Filling up the Calendar

Property of Stormberry

 I was thinking the other day about comfort zones and why on Earth would anyone willingly seek to abandon their comfort zone. Don't you want to live in a comfortable manner? It does rub me the wrong way when the phrase "comfort zone" is used to refer to a place of destructive, stagnant mediocrity. In my mind, a comfort zone is like that perfect spot in the couch or the sofa, where you like to curl up with a book to read, where the coffee table or the ant table is at that right angle for you to put your glass of wine, your cup of coffee, light a candle and put on a John Coltrane record.

I think that, if you are in a comfort zone, congratulations! A lot of people struggle to find a comfortable, livable life, so don't give up yours.

I am in my personal comfort zone, and I don't plan on leaving it.

However, in my confort zone there are also places that need work and organization. Part of my comfort zone is my studying, which currently is about working on my Master's thesis, so I'm working slowly and surely on that. I'm also trying to add some social activism, because in my comfort zone I also want to be able to do something for my community. Yes, that might not sound as "comfort zone" for some, BUT my concept of comfort zone is about feeling good, being able to relax and enjoy myself, and is not about being lazy. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't condemn being lazy, just as I don't celebrate hyper productivity. Allowing yourself spaces to enjoy laziness, and even have lazy days are something we all need. My comfort zone is about being happy, enjoying life and building a life where I can think that I actually succeed at this "life" thing (and I do!).

Next week starts with a holiday - May 1st, the International Workers' Day - and then I took Thursday off for a Thesis Day. I'll have a meeting with my tutor, so I'm really excited. And on Monday, if all goes well, I plan on joining the Workers' March in order to protest against a bill that would legalize 12 hour work days (12 effective work hours per day, where lunch and rest time won't be deducted from it) in the country. That's my activism, and I intend on seeking ways to get more involved in labour economics' activism.

Since I started my second YouTube Channel, planner and journaling videos have been a weekly task for me, but this weekend and the next are already covered, as I shot, uploaded and programmed the next videos. However, I already planned ideas for videos for the next weeks and up to September. I started already shooting some B-rolls and planning on how to do the rest.

At work I've also been pushing on my tasks and working to keep everything up to speed, and maybe even get ahead of some stuff. Just getting ready with everything. We are finishing April and I have still managed to keep a clean mail inbox, where the only three e-mails are about a seminar in two weeks, an in-person meeting next week and a notificatoion I keep as reminder that someone else has to finish something. And we are nearly in May!

Have I mentioned that we are in Mercury Retrograde?

I'm also amazed at how I have managed to keep my filofax "in line", with all the pages neatly fitting, passing the "ring test". I remove pages as needed, review what I have, what I need to take out, what needs to be included, and so I keep it manageable. I play in my mind with crazy ideas, such as buying a Filofax Heritage in Personal, just to try it out, but I seriously doubt that day will come (this year). I have also thought of getting a Personal Filofax Malden, but I must admit that I really dislike the leather penloops of the Malden's because they catch inside and the folded leather bunches up and makes it hard to use. Maybe I'm getting much into the "Planner+Journaling Content Creator"-mode there in that regard, or maybe my mind if flying ten thousand ways for some reason. Maybe I need to burn mind-energy. But be it as it may, I've been on a planner hype as of late, inspite of the Retrograde.

I write things down, I update my online calendars to make sure all my witchy rituals are in there, so I don't forget auspicious dates and so on, and they also get into my filofax, along with my cleaning schedule. And this is how I opened my filofax to check how my next week will look like, and Holy Mother of the Wenn, it looks full!

Should I take a page from the message of the Retrograde and go inside, introspect a little, retrieve into myself and stop filling my calendar to the brim? After all, in keeping my comfort zones, I also need to enjoy the peace and delight of them, of a life happy, relaxed and sans souci.

Opportunity

We've been talking about labor and fertility in the past few days, aho how both fertility and labor (understood this as work, be this paid, unpaid or indirectly paid, or paid by means other than money) are knit together and vital for us both as individuals as well as economies, communities, groups or even mankind. Indeed we understand that without labor and fertility, life as we know it wouldn't be possible. It is through these that the things we need to live are produced. The food we consume, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the furniture we use, the roads and means of transportation, and currently even a large part of our communication means. The current development of knowledge - or any knowledge, actually - wouldn't be possible without labor and fertility.

At the same time, labor and fertility have a price, and that's effort and dedication. It entails resilence, patience and the determination to continue, to work hard and do the best possible constantly, even when the results are not seen at once. Lands need a lot of work for them to yield a good harvest, and that often means many years of poor - if any harvest before the bouty of the land showers upon us with the richness and goodness of Mother Earth. At our office job - perhaps seeming so far from the creation of God - are also ruled by the same Golden Principle, and so we often have to work our backs off for a meager wage, a little payment and no recognition, before we stablish ourselves and see the fruits of our efforts. It's not an easy road, but it is the road, and so it can be hard often to see others who have found shortcuts, and reach those fruits and that bounty in a shorter time or a different, easier way. A friend of mine would often say "it's not your time or my time, but God's Time the one that matters", to refer to such cases where we feel things don't go as fast or as slow as we would want them to go.

However, not everybody is willing to wait on God's Schedule to arrive to the bounty of the harvest, nor they want to invest any effort, dedication or hard work to get what they want. These people are the "opportunity hunters". With wide eyes clouded by dreams of greatness, they often look down on the hard working ants and say it so, thinking that working hard to get what you want, live on a tight but stabile way, work for someone else or be "employed" is degrading and take you nowhere. The perspective of working hard for five or ten years to save up for a home - for instance - or for a promotion so that you can take yourself or your family to the next level of comfort , equals to eternal stagnation, where you will forever be condemned to a life of endless struggle, tiresome working and deep poverty, stuck in the same rented room or in your parents' basement. They consider that opportunities are fleeting things that you have to grab when they flash before your eyes, and squeeze all you can from them, placing value on those chances where you can get the biggest earning out of the less amount of effort.

Several opportunities then start appearing, all of them quite risky, often schemes or bogus enterprises designed to fool people to take their money or make them work for free, or become the escape goat when the truth about the activity is discovered, to down right illegal activities. Such are the people who compulsively spend all their begged up money on lottery tickets because they expect to become millionaires through it, those who enter all sorts of pyramid companies or invest in ponzy schemes, to those who start prostituting themselves or serving as drug mules and smuglers. In times of high unemployment, but even in times when the economy is well, those who can't find a job or are not willing to take one, are often seduced by these sort of proposals. Quick money and the right pitch sale to blur the risks, can make it seem as the best idea in the planet, or at least not as bad as many would think. Like I noted in the post "Beware of the Tricky", not everybody is able to do the right questions, nor is able to notice that the pitch sale lines are designed to take away their attention from the obvious flaws your common sense would warn you about.

