Salient. The Newspaper of Victoria University College. Vol. 19, No. 7. June 16, 1955
Few Rights for Workers
Few Rights for Workers
Like the ancient Romans, we live in an age of unique technical achievement. Our machine age, however, is dependent for its existence on a vast army of workers. They live herded into squalid slums in sprawling cities. The workers have few rights as persons.
Significantly enough, factory employees are called "hands." We do not think of them primarily as individual human beings; from the point of view of our technical civilisation they are cogs in a machine. This fact is made starkly clear by a notice that recently appeared in an American factory: Don't waste the time of the machine!"