The ďŹ lm, Two days, One night, stars Marion Cotillard as Belgian factory worker Sandra
Paul Donovan suggests the Church could look at its own track record of support for trade unions to ensure that human dignity is upheld in the workplace
Dignity or slavery – does work still work for the common good? The film, Two days, One night, starring Marion Cotillard as Belgian factory worker Sandra will have struck a chord with many workers. Sandra is told she will be made redundant unless she can persuade her fellow workers to give up their bonuses. She goes one to one seeking to persuade the different individuals of her cause. In the end, she succeeds in converting half the workforce to her cause. This is not enough, but the boss is impressed at her fortitude and says she can have a job when one of the other workers is released. She refuses, knowing that it will be one of those who voted to support her who will be let go. The lesson of the film is the need to show solidarity, organise collectively and work for the common good. The film is so timely at a moment of unprecedented insecurity in the workplace. The much-lauded economic recovery has, in the main, been prefaced on forcing more people into low paid, insecure work. This is most clearly evidenced with the movement of more than one million workers,
since 2010, from the more secure better paid employment of the public sector to the lower paid insecure work of the private sector. There are now 1.4 million people on zero hour contracts, with two in every five of the new jobs created over recent years being self employed.
Entrepreneurs
Some 4.5 million are classified as self employed. The official figures published by Parliament found that the average annual income from selfemployment is less than ÂŁ10,000 for women - in case anyone should think that self employment is the exclusive status of aspiring entrepreneurs, the number of whom have incidentally declined by 52,000 over the four year period (2010 to 2014). Then there has been the growth in part time workers, who now account for 8 million out of the 30 million workforce. They account for half of the jobs created between 2010 and 2012. And it is not a life style choice or a matter of work life balance, most of those on part time jobs wanted full JUSTICE MAGAZINE 31