Why isn't in the news how many people has gone rich in a matter of days for doing this? Why can't be explains clearly and shortly what this is or how it works? Why aren't there more millionaires from the lottery, when every week there should be a winner for each of the games available? Where are the millionaires that the Casino produces?

Many articles in magazines and on the net, often talk about the dark world of prostitution, or nightclub dancers, strippers and drug mules. There's also the world of people who take shortcuts at their jobs or steal. Cashiers slipping part of the day's income into their pockets, or stiffing the clients for their benefit, warehouse workers who loit from the stocks, drivers who "drop" part of their cargo and so on. The general mantra is "No Game, no Gain", or "No Risk, No Earnings", as if really, you had to put your life on the dice everytime, risk all you have to get some sort of benefit, unless you are left only with that you started. It drives you to expect something from what you can't control, no can't influence in anyway, instead of seeking a more safe thing, where though many things you can't control, at least you have control - and therefore responsability! - over a part of it, thus allowing you to ensure the end result.

You can buy a thousand lottery tickets and never win anything, and but a thousand more and remain with the same result, or spend your whole life buying tickets and never win a dime, but spend all the money you get on it. You could also work the land hard, day after day, and do it for five years without results, but eventually - according to what you've planted, and within an expected amoount of time - the land will yield and produce and your efforts will be paid for, assuring your from then on the fruits of your labor. So, why to chase fleeting opportunities that could turn into smoke and mirrors, hoax or traps that leave you in trouble or in shame, when there's a God given way, and take it on the Land, on Mother Earth and partake in the fertile activity of labor?

Sometimes those "bright, smart out" ideas are the most stupid of all.

Little Big Efforts

Continuing on the topic of fertility and labor, it's interesting to think that fertility isn't something we can do by ourselves. To procreate a child you need two people - one of each gender - and often other many sorts of conditions, like the right mood, the right environment, income security, stable relationship... For any sort of work you need at least someone who hires you (your employer or the client who buys from you) and maybe also someone to hire. Even for the most simple of fertile activities, such as sowing, you need the land, the seeds, the Sun, the water... Be it other people or the colaboration of other elements, fertility and labor are things you can't do on your own. (I'm thinking about creating stories in your head as something you could "do on your own", but I'm not sure about that, so I'm leaving that in the limbo.) In this sense, it happens that often we think that the part we give to a job or to the big scope of the economy or the country itself is very, very little, and it goes unnoticed. You may think that the GDP measure has nothing to do with you, that the part that you produce is so small, it wouldn't go missing if you would stop doing it.

It's similar the case with voting, for instance. In the big scope of a general election for the presidential campaing, you may wonder what does it matter if you vote or not? What weight does your one vote has, and who would ever miss it?

The beauty of labor and fertility, is that even the smallest part matters, that it doesn't matter like it has so much weight, the smallest part is the crucial one. A person forms thanks to the efforts of one single sperm from millions and millions that could rush swimming up to the womb looking for the Promise Egg, and each plant in a plantation also comes from a tiny seed that made it. You may see yourself small and insignificant in the big scheme of things, but there would be no big head up there if it weren't for all the laborious, little ants like you keeping the world running.

For all those efforts that might seem small to the world, that are big for us, there are loud echoes in the future, out into the Universe. For all of those, we deserve to remember, to celebrate, that though we are small, and though we can't do it without the colaboration of others, we are also a vital part of the big scheme, and as so, we must keep that thought in mind, smile and celebrate, be happy and passionate. In this spirit, I took a small stick - small like me - and tied on it three ribbons in the colors of the Costa Rican flag: blue for hope and dreams to fly high in the sky, white for the purity of the heart, the peace and calmness of Mother Earth, and red for the passion, the effort, the flame and the will of the Lord. Nobody can see it, probable, as it is perched in a small pot with a cactus, from a window on a high floor, but it's there, close to the sky where the dreams are, there to remind me every morning of the promise of May, and before God.

Your efforts might seem so small for the world, but in the eyes of God they sure are big because He knows what's behind them.

Labor Day

Today in many countries around the world we celebrate Labor Day. It's a day to honor, remember and celebrate not only the work many of us do, and which produces everything we need (and also what we don't) for life. As I noted in yesterday's post, perhaps it's not a coincidence that the festivities of fertility and Labor Day happen on the same day.

During Labor Day we honor the work - from the humblest to the most important - that brings bread to the table, but also gets economies moving, countries growing. It has always been hard, and often happened that workers got exploited. Overworked, poorly paid and even not paid at all, mistreated and in some cases to death. The cases of little children worked to death in mines, or the women who sewed but wouldn't get paid enough to support themselves, even less their families. Many fights had to be fought in order to ensure conditions that make work a just and dignified activity, where there no side preys on the other.

The battles were hard and many fell. It wasn't easy to gain the respect and fight for many of the rights we have today, and ensure the world wide watch organizations, such as the ILO, that support workers. In this sense it's upsetting to see Governments and people disregarding them, and even calling those rights "unjustified abuses"  claiming that Unions look only to ensure people get lazy and a few get to be paid while doing nothing. The "flexibilization" of work goes against what was so hard to get in the begining, and the empty talk trashing stability, as if having a job and an income you can relay on where a bad thing, making you "lazy", instead of thinking that it gives you calm, certainly and you can avoid unnecesary stress, not having to wake up everyday without not knowing whether you'll have a job that day or not.

I'd like to take this chance to remember the struggles, how we pair the fertility of work with the human rights and the respect, the peace and the acceptance that we are all alike, that we all must be respected, that workers are not slaves to their jobs, that patrons are not all mightym but have to remember that in order to produce they need the workers, and thus, as we should respect Mother Earth, observe the power of fertility, also we should remember that all jobs are full of dignity, if done with honesty, that no job empowers anyone to look down on the other. No job makes you more and no job makes you less than others. Money by itself doesn't move the world, is work what moves the world and makes it breathe, let's not forget that.

Happy Walpurgis Night and Beltane!

