood the happiness of that indifference.

 

(my translation)

 

3.  A paraphrase of a popular (recurrent) thought (expressed outloud) of Richard D Wolff:

 

One thing you know is:  Your employer is not going to pay you 25 dollars an hour unless, as a result of that hour, he is going to make more than 25 dollars.....

4.  My suggestion:  in part the problem here is commodification, and the invisibility (to the author of those words) of class struggle.  Of course, we should love our lives, and the working part of our lives.  However, when you work for a wage, things are not so easy.  However, I would suggest that the author of those words is still suffering from the mystification of capitalist social relations.

5.  The character in Kundera's novel, Tomas, finds it rather liberating that he doesn't need to worry about his work outside of official working hours.  Would he feel that way if he worked a minimum wage job without benefits (e.g.,health insurance) in the contemporary USA?  I suspect not.  During communist Czechoslovakia, health insurance was universal.  Tomas has none of the worries of a contemporary American low-wage worker.