PENNED BY SELAMİ ŞAKİROĞLU
Applauding the Garbage Collector from the Windows of Paris
Click to read the article in Turkish
It was on March 22, 2020. Having isolated themselves in their homes in Barcelona, people took to their windows and balconies and applauded the workers cleaning the streets for minutes.
Fighting against the coronavirus outbreak on the front line, healthcare workers were receiving their applause for days. Every evening, at 8 p.m., children, adults, the elderly, people of all ages were crowding into their windows and balconies and applauding to thank healthcare workers for their selfless efforts. First the importance of physicians, then that of the nurses and health technicians, have come to the forefront.
But, this time, it was the unseen who were applauded.
With the declaration of the curfew, the lay-bys on the highways were closed. Their toilets were locked up. First, no one was bothered by that. Until the moment when the heavy vehicle workers started protesting... Everyone remembered it at once: If lorries did not work, who would bring them their food and beverages and their medicine? The lay-bys have been reopened immediately. Their toilets have been cleaned.
Masks and gloves have been handed out to the ones working at supermarkets. Transparent barriers have been placed in front of checkout counters to prevent customers from coming too close.
That was how noticing the unnoticed entered our daily lives. The role played by supermarket workers, cashiers, heavy vehicle drivers, garbage collectors, cleaning workers and many others in social life has started to be more visible. The existence of an army consisting of the unnoticed is understood.
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9:30 in the morning. 19. Paris. Vicinity of Bolivar Subway. A street. No one is around. The ambulance of fire brigade is already on the streets... The cart of a post carrier. She is delivering the letters. I cannot see her. At our garden. A worker carrying food to homes. He has neither gloves, not masks. The only difference with the past is that he does not go to door. You have to come downstairs. A bus stop. The banner lists what precautions to take against coronavirus. A queue in front of a closed bazaar. Let's keep our distance, ok... Garbage trucks are on a day shift... Automated cash registers in a supermarket. The housing estate where we live. There is no one around. A bus stop. The opposite side of the former billboard. A banner for thanking health workers. A cleaning worker, he is cleaning the apartment's entry. |
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The human value of prestigious professionals, traders - or stock exchange acrobats (as my father called them; he used to say, "I have fallen in the clutches of stock exchange acrobats") earning ten times higher than a nurse or a virus researcher has become, at least, striking.
The current crisis has revealed the inequality in work life. Globalization divided the job market into two. On the one side, there were high-priced, educated-qualified workforce; on the other side, there were the low-paid and not protected. In this crisis, while the ones benefiting from globalization have been locked up in their homes, the others, some of whom were providing service for the former, have remained outside.
Nothing will be the same, you say!
"Nothing will be the same anymore." How frequently we are hearing this sentence. While the crisis is still going on, it is hard to speak about the future, it is hard to make a forecast.
An increase in health investments can be expected. Expenditures for that end can be supported by the society. But, the situation is more difficult for the ones working in the care and service sector except for healthcare. They are in a collective structure as required by the jobs they do. Truck drivers are on their own in the truck. The ones delivering take-outs to homes do not even have the status of a worker. Most of them are their own bosses!
But, the truth is that no one can ignore the imbalance in the hierarchy of wages between social prestige and social merit any longer. How to restore this balance is yet another problem.
France is in war, but, let us not forget that these people are not in war, they are just working. (SŞ/DB/SD)