Another Pagan Sabbath is around the corner, ready to be celebrated, and with it I prepare to take the message into my heart. The most part of the information you get - from the 101 point of view - talk to you about Beltane, but it wasn't until recently that I learned about Walpurgis Night. Then, given that I'd like to work out another topic for today (or more like a different approach), and yet I wanted to keep my Pagan Calendar updated, I decided to invoke the help of Walpurgis ^_^ for the task. It's late anyway - or late for me, so you'll be probably reading this entry already for Beltane - which is held on May 1st... though I've heard of May 2nd as well. (My trusty Witches' Datebook 2012 - which I of course got because I had to and it has been very useful in my research - places Beltane on the 1st.)

In the Wheel of the Year, Beltane marks the middle of the year, and is opposite to Samhain, which is the New Year of the witches or Pagans. It celebrates the coming of the summer, the begining of the longest days of the year, with hours and hours of light and sun. In Costa Rica you don't feel this all that much though you may notice (if you wake up early enough) that you have an extra 30 minutes of light at dawn and another extra at dusk. In Europe there's no mistaking when you notice that the sun is nowhere close to the horizon at 8 pm, and 4 pm and 7 pm look exactly the same.

For many Beltane is also a much favored celebration because it's about fertility. The courting of the Spring, the shy blooms are over and it's time to get the land and the stock pregnant. Time for sex, fire and passion related thoughts, intentions and activities. However lets take the line of thought we have been following through the other Sabbaths and think about this one as well as part of our life cycle. What is this celebration of fertility? It's a celebration of Labor, and as such, it's not so farfetched to imagine how Beltane and Labor's Day fall on one and the same day (in most countries). One is a celebration of sex and the other a celebration of work, of jobs as a dignified human activity that makes the world possible. It's also a day to celebrate the conquests of Labor, the social and labor guarantees that keep us from expliotion and from working in inhuman, abusive condition. From any angle you see it, it's a celebration - a happy and passionate celebration! - of fertility.

We have planned, prepared and with Beltane we go on the Fields and work them. On these long days, under this hard sun, many peasants worked from first light to last light on the fields, on meager food if any, taking care of the pregnant Mother Earth for from the good completition of her pregnancy all of us depend. From her dark, soft womb is born our bread, from it nurtures our meat. With the very passion of unleashed joy and gayness, we should work our projects, work the fields alotted to us, push ourselves, even if we still don't see the result, even if the impact of our work gets swallowed in an endless land of waying greens and yellows. The harvests will come, the results will always show, and now is the time when we can make the difference. Now is the time when we can give into it everything we have, do our best and try to surpass ourselves, show ourselves that yes, we can and we can go even further. Surprise yourself, impress yourself! Show yourself what are you made of and do the whole 9 and then add the extra mile!

Beltane is where the plans and preparations get in action. It's the time to show the passion, unleash the flame inside our souls.

Today we went to the Velence lake, where a friend of us has a lovely summer house. The place is in one  of the many little villages that ring the lake, and to my surprise, they had a May Tree. (To Sartassa: I guess you were right! Hungarians also celebrate the May Day!) It's not a pole like the May Pole, but rather a long, long, thin stick (probably from a very thin tree), with a few branches on top, which are richly decorated with colorful ribbons. This May Tree is located at a prominent area of the village, such as in front of the city hall or some place like that. Nobody would think that it's a Pagan thing (actually in this place the city hall was in front of the church and there seemed to be no problems with that), but an ancient tradition the village is very proud to keep.

After seeing this, and since my boyfriend repotted our plants, I decided to do my impromptu May Tree from a little stick that had been in one of the pots. (One of the plants we've got was a little gift from a wedding my boyfriend attended, and on the stick was a little paper bird with his name.) I took a few ribbons I had lying around and tied them securely on top of the stick, and then stuck it back in the new pot the plant received.

This is the moment to make things happen, so are you going to make things happen, or will you remain at the drawing desk, with the blueprints of your fabulous life?

Pride as a Virtue

It seemed up until a few days ago, that I would manage to write one post per day. It would have been nice to do so, to add up 31 posts for October, and round up, pair up a month with a number signaling my favorite celebration: Halloween. Before you ask, no I haven't started my planning and rounding up for Halloween/Samhain yet. According to plans, Alix shall "lead circle" for Samhain, if we actually decide to keep up this strange decision to celebrate in a Pagan-ish way the cycle of the year, so it's not like I must be working on it, planning and coordination - no matter how poorly the end result comes up - though most likely I would end up doing something small and private - Solitary Witch like - just like I did in Mabon (though I didn't took pictures of that).

In the past days, the days I didn't post a thing, I took part of two activities that made me think about pride in a very positive way, a way that should be kept and nurtured inside everybody's heart.

On Friday seven of my coworkers and I went to a work tour to know an Eolic Power Plant and a Hidroelectric Power Plant. Our company - which is a State Owned Company - started originally working on the energy sector, aiming for many years to bring power to every corner of the country at affordable prices. The ideal back then was to work hard and do the best to ensure the country could grow and develop. The company gave jobs and made sure to have the best professionals in every area, sending them to study, giving them chances to be better and serve better the country. Years after the company also took care of the telecommunications sector, also seeking actively to interconnect the whole country, ensuring low prices and access to phones to everybody. The level of penetration in both sectors was quite high, earning the country the first place in electrification, and I believe telecommunication reach in Latin America. (Or so we have been told.)

With the years, many upper tiers got corrupted and soon we found our labor force filled with people more interested in pulling personal benefit, sucking the blood of the company for the sake of their own pocket, than that of the country. Service degraded, poor choices were made, elitism sneaked into our ranks, with many middle and high management elements too quick to outcast the poorer segments of the country in favor of big companies, ready to give away important chunks of service and price, not thinking twice before fucking up the little people. The phrase "they don't make us so much money, they can go to anyone else" has been said more time than I'd like to recall.

On Friday, however, we were packed into a small mini bus and drove to the far West province of the country, Guanacaste, where in Tilarán and Sandillal we've got the chance to see an Eolic Power Plant (Tejona) and a Hidroelectric Power Plant (Sandillal). Aside from the tremendously poor planning and evident adjust-as-we-go system, it struck me how so far from the putrid higher management spheres, there were people still living the ideal, plausible proud of wearing the uniform, eyes filled with stars of love and pride when looking at the logo of the company. It got to me how these simple engineers, working in far away locations, among machines, staring intently at control panels, still had that unadulterated pride of being part of a force that's there to serve the country. They may not make as much as any of those working where I do, and yet they relate to their jobs, they would give their lives and souls to serve the country. In they lived the kind of pride many have forgotten, with their minds clouded by greed, juicy paychecks, big titles, work paid trips to anywhere in the planet, and the handshake from corrupted politicians who wish to break the company to pieces and give it away to their larger campaing contributors.

