Rtmark adopted Phone In Sick Day from
the British group Decadent Action, which has successfully organized
the holiday for the past three years. The day, originally set for
April 6, was rescheduled for May Day, which is celebrated throughout
Europe, South America, and Asia, but is oddly enough ignored in the
United States, where it originated. Also known as International
Worker's Day, the holiday commemorates the 1886 Chicago Haymarket
Riots, in which workers were fighting for an eight-hour work day.
(Rtmark is aiming even higher; insists Guerrero, "sitting down at a
computer for six hours seems enough to me.") National Phone In Sick
Day fits in well with Rtmark's other media ploys. When the group
took on the corporation the digerati loves to hate, eToys, last
year, they pummelled them with DOS attacks to get the company to
drop its suit against etoy.com, a European art site.
After the WTO and IMF protests in Seattle and Washington, May Day
took on a particular resonance this year. And as the collection of
groups involved in fighting globalization continues to diversify, it
seems natural that the digital workforce will begin to exercise some
muscle, voicing a desire to spend more time with families and less
in front of computers. Of course, in contrast to workers toiling for
pennies in sweatshops, white-collar workers' suffering seems
exaggerated, their complaints somewhat frivolous. But the same force
that drives the exploitation of the third world is stretching the
workday to its seams: the quest for more capital. Residents of
Mexico City were disappointed last spring when their siestas and
long lunch breaks were yanked away from them. This is the ominous
result of competing in the free market: surrendering cherished
cultural flavor -- and time for relaxation -- for a bigger piece of
the monochrome pie.
It’s impossible to determine how effective Rtmark’s action was;
although it merited coverage on NPR and Wired News last week, there
was no mention of an insurgence yesterday, and the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce had "no public comment." An extremely unscientific survey
revealed that few people were aware of it. (At a May Day
demonstration for amnesty for immigrant workers in New York City,
not even the guy handing out socialist leaflets had heard of the
Rtmark event.) Still, Rtmark received hundreds of e-mails in support
of the project. Mark Allen, director of game development for an
Internet company in Los Angeles, gave his department of ten the day
off. Allen didn't take the protest too seriously, considering that
long hours are the nature of the industry. But he was happy to
"reflect on the fact that there's more to life than work." So, on
Monday, he got his hair cut, sat by the pool, and took an hour for
thought. On Tuesday, he returned to work. And to the twelve-hour
day.
Claire
Barliant is a reporter in New York City. On Monday, she didn't
phone in sick, because she had too much work.
Post your thoughts on today's column in the FEED
Daily Loop. For discussion of other recent FEED Dailies, check
out last month's Daily Loop.
Disk-o, the internet publication dedicated to "the
growth industry of disinformation," reports on an unorthodox new
approach to bridging the racial divide that just might be crazy
enough to work. "A full two-thirds of New York City households
surveyed last week said that seeing a rebroadcast of rock singer
Marilyn Manson's ass might 'heal the racial tension that's been
gripping our city.'"
From Mary McCarthy to Joe Namath, celebrities tell about their
first time snogging in Nerve's Star Firsts. "When Atatürk dismissed
the dancing girls the two us were alone. Sometimes I think it
happened in a dream, sometimes that I was in an opium haze or a
stupor induced by the raki. All I know is that day, Atatürk, the
conqueror of Turkey, the idol of a million women and the envy of
countless men, took my virginity"(Zsa Zsa Gabor).
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