by VÍCTOR CORCOBA HERRERO
I have always had a weakness for getting close to the worker José, a humble man from Nazareth, as it could not be otherwise to become a saint, who gave dignity to the works carried out by people. He was justly named guardian of the workers; that is, of those who have calluses on their hands, scars all over their body and a soul hardened from swallowing so many toads. The laborers, day laborers, farmhands and other rabble that the bourgeois call them could not have a better defender. The worker has been elevated, with José, to the highest of the ascending verse. This is doing justice. The worker needs more respect than bread, said Karl Marx. Therefore, I believe that these inner ascents, of putting into truth, are always healthy. It is a good way to unite the worker world with the working world.
Putting the nobility of human work in its place ennobles and banishes the pomposity of current production processes. I detest that production machinery that has no heart. Likewise, the flood of precarious jobs. The same people, the marginalized, always swallow them. Here, in this mess of precariousness, I do ask San José to give us a hand. Precariousness is not a natural reality, it is a social construction of which we are pioneers in these walls of my homeland. What a painful sadness that after so many advances, the liberating working-class culture does not reign or govern. Why this inability to amend the page of the alarming deterioration of working conditions? When the production system is organized with its back to the human being, to the family, other fruits are produced; of course, no dignity is increased.
It is true. Society, however, needs the work of the workers to grow and conquer futures. The sleeping unions, well nourished with the budgets of the workers, ask for stable employment in equality. We would like it to be so. The first thing is to believe what is said. Do they believe it? Or is it more of the same? Having a job with rights is the minimum that can be demanded, a matter that should be the eagerness and dedication of every self-respecting unionist. I think that fight goes with the job. Furthermore, I believe that we are old enough to deserve it as democrats of a social State. When the action only stays in words, the reaction is to watch them pass and stay safe. There is talk of overcoming precariousness for a decent job and, despite this, workplace accidents are no longer news because we have become accustomed to the event, due to its repetitiveness. Listen, people die, not things. It is really difficult to understand, as the courtyard of abuses is, that there is no social force that revives the labor movement, a skillful force that awakens it from false enchantment. Something is failing or someone wants this to fail, the force of building a working-class community with rights, since they have all the obligations in their service records.
We must, without a doubt, promote desires different from mere consumption, values that make us aware of other lifestyles. Nothing is impossible. There we have San José, on his way to glory. From a discredited city like Nazareth comes a story that transcends us. The work carried out by José in his small carpenter's workshop, while Jesus, at his side, "grew in wisdom, in stature and in grace before God and men", reaffirms that work is a means of participating in God's creative task, for those who believe. And for those who do not believe, in the humanizing and humanist task. Consequently, we must vindicate the dignity of being and feeling like a worker. How many curse the word? Really, workers count very little in this world of honors and positions, they can barely decide on the how and why of their work. This is the pure reality. With these parameters it is unlikely to live it as something of our own and as something that should fulfill us.
The working world, to get out of those tremendous tunnels of exploitation and dependence, needs to open exits, windows to a culture that allows other more human breaths and other freer aspirations. Seeking the interest of each one is very much of capital and little of thinking beings. Consuming a lot to live as well as possible is not a guarantee of happiness either. Not worrying about how society is organized, that's what politicians are for, is like signing a blank check to donkeys and putting them to find their way on their own. Thinking that work is nothing more than a means of earning money is a miserable attitude that leads to nothing. To live humanly and grow, we need more than ever to return to that small town located in the last foothills of the mountains of Galilee, where that excellent family resided, when, after the danger had passed, they had been able to return from their exile in Egypt. And there is where José, living and surviving all the hardships, sometimes in a carpenter's workshop and others in a hut on the side of the mountain, develops his role as head of the family, with the greatest of dignities. Like every worker, he supports his own with the work of his hands: all his fortune is rooted in his arm, and the reputation he enjoys is made up of his exemplary probity and the prestige achieved in the exercise of his trade.
In this kingdom of crooks, this is the great lesson of the good worker José, the just man, that of empathizing with his fellow citizens. What a different situation from the one we live today, where everyone seems to be absent from everything, which translates into apathy and loss of values typical of working-class culture: solidarity, justice, equality; and what is worse, it is generating a deep despair. One more year, the crowd that does not usually work as a worker will take to the streets on May Day to show their best smile and, thus, at least distract from the fact that we are the Europeans who work the most precariously. For that reason, I prefer to meet with the workers who come to relive the spectacle of holiness of the worker José, special protector before God, and shield for protection and defense in the hardships and risks of work. Long live San José on May Day!