It made me think that Pride isn't a capital sin, but the sin is to forget pride, to outcast it and thus be open to sell out one's soul for money, for greed, forgetting the noble ideas that can make you grow by serving your country.

A second type of pride I learned of was the pride of being able to help. It happened on Saturday, when a former coworker of mine, Andy, and her sister, Cucha, took part of a walk for Breast Cancer Awareness. It was particularly meaningfull, because Andy and I have very different political backgrounds and positions: me more "State oriented", she definitivelly more "liberal", and yet it came the day she and I walked for a common cause, and donated for a common cause. Without any discussing, fight picking or anything (we never got into arguments anyway), we took part of a huge Pink Force, among men and women proudly sporting pink ribbons and pink t-shirts, surrounded by people who was there for a family member, a friend, and acquintance or simply for the world, in an effort to do something to help, to bring awareness about this illness and others like it.

Here differences went up in the thin air, made smoke and it didn't matter if you were against or in favor of this or that, didn't matter if you were of this or that religion, of this or that sexual orientation, poor or rich, healthy or sick, strong or weak, fit or a potato couch, what it mattered was that you were there, helping to bring a message to the world, to your fellow citizens, donating time, effort or money - as little or as much - to help those in need, to contribute with the recovery of those stricken with the illness and wishing them for the depths of your heart, without knowing them, to be better. You walked there in support, showing respect and sharing the pride of those who survived and made it, infusing your life strenght from close and from far, to those who are still in the battle. They are not alone and we, a big pink sea, came together to send them our thoughts and positive energy to encourage them to defeat the illness and soon walk with us.

This is Pride, and this isn't a sin. It's the pride of being helpful, of sharing, of doing something for others, it's the pride that doesn't seek to raise above others, but to pull others along, infect them with the feel and the happiness and move them to be part of a greater good.

Be Proud. It's a Virtue.

24

24 are the hours in a day. 24 could be the number of shoes in your closet, though I'm guessing that would be the number of black shoes you use to go to the office. 24 could be the number of freckles on your nose. 24 could be the day you were born. 24 the number of unanswered e-mails still sitting in your mailbox, though if you are Shota-Hunter, the right number would be around 24 000. 24 are the months in a two year period.

Today, from the news, 24 are the number of France Telecom employees who have commited suicide in the last 18 months. This gives a different sense to the number. 24 employees have seen in ending their lives the only way to get out of the conditions that the organization imposes upon them. 24 are the tip of the iceberg. How many else are there who don't commit suicide but are subject of the same inhuman treatment these 24 were? How many don't do it because they need the job to support their families? How many don't do it because they have been bullied into submission?

This is, on the other hand, a reality lived in many other companies, some even worse in the private sector, but people don't care. Unions are ignored, but then in the private sector unions are down right prohibited because "they cause conflict between the employees and the employers". Flash news: if the working conditions are good, trust me, the Unions won't stir any problems.

Then again, this is not a matter of unions or not, it's a matter of people, and how unreasonable some can be. What was France Telecom thinking when the first person commited suicide and blamed the company for the decision? And what was thinking when the second followed? Evidently that it was just a matter of people throwing a temper tantrum. Don't they get the complains? Or do they think that the well being of their employees is entirely irrelevant and grupmy, depressed people can produce the same as happy, motivated people? Well, they don't, and if they can't see the results, maybe it's time to check the company and see where all the inefficiencies are going. A bit of advise? Start with the upper hierarchies.

When I worked at the bank, there was a boss who loved to mistreat their people. Though there was no colocation quota settled, not quota would affect the workers' wage (which is fix), he loved to gather up everybody once a month and tell them how bad had they performed, signaled out people, berated them and let his mignions to call anyone out to be berated. A personal case of that was when I was sent for one month to sell credit cards, which everybody had to do for one month every year. We could not answer the phone, only make calls, because all the calls that entered had to go to our loan procesing workmates. We were given lists of people preapproved to call. The lists weren't nearly enough to keep us occupied, so I took my textbooks to study while the new lists arrived.

A mignion called me one day to berate me, saying that I wasn't allowed to read at the office.

"What should I do then?"
"Make calls."
"All lists are finished. I'm still waiting for the new ones."

Sometimes lists could take days on arrive.

"Then take calls."
"I'm at the Credit Card section. Can I really take calls?"
"No, you are on the Credit Card section! I thought it was explained clearly that you CAN'T take calls!"

(As you can see, the mignion was very clear with the procedures.)

"Then, if I can't take calls and I have finished all my lists, what can I else do?"

The mignion looked at me with a mighty air of superiority.

"Your productivity is extremely low. You should be concerned about it."

Two days later I was awarded for breaking records in Credit Card sales. And the lists I was waiting that day hadn't arrived.

Many of my friends and coworkers have been subjected to worse kinds of bullying, things you wouldn't see even in The Devil Wears Prada. Though the worse cases happen usually in places where the workers have lower levels of education, or places where a given degree, a specialty is not needed, often happens is specialized places that workers with high degrees and so are mistreated. The debasing of workers, screaming at them, keeping them after work hours against their will, bullied into staying with either paid or not extra hours, often making them work on something that will be either filed away or discarded as soon as it's finished, the pushing of irrational deadlines or irrational demands, minimizing their skills, hiring people from the street to better positions, internally denied to them, and then demanding them to teach the new ones the ropes are ways of bullying more and more common in our laboral environment.

But 24 suicides don't tell the company that something is going wrong. High levels of personal rotation tell nothing to the company. Complains tell nothing to the company. Companies care about the bottomline, the worker is just an annoying necessary evil. Well, two things:

1. How do they expect to reach the bottomline with no employees? Good quality workers will leave toplaces where they can be appreciated, and the constantly rotating base of lower quality workers will drag the company down slowly. There are not so many workers as the companies would like, certainly not many good.
2. Workers are also customers, so a deceptioned worker, sad and depressed will strike twice.
   

