Last week I did the second truck load. It was less than the last one and took us two hours to finish the task. However, three of the items weighed more than 160 Kg and did not even have a good grip to hold on to. Four of us struggled to carry these objects into the building. The first piece was almost slipping off when another worker doing another job in the same building rushed in to lend a hand. When we had put the load down, he went back to his work without even waiting for a thanks. Most likely he didn't even understand Engish or German or Italien which the four of us could speak. Manual workers often come from a variety of nationalities and many do not speak either English or German. But that, was just a normal act of solidarity that occurs in such spaces, without speaking.
There was another thing I learnt this time. My innumerable memories from back home remind me of laborers often walking back slowly after putting down one load. They did not seem to be in a hurry to pick the next one. Meanwhile the Supervisor / Contractor would try to get them to be quicker. That slowness was seen as a sign of laziness or delaying the work and a way to get more money. While the contractor's interest in ensuring a fast pace would mean less money to be paid to the laborer or more savings.
After the first experience, where we carried 8000 Kg of load in 4 hours, to the first floor of the building, my body was at the end of its limits. I needed a good rest afterwards and the muscles recovered slowly over the next 2 days. What I realized was that we did it quite a fast pace. I was often a bit breathless in between, as were the other three colleagues. We walked back at a brisk pace each time to get the next load almost immediately. We did take a short break foir a coffee in between, but the walk remained quite brisk. And that perhaps was making us all breathless. I thought about it over the next few days, before the second load came. I felt we need not push the body after delivering a load, but rather, walk back at a very easy pace, to give ourselves the time to recover.
This time, I tried that - walk slow. And it did help. Not only was I far less breathless during the work, it also took much less time for the body to recover later.
I think that all able bodied young people must experience manual labor to understand what goes in it. There's a lot to learn there. There is no doubt that the Caste and Class perspectives on manual labor are highly discriminatory and problematic. And of course they are based on totally false grounds that merely allows exploitation of such workers to continue in places where there are not enough laws to protect them and provide dignity to this work.
Parvez
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