Last year I had the temerity to ask for a wage rise. Well, lets face it - I hadn't had one for three years and what with inflation going rampant and price rises across the board I was starting to find things a bit difficult. A month or two earlier one of the bosses had said to me how our sales figures were sky rocketing and so I figured that maybe some of our hard work could be rewarded with a little bit of the famous 'trickle down' we keep hearing about.

Come the next staff meeting as subtley as I could I tentativly made the suggestion that perhaps a raise might be in order. My boss was also subtle; there had been problems in other ares of the company, the economy was tight etc, etc (and then) and I'm already paying the supervisors in the other shop 35p an hour less than you.

In other words 'why would I pay you x amount per hour when I could employ someone else to do your job cheaper than I currently pay you.' Now what he failed to mention was that the other shop looses money hand over fist where we make it and that the losses incured elsewhere in the business are of no fault of ours - rather they must be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders. Had I been fast enough I would have replied that the extra 35p might be seen as good value, particularly in my case who in six years of employment have never been late or swopped a shift and have been sick only once when I was hosptalised, and was back in work 6 days later. (This does not of course include my demonstrated honesty or diligence to my duties over the years of my employment).

But fair do's - I accept that doing your job properly and being honest are things that an employer has a right to expect anyway and there is no reason why they should buy an employee extra favour in the eyes of his boss. Alaso if labour is seen as a commodity like any other, then fair enough - if there is loads of it about then it's going to be cheaper to buy, and who said bosses had also to be philanthropists. Anyway the upshot was that two months later my boss aproached me and drew me to one side. "We hadn't intended to give any wage rise this year he said but we have reconsidered in the light of your request and have decided to increase your hourly rate by 15p to £7 per hour."  (Thats 0.7% per annum in the face of an inflation rate of 5% - a real term salary drop of 15ish % in terms of the 'purchasing power' of the money in my wage packet).Well ok - it was a result of sorts. I'm now the proud recipient of £240ish per week (after tax) for which I work 43 hours of mixed early (6 am) and late (11pm) shifts, no weekends, no sick pay, no bank-holidays and now it seems no wage rises. (I was tempted to say 'and diet unparalelled' there for the literary minded among you but thought this might be taking it a bit too far!). Luckily for my employers the rough patch 'in other parts of the business doesn't seem to have stopped them from allowing themselves a few little extra luxuries like new £40,000 cars, new houses (2nd of course) and refurbished offices (complete with remote controll heating/air conditioning in each office I'm told). Still - one must maintain one's face to the world even in hard times.

Now the hard headed amongst you will say "But hang on - these guys run the risks. They start the businesses that give you work. They deserve to reap the rewards." Well yes, ok. I'd buy that apart from the fact that my bosses are third generation employers -  with exeptions they have never done a hard days work in thier lives. Trust me, all the meetings in the world do not stack up against one day of shifting 10 tons of stock by hand. Irrespective of all the talking at some point some clown has to do the actual work. One of thier wives was bleating to me about how over-worked her husband was, "He was still texting at 10 o'clock last night!" she cried. "Oh dear - how awful for him" was my response which may have sounded a bit wooden - at that time I was still shifting stock at the rate of 2 tons an hour from the store to the shop.

So Easter came and went. On 'Good Friday' as I served the continous stream of benefits scroungers and single teenage mothers (with thier scratch cards, phone top-ups, rolling tobacco and cheap vodka), enjoying the festivities with thier families, and paid homage to my bosses who also enjoying the day off, stuck thier heads around the door just to make sure the money was still rolling in,I had an epiphany. Beneath us is a sea of parasites who feed on the fruits of our labour via the welfare system that allows them to live life at the level of thier choice without the real need to work; above us is a sky of predators who also enjoy the fruits of our labour in the form of the profits that they cream of and distribute amongst themselves while always keeping to an absolute minimum that which they allow to 'trickle down' to those who's labour produces the wealth. And in the middle is me - and a million others like me - whose minimally rewarded labour it is that keeps the whole beastly thing going.