Happy Thursday

From a joke I learned that while Friday is known also by the happy acronym of TGIF (Thanks God it's Friday), Thursday is known by the acronym SHIT (Sorry Honey, it's Thursday). Well, today I guess we can say TIGT: Thanks God it's Thursday. Yes, today is a kind of Thursday that's more like a Friday, because tomorrow is a holiday! Yeah! No work for tomorrow! Wake up at anytime, smack away the clock or cellphone that wakes you up everyday to tell you the same old bad news: another day of labour has come, wake up and join the ants. Today is the International Day of Labor, so we rest and do whatever we feel like doing.

However, not everybody has today a happy Thursday, for some people gara go work tomorrow. Year after year more and more people in Costa Rica have to work through holidays. People with jobs that pay little, such as cleaning and construction, but also others like stores and restaurants mainly in big commercial centers, or Malls. However now also people working for foreign companies, particularly in the call centers. I have friends who work in these and it amazes me how these enterprises are allowed to function under this method, forcing their employees to work through the holidays all year long. What's Government doing? Because it's one thing if I volunteer to work throught a holiday in exchange of an extra payment, but it's entirely different if I'm made, if in order to enjoy a nation, and Hyne forbid, an INTERNATIONAL holiday I'm made spend vacation days, and even then have them tied to the chance of being rejected because "a lot of people is asking that day out".

I'm a public employe, like everybody knows by now, and this things are simply unheard in my environment. Nobody questions holidays here. Then again, it's also in our Laws, in the Labor Code, chapter III, article §148, the list of holidays that are obligatory and must be paid by the employer, that must be given to the employees. So what's going on here? Foreign Direct Investment, that's what's going on here. They, namely the current Administration, and other Administrations prior to it, that follow the Liberal and Neoliberal way of "fucking it up", for such brain fart can't be considered "way of thinking" or much less philosophy, allow enterprises to ste up here, have no union and take from the workers as much as they want. Young kids, barely out of their teenage years, working for dollars, some handsome fee... for someone with no preparation whatsoever, and have them locked in a somewhat relaxed environment, socially, where they can dress up their cubbies like one arranges a bedroom, with pictures, posters, toys, and have them work for more hours than they should, for more days than they should. Most of them resign quickly. Most of them hardly last a year, and jump from call center to call center, from this tech support enterprise to that, from this merchandising enterprise to that, here and there like crazy bees, making a patched up career as call center agents,or "account executives", however do you wish to call them, but what kind of career is that?

A generation is growing up without knowing what's like to work for years in the same company, getting to know it, love it, become part of it, feel proud about it. I hear kids ten years my juniors talking about the plans they have with the money they'll receive when they resign from their current workplaces. What happened with the value of stability?

Today everything is fleeting. You buy a new house and a new car if you get a new job with a higher income, but you don't think ahead about what you'll do to pay it. No. While your income is enough, you pay it. When you resign or get laid off, the bank takes the house and the car, or maybe you'll be able to sell it, pay the bank and get something with the remaining money. This workers spend differently than their senior generations. While others bought land, estate, these kids buy toys and electronics. Things they can get quicker, that won't force them to remain in a given enterprise for too long. They won't anyway.

People live short term lives making no plans, maybe just dreaming al kinds of farfetched dreams that feed their desperation, but possess no real base to be achieved. A kid that does nothing but plays videogames all day, works every once in a while for a few months and quits, eats up all his or her money in matter of days and lives a messy, unorganized life can't possibly expect to become "rich and famous". And yet many of them do. Many wait for fame and fortune come knockng on their door. Really, I have more possibilities of developping telekinesis that they have of achieving such unreal dreams.

You know, it never cease to amaze me how people who actually seek to avoid working hard to achieve something, are capable to getting themselves into jobs that squeeze them in exchange of nothing. Wouldn't be better to put all that energy in something that can get them ahead?

And yet, on the same page, there's a lot of people who has been left behind, cut from the chances others had and are stuck in these jobs, trying to get ahead. These are those who stay the most, seek to remain employed as much as they can, because they need the income. You can recongize these people from the others, separate them from the addicts to the instant gratification, because they have to work far harder than many of us. They do these "marxist nightmare" jobs and next to the them they study. Either they manage to attend class, or they are enrolled in online classes, maybe thought distance learning, where they enroll to different classes, pick up their books and do their homework for a given date and then go to the university only to do their tests. I've been there, so I know it's no piece of cake. And yet there are many of these kids, who seek for a chance to make their dreams a reality and follow a career this way while breaking their backs in all kinds of neo-imperialist "coal mines".

All other jobs are being erased as enterprises that work with the old methodology, respecting the law and keeping up with it are forced to close because they have become "inefficient" and "too expensive". Who will have the strenght to work at this pace at the age of 50 or 60? Who will be hired at that age? How will anyone live at that age? Many of these kids, of this workers are not insured, and even if the 9.9% of their wage is retained by their employers alleging "Insurance fee", employers are keeping that money for themselves and not insuring their young workers. "What for? The kid won't be here more than 9 months, so he or she will never notice it". Only, each time the kid remains only 9 months to 1 year at the enterprises, and so, when he or she turns... 65 the Insurer will tell him or her, "Sorry Homie, no money!".

I don't think it's fair that only a layer of our society can have a good life secured. Holidays are for the whole country, not only for those few "blessed ones" who got the right education and the right job and the right connections. Why only a part of us can enjoy the Social Guaranties secured some 13 years ago? Why this benefit, this right we have shed blood for is not for everyone? If we work for a wage, if we all have to pay taxes, and we do, why only a part is subjected and protected by the Law?

So, a day before the International Labor Day, I'd like to leave this thought for reflection about what have been fought, the great revolutions on this matter we had in the XX.th century and what are we doing of it in this new XXI.st century.

A Certain "Plan Escudo" in Costa Rica

So, our Government came up with this brilliant idea of preparing a "Plan Escudo" (Shield Plan) to get ready to face the crisis. One would think it's a great idea and these people, this Government should be patted on the shoulder for it. Well, hold your horses, homies! This is no other thing but yet another scheme to protect the interests of a few in prejudice of a whole nation. It is indeed advertized as something that will be oh-so good for the population, but truth is that it seeks to finally demolish our social guaranties. People could be fired far easier and without being paid as much as today or with no payment at all (and there's no unemployment social aid in Costa Rica, so make the numbers), work conditions can be changed at will (the will of the enterprise, you mind), and so wages can be subject to reduction. It is all sold under the shady label of "flexibilidad laboral" (labor flexibility), which pretty much means that the employer can do as it sees fit.

