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It's not only that. Many railway jobs are stressful jobs where age will be a safety issue earlier and the wear on the worker is greater. You don't want 62-year-olds doing the 12-hour locomotive driver shifts at any time, or what about 37 years of standing up at 2am to get to the locomotive shop to get trains ready for the morning runs. (We discussed the class division in how early one commutes -- well railwaymen have it even worse than average workers, and commuter train depot workers the worst.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
This is a hugely important point, because it represents the opportunity to attack the neo-libs with their own rhetoric. In the the logic of the neo-libs, the opportunity cost lost through the imposition of regulation is said to represent a takings of private wealth by the state.
So when a company is forbidden to pursue a business opportunity, let's say that a company views laws banning certain chemical substances as forcing them to suspend production of something that they make. This is said to be theft, a takings.
Yet when working men and women forego wages in order to receive pension payments, and an employer later reneges on paying out those benefits there is not said to be a takings.
Lesson?
The rights of individuals matter less than the rights of impersonal wealth lacking the most basic requirement for human rights: Humanity. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
That's the amount of money these workers are losing... quite staggering. Living on 800 a month is very tough in France, impossible near Paris if one wants any comforts. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
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