Return to Work July ’09: Day One

It had a completely surreal quality to be back working on a construction site. After 5-months of unemployment, I was back on at work, as if nothing had happened. Tool bags, drill, up on a scaffold.
It also felt strange to be among the workers that had missed the jobs massacre: the few, the not-so proud. Many whom I worked with today were foremen bumped down to replace carpenters and laborers, themselves bumped onto the out of work lists. Others had worked the last six months on two and three-day weeks. No-one at work today felt the economic storm was over, but for me it felt weird to be out of the heart of the storm: and back working.
Naturally, I was reminded of how much I hate the drudgery of work. I didn’t really need a reminder. My back, my wrists, my neck were all complaining having been stretched in ways they haven’t been for five months.
Word's got round among friends that I got my old job back. I’ve been congratulated so many times, that I’m now trying to keep it a secret. It’s obviously a good thing, economically. My family may not lose our health benefits after all and the money will be very welcome. But I don’t expect things to last long. The two jobs I am working at are both schools. By September they’ll be occupied by students and the construction will be over.
Then there’s the collateral damage of returning to work. It’s horrible not being able to get up with the kids and being able to read to them over their breakfasts. I will instead be the guy who disappears before they get up and reappears late in the afternoon, tired and slightly brain-dead.
It was, however, good to feel a little productive again. Also to hang out at break-time and bullshit with other construction workers. One guy today, started off describing a ceiling he’d built in a lobby in some fancy building downtown twenty-five years ago. That led him into a long story of how being of Korean descent he had had to fight racism on the job: how he’d done his bit to put racism in America onto the backburner. It was quite inspiring.
I was unemployed for 22 weeks. I expect to be employed for most of the summer. Then? Who knows what? June’s figures for unemployment showed that in this so-called period of recovery another half-million net jobs were lost. (Net jobs loss is when you add all new jobs created and take off all jobs lost.) Solidarity out to the 15 million workers still unemployed and the near 25 million jobless or part-time seeking full-time work. However f***** -up and alienating work is under capitalism, its what pays the bills.