Though in the past years the labor conditions have deteriorated terribly in Costa Rica, this will finally give legal support to all abuses committed by the employers. You have to actually be very thorough to find that clipping today (thanks Hyne I do not give it up!), but last year, November 13th a Nicaraguan worker died due to the highly unhealthy conditions in which it was made work by the Hotel Rui. Of course, Hotel Rui had nothing to do because it outsourced the contruction to some other entreprise. Of course. Poor Hotel Rui, however, has been so unlucky that it has outsourced with a lot of enterprises that commit serious abuses against its workers. This Nicaraguan guy and his coworkers live in unsanitary conditions, among LOADS of dirt (and I mean even sewer dirt too), in very tight places. So, this man got sick and died. Other 1500 workers have gotten severely sick while working in the building of this hotel.

Bad, isn't it? Well, read the article I linked up there and you'll see more. If you can't read in Spanish or are too lazy to do so, worry not, I'll give you a bit of highlights here:

1. Employers take from the wage of the employees the 9% they have to for the Social Security, BUT they either never inscribe them, and therefore they remain without social insurance, or they report a salary 50% lower.
2. Working conditions are so rought many workers can't take it and are forced to leave. From their proportional payment, they hold back this 9% allegedly, to pay it to the Social Security.
   
3. Workers receive very reduced portions of food, often made in situ, under unsanitary conditions and served in dirty dishes and cuttlery.

Often these enterprises hire immigrants because it's easier to abuse of them, because they don't know the law (well, nobody, as a matter of fact), and they fear being deported. A case I know well is that of the cleaning ladies of our building. It is actually a shame that this Institution allows such abuses against workers. Most of these women come from Nicaragua, and have still their families, their kids there. In here they are made work with dangerous chemicals and wearing no protection. Once they cleaned my office while I was still here, and I, at a bigger distance from the chemicals, suffered a fit of asthma. The supervisor tried to tell me that it was nothing, and that the girl got the products wrong, but I was having none and told her to used only water in my office. Later on, one of the girls came and told me many of them have gotten sick for the product, but the company did nothing to change it, and instead claimed they were problematic and fired them without paying them a dime. This cleaning company holds up their wages for months, and doesn't care that they have no money even for getting the bus to come to work. The harrass them and if any of them starts befriending one of us, she' sent to another building or fired.

There have been cases of girls fired that never even got what the company owed them. Naturally the company holds back the 9%, but none of them has insurance.

This all happens inspite of the existence of laws and institutions created to protect the workers, so I wonder, what will happen in Costa Rica when the Shield Plan gives finally the green light to all the abuses committed against workers that are being denounced today and that the law fails to process?

Just an observation

Regarding the current "fucked up" market situation into which the U.S. managed to pull the rest of the world (and I hope now the rest of the world learns and next time knows better before trusting all their assets into the hands of one egomaniac nation or group, and stopr thinking the "Memo Zúňiga"way where the future is the problem of the future, thinking they can fuck up stuff, bacause they'll be long dead before hacing to pay for it...), I watch how the different countries get the Government to help their financial systems. It's kinda funny how if Hugo Chávez talks about "nationalization" it means "socialism", "communism" and therefore evil satanic practices left only to cruel, people torturing dictatorships, where people leave in fear, poverty and denied to express themselves. BUT if the US talk about "nationalization", dude, that's okay because that's gonna save us. (The EU does "nationalize" as well, but 1. Yes, I'm partialized about Europe, because for me Europe is beyond perfect, and 2. As far as I know, Europe hasn't gone out of its way to point fingers at nationalization.)

Who is responsible for the crisis... oh, the Democrats for not acting on time at voting the bailout! The Republicans for not acting together, because they didn't need the Democrat votes to pass the bailout (of $700 billion, according to the American Press, $850 billion according to Le Figaro...) Fuck it, people! The bailout ain't the root of the recession. This was lurking since 1995, almost fall into the ditch in 2001, but the 9-11 came "miraculously" to the "rescue", so people didn't pay attention to it. But it was there. Poverty raising... okay, haul over some of those paupers, make them soldiers and have them killed out there. That's actually very, very Hegel. "The way to end with misery is killing the miserbles." Hey, at least there's a philosopher backing it up, right? So, who's responsible? Everybody from the President down.

Like they say in Internal Control, "the responsability is not transferable". You may "empower" someone, and delegate functions and capabilities, but you cannot delegate responsability. So yes, if the President didn't pay attention to it, it IS his responsability still. Sorry, no way out of this hole. It's responsability of the people as well, for electing him. It's responsability of the enterprises for not taking measures, for thinking they could surf through it and take no precautions even if they had a 13-year notice that this wasn't gonna last. It's the fault of people as customers, for pushing for more and more loans, for not living within their means (yeah, me talking), for not demanding the State to keep their hard earned social warranties. Dude, press your representatives! You have Senators to talk for you! Honestly people, for a country of Freedom and Right of Expression, you really don't get to say much. Anyway, you got into a pit, and now you have to pedal back, and you see you have to go against your own preeching. The irony of it it's actually wonderful. And not because I may or may not be a supporter of the Socialist Systems (I'm not really, for I still don't understand them fully), but because this is like in the 30's, with the Great Depression, when John Maynard Keynes finally had the chance to prove that, yes, he was right and Jean-Baptiste Say was wrong.

The markets themselves are imperfect, and you can't leave them do as they see fit, all guided by their own "selfishness" and feed the fools' hope that it will work out fine. The world is not an economical model, starting with the fact that a. products are not homogenic, b. agents are not the same size and evidently those with more power WILL exercise said power (hey, they are SELFISH and we encouraged them to be so!), but above all c. the agents are NOT rational. Selfish doesn't mean they are by default rational. Why? Because they are ran by people, and people is NOT rational. People is irrational, and hell, I'm rather irrational, so of course the rest of the world is irrational! So, will the individual "every man for its own" attitude save the world amd make us live in a better place? Of course not! If we let them, well, you can well see what happens. What do we need to prevent this? Intervention. Institutions, a government that sticks its nose in the market and makes sure the little people are fine and the conditions are fair. What is fair? Well, for me, but that's just "good ol' keynesian thinking", "fair" means welfare, national well being. People able to support their families, capable of providing to satisfy their basic needs secured in the long term, and the tools to get to those means at hand for everybody without discrimination of age, race, gender, political affiliation or ECONOMICAL and SOCIAL CONDITION. Meaning? Education, and I mean ALL education should be free for the people. From kindergarden to the PhD. Access to health and medical assistance should be free, ranging from a cold, a cut to a nutritional consult, a psychological appointment to AIDS, cancer, or any illness in the world... all of them along with the treatment and the medication should be for free for everybody. Maternity leave, sick days, retirement... should ALL be covered by the Government. And this ain't some "she drank too much coke and is hallucinating" kind of speech. This have been existing around the world, so they are very much possible. Oh, and I include up there also the dental stuff.

