Self-Employed
DEAR SELF, Official documents in my possession make it clear that you have been employing me for a number of years. I have no serious complaints about my treatment while in your service, but I cannot help feeling that the state of our labour relations—those links between master and man of whose importance we are so frequently re- minded—leaves something to be desired.
I partly blame myself for this. I acknowledge your wisdom in dispensing with the otiose methods of bureaucracy. You have never issued any prohibitions or exhortations; you have never even asked me to put my name down for a Staff Outing. But your continence in such matters has woven around you a cocoon of impersonality— a cocoon so curiosity-proof that I do not even know whither to address this letter, which I send to you through your principal sponsors, the highly esteemed Ministry of National Insurance.
It is typical of what I instinctively feel to be a crisis in our relationship that I was uncertain how to begin this letter. The vast majority of my —of our—compatriots face no comparable dilemma when they take up their pens to write to their employer. Their protest may not avail; their suggestion may not be adopted; their resignation may be accepted with alacrity. But at least they know how to begin : `Sir,' Comrade,' `Dear Sir,' Dear Sir George,' Gentlemen,"Dear Mr. Headmaster'—from whatever leVel in what- ever hierarchy a bow at a venture can be loosed off towards the summit. It is not like that with you and me.
It would (I hope you will not mind me saying this) be absurd to address you as 'Sir.' A bald `Self' sounds schizophrenic and 'My dear Self' Barrie-esque; 'Gentlemen,' besides being in- sufferably affected, would remind us both of our bank-manager; and as for 'Comrade,' I do not see why I should call myself what I am not prepared to call anybody else. You begin perhaps, dear Self, to understand the sort of handicap I start under in this unilateral attempt to put things right between us.
Not that they are seriously wrong. In initiating this correspondence my sole, purpose is to suggest that you have not yet fully recognised your responsibilities as an employer. I, for instance, am compelled by law to take a number of pre- cautions designed to ensure the safety and health of my employees. I have to provide a medical chest in case they injure themselves. When they are driving lorries I have to see that they do not drive for more than five and a half hours without a break or more than eleven hours in one day. In practice I cannot of course guarantee that these regulations are complied with; but I am respon- sible for seeing that the drivers fill up elaborate forms purporting to show that they have been complied with, and I can be heavily fined if the forms are not filled up properly.
As far as I can see, you are bound by no comparable obligations. I shall shortly, I believe, become liable to prosecution if any of my em- ployees is found handling 2# cwt. sacks. Yet you can compel me to lift these crippling loads without incurring any penalty—unless of course I burst one of our blood vessels.
I am frankly shocked by the immunities you enjoy. 'An Inspector,' I read in Leaflet N.I.20, `has power to enter at all reasonable times any premises . . . where he has grounds for suppos- ing that any persons are employed.' Why should you be exempt from such visitations in respect of me? Although, as I say, you have hitherto treated me reasonably enough, there is nothing to prevent you from working me sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. This is surely a dis- graceful example of laissez-faire.
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What steps, I should like to know, are you taking to protect me from contracting one or more of the Prescribed Industrial Diseases listed in Leaflet N.I.2? To most of these, I admit, you have not as yet required me to expose myself. Varied though my duties have been, they have not included the manipulation of African boxwood, and it will thus be sheer bad luck if 1 go down with gonioma kamassi; nor, although your office, unlike my sawmill, is not subject to the whole- some provisions of the Factory Acts, and con- ditions in it leave much to be desired, do 1 greatly apprehend infection by leptospira ictero- htemorrhagite, an occupational hazard of 'work in rat-infested places.'
But there is no earthly reason why I should not catch glanders, since your imperious whims force me almost daily into 'contact with equine animals'; and it will certainly not be your fault if I escape writer's cramp, which I am glad to see qualifies, along with telegraphist's cramp and twister's cramp, as a Prescribed Industrial Disease. What are you doing about all this?
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What I cannot understand is how you have managed, by eluding all the recognised forms of control, to cut me off not merely from the privi- leges but from the elementary rights which workers enjoy in a Welfare State. What would my employees think if I made it clear that, instead of me paying for their holidays, they should pay for mine? Yet you exact this unheard-of con- cession as though it was the most natural thing in the world. I should also like to point out that nothing has been said—and if I know you nothing ever will be said—about the age at which you will permit me to retire.
I hope you will take these criticisms in the spirit in which they are made. Unlike most ordinary employees I have not got a union behind me; a strike, or even a go-slow movement, would harm me as much as you; and I am, as you are well aware, too old to stand much chance of getting a decent job with anybody else.
In these circumstances there is little that I can do except throw myself on your mercy and ask for rather more consideration. It is all very well for you to treat me as if I was a sort of Caliban; but I must remind you, Self, that if I am Caliban you cannot possibly be Prospero. Your obedient servant, STRIX
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