State provided education and health doesn't have to be poor quality. It becomes poor quality if you LET IT go that way. Pay no bribes, demand enough people working there, go to no private clinics... Start and finish your education in the State universities, and don't go to "easy" schools where you can pay for the diploma, or end medical school in two years instead of six. How can it be that during the 50's and the 60's universal health and state education where the top in quality and now people think of them as the worst it can happen to you? Dude, that's not because the State stuff don't work, but because you let corruption enter. And I won't go there sounding like my Mom and telling you how the corruption is the little "capitalist pig" people have lurking inside (though right now I see her point), so let's leave it like that. (However, ain't that capitalist pig sweet? Oh, I just love it! Made me laugh a lot at the office!)

So, the thing is that "nationalization" and letting the State take care of matters that affect the population has been around for quite a long time. And we have known of what happens in the "wild, wild capitalism" when you take away all restrains and let the burgeoise, the Co.'s and the "Big Private Money" do their bidding. Just in case you have forgotten, please let me refer you to Karl Marx and "Das Kapital" or "The Capital", available in pretty much all languages... as far as I know. It's available since 1867, so it has been around quite some time now. No, no, before you even say so, it is not Socialist Propaganda, and please don't say you don't write stuff written by the Russians or the Soviets, because it is GERMAN. Okay, so stated these facts, I found it utterly amazing to read in the news that this Mr. Gordon Brown, British PM said, and I quote from the CNN

"This is not a time for conventional thinking or outdated dogma, but for the fresh and innovative intervention that gets to the heart of the problem."

(CNN, London, England, "Britain unveils $84B rescue plan".)

Fresh and innovative. Say, I guess if you plan to use slave labour force... LEGAL slave labour force it won't be fresh and innovative anymore, right? C'mon dude! Some common sense here! Don't try to invent the sliced bread. Go back to the books and do things as they are supposed to be done. This ain't no time to go "experimenting" with something that "doesn't look so leftish, specially not so Soviet". It's fucked up, now own it, face it and work on it.

The Real Cost of Driving

Today I'll share with you a few thoughts about a very serious topic. As usual, these things come from me reading the newspapers. I know, a shameful habit. Should grow out of it, right? Reading newspapers, no matter how biased and filtered they are, how the facts are tampered and the effects diluted and minimized, so we all let out politicians fuck our living conditions far beyond our wildest dreams, well, it's not a good practice. People should read... well, actually they shouldn't read at all. Celebrities and Reality Shows should be people's only concerns.

Yesterday, reading the Népszabadság Online, which I don't read as often as perhaps I should, I was shocked by an article stating that food prices would be growing some 12% to 13% next year... in addition to what it has already grown. I read the article, and really, it was talking only about poultry and pork. But it was "fine, because 20% of the consumers prefer imported, more expensive meats anyways". This all due to the Avian Flu. Question: forget my utter stupidity, but how does the Avian Flu affect the pigs? Pigs finally fly in Hungary? Surprisingly, local specialists argued, that it wasn't so bad, because an increase of 12 to 13% on food prices would only affect the inflation 3 percentual points. Then the article went out of the way talking about the producers and how it was so very hard for them, and how they were getting broke because Hungary can't put up with the EU standards of "no animal cruelty" (it seems Hungarians like their food well tortured, well killed, well cooked), then there was no way that given the current market tools producers could... blah, blah, blah... At one point there was a tiny glimpse of something: people don't care for higher quality, but for the price of the food. Why? Well, try being kinda like "poor" and having to "eat". Need food, have little money, what do you do? Buy what you can afford. In the mean time, the producers are getting broke, so more people becoming poor, more people trying to buy cheap food.

But this is Hungary, and Hungary is Schengen Space, EU country, right? Well, today my attention was caught by another article, this time in the Washington Post. The title of the article is "Food Crisis Is Depicted As 'Silent Tsunami'". Not something that would make many go read it, yet I kinda stranded there. I won't quote the entire thing, though I would like to, because I have no publishing or republishing permision, but there are a few things that I would like to bring to your attention. "Food Crisis" is a phenomenon happening around the world. You can feel it harsher in poor countries, and yet is actually something happening world wide. The price of food is growing out of proportion to the point where people can't buy food with their daily earning. There's people making US$0,50 a day, and want to know something else. It's not in that article, but it's in many others: many of those who make $0,50 a day or even less, are children. Kids taken out of school to go work and support their families. Oh yes, in real life, those two quarters don't go to one person, but more than one, many maybe, and there comes a point where the saying "where one eats, two eat too" is no longer appliable.

20,000,0000 children starving.

A child dies every five seconds for causes related to hunger.

There are many causes for this "food crisis" and many scenarios. Some countries do not produce food at all, and are completely dependant of importations. In other countries there is food, but people can't buy it because they have no money. In other cases the farmers grow less crops because they don't have enough money to grow more, and they are not subject to loans. What is happening here? Well, people don't have jobs or they have jobs but they are not being paid enough. People are not given the chance to educate themselves and their kids to ensure a better lifestyle, and then, the means of production and the food itself is cut. Thomas Malthus said in his book that there would come the time when the land would not produce enough to feed the world and so mankind would know its end. Ironically, we have not reached that point, but rather our greedy ways and our pitiful resource and need prioritizing is pushing us to teh verge of the extintion. Because, to add to the "food crisis" factors such as the oil prices and the biofuel are having a bad influence on it. Rising oil prices keep farmers from the fuel to make their tractors and machines work, so they produce less, but then when you take part of the grains produced and make biofuel out of it instead of giving it to people to eat, you are starving people and killing them around the world.

Now this is not the absolut root of the problems, but please take a second to think. Each time you are filling the tank of your car, you are taking away gas that could be put in a tractor to sow the land and make food for people. Of course, if you think small you could say: "If I don't buy it, they won't either because they have no money", but if you stop buying it and others do too, the price of gas would lower and so the farmers, most of which are not subsidied by the Government, will be able to buy it and work the land. You can use other means of transportation such as public transportation or bikes or your own feet, the farmers need their tractors. A lot of people live in the same city they work, yet they use their car to drive down ten blocks and make traffic jams. Other people live in cities, I know this, that have been planned for car driving. Move closer to the office or, really, give public transportation a shot, even if it makes you wake up earlier. Oil is needed. Arabic, American, Venezuelan, Russian... please understand that it is needed, and until we don't find new ways to produce, and I think going back to plowing with horses or sheer manpower is not a choice now, we MUST decide where these resources should go.

I know many of you would like to turn then to the "miraculous biofuel". Since it was proposed, it sounded like a bad idea. At least to me. I've published here two pictures, which are too sides of the same coin. Biofuel takes the food from the people so some can run their cars. Please! Stop that!! Biofuel is not a solution! It's murder!

This makes me think, you know? How dare different organizations forbid certain productive procedures due to "animal cruelty" and yet some politics and some products are allowed even if they are a clear case of "human cruelty"? How many more people must die from starvation so Annie can get her brand new car for her Sweet Sixteen and Johnny can have a car for each day of the week? How many must die so Pablito can drive a block to buy a fucking bottle of water from the convenience store, and Lucía take the car to go work instead of using the metro because she wants to spare her brand new Prada shoes. How many must die so that the fat asses of the world don't have to make the effort? How many must starve to death so that big cities are not replanned and clean technology public transportation means are not improved? Yes, there are options, electrical options to the gas consuming busses and taxies. There are tramways and trollis (is there a name in English for the electrical buses we call trolibusz in Hungarian?), and for fuck's sake, grab that fucking bike and ride it. People pay loads of money to sweat on a spinning bike in a gym when they could pay some bucks for a bike and ride it everyday to the office. Not so much glam in it? Well, dying of hunger or promoting the starvation to death or other people has not much "glam" either. You are in no condition to ride a bike to your office? So you sit through 45 minutes to 1 hour in a spinning class and you can't take the same time to pedal to your office? Give me a fucking break.

You all know I don't have a car, and you all know I was basically holding up due to economical reasons. Too much to pay for, gas, mechanic, taxes, insurance, technical checkings... I didn't have a car because it was not a profitable investment for me. I did planned to get a car when I moved, but not anymore. You may have a car and use it all you want, but I will not have a car so that people can die out there, farmers can broke and people starve so I can wake up 30 minutes later. Fuck no. I will not be an accomplice to this crime. I will not become an accesory to this massive murder.

Yet, let's be clear, this is not a solution to the problem, but allow me to make of this a statement, a sign of what I will not tolerate, and a banner, a flag to tell the world that insensitive producing and consuming must stop. Take a look:

"THE REIGN OF THE MARKET MUST STOP."

Out for Three Days

Do not look for me, I probably won't be able to post from tomorrow to Saturday, since *I* will be in Wien. ^_^ Yes, yes, yes, the city of Mozart, Freud and Maria-Theresia. What will I do? *looks around* Well, nobody seems to know the answer, why would I? Hehehe... I'll have fun and do whatever pleases me when it pleases me. I want Wien all for my own.

...

In the Holidays, it seems there are only a few news, or at least a few journalists working. Perhaps it's unfair for me, who have been almost three weeks not working (one week on sick days and soon to fulfil two-and-a-half on vacations), to expect others to work all the time. Hey, I'm home, I want my news! We peopel can be so unconsiderated to one another. So, I guess journalists are entitled to take some vacations for their own purposes. So, There's so little of the Washington Post, I barely receive a section per day instead of my issue full paper and the separated fuller sections of Politics and Technology. I actually expected no news to comment, but then again, CNN don't stop. The article that caught my attention is this piece titled: "India's Outsourcing Industry Takes Toll on Workforce". I don't link it since I have no idea if you can follow the link or not. Most likely you can't since it's an e-mail encoded site.

Since it has to do with "work", "labor", I was insterested. Hey, I'm a Development Economist after all, and I'm passionate about what I learned. As I opened the article, I realized it is about the situation in the call centers in India. It names cases in IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard and Intel among others. The article basically says that though this jobs pay people more than what they could ordinarily earn, it's causing several problems to the health and mental and emotional health of the people. Weight disorders, heart disease, sleep disorders and so on. Their trget labor force is composed by people between 20 and 30, I guess, they project themselves as a "temporary job" place. Then again, due to the harsh conditions, regardless to the good payment, the job churn rate must be quite high.

I have friends and acquintances working in Costa Rica in this industry, and it honestly concerns me. It's also depressing to see how even Universities have opened the "Call Center Officer" fac. I don't understand why people can't see this is going the very wrong way. Okay, there are people who have worked a lifetime as call center operators (mostly at telecommunication enterprises... like giving information and so), but that can't be compared with what goes on today. What I see is a modern version of the same horrors described by Karl Marx in his Masterpiece "Das Kapital": the poor, starved, young worker is squeezed for the maximum profit: little payment, long hours of hard, demanding work. If we were horrified at tales of six year-old kids dying in the mines, and twenty-year-old girls literaly worked to death in embriodery shops, or at seamstresses, then why can't we see how our youth is robbed of their health and possibility to grow by this companies. How many of them can use the money they earn to further educate themselves and find a better job?

Though I preech that the economics are merely eficient, and leave the social problems to others, it's not our place (as economists) to solve the world, I'm sorry to tell this enterprises, that the social part is needed to keep our laborforce healthy and productive for years to come. Kill them before they can get their pensions is not a viable solution. Squeezing them and making them work sick and depressed is not a productive, eficient solution, and though the economics can separate themselves from the social part at the theoretical level (that's what the Ceteris Paribus is for), at the practical level they can't. Furthermore, we economists still float several levels above the ground and society, since we are still the macro planners, but the enterprise, which is IN the society, must be careful and conscient about the society.

Call centers around the world should consider the social and health factor of their employees and change their politics.

1. Shorter worktimes (make it a part-time job for everybody! Do not allow full-timers due to health considerations, like the health of the ear.)
2. Respect natural working hours as well as holidays and the native customs and habits.
3. Promote the social interaction of the employees as well as the interaction of the enterprise with the environment and the society.
4. Promote the further education of the employees

Familiy, friends and self. Health and comfort. Enterprises work with people, and if they should care for the people at least as much as they care for the machinery and equipment... and actually far more.