Oppression in the Workplace

The five faces of oppression are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. I believe that all five faces of oppression exist in present day America and this is regardless of specific example, but is foundationally based in that I do believe that Young’s claim that these five faces allow you to determine which groups are truly being oppressed. Due to the limited amount of paragraphs allowed, I will only discuss one of these faces of oppression. The face of oppression I choose to discuss is exploitation because reading the text by Young has opened my eyes to see how I am exploited each day in my work place without necessarily questioning it or ever paying much attention to it because I am there to work and get paid and not ask too many questions because I need the income. Exploitation comes about in present day America where the labor of one social group benefits the other and is ultimately associated with capitalistic agendas. One example I can think of an heavily relate to is the service industry. Servers in restaurants are paid an hourly rate of $2.13 solely for tax purposes so they can be taxed on their tip earnings based on card payment because most times corporations and owners are unable to accurately keep track of cash tips. In my case, there is still a percentage of my cash earnings that is taken away based on my net sales and these cash earnings go towards the pay of bussers. The money that comes from the total sales I make is handled by the higher ups. This is exploitation because say I have a total of $100 worth of total tips for the night, a percentage of my earnings for the night is taken out to pay the bussers their hourly wage instead of me being able to keep everything I earned. In this way, the business owner is not losing any money because my work ethic pays the hourly wage of the bussers, thus exploiting me and my other coworkers. Also, despite the hourly earnings of the bussers, whatever excess money there is left over after the servers tip the busser out each night gets pocketed by the owner. Servers are continuously exploited at my workplace in that if a table decides not to tip me, the owner does not miss out on any money because I have already sold the product and if people dine and dash, I am responsible to pay the owner whatever the amount is that the customers dined and dashed on. The corporation or owner will always get their money. The five faces of oppression are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. I believe that all five faces of oppression exist in present day America and this is regardless of specific example, but is foundationally based in that I do believe that Young’s claim that these five faces allow you to determine which groups are truly being oppressed. Due to the limited amount of paragraphs allowed, I will only discuss one of these faces of oppression. The face of oppression I choose to discuss is exploitation because reading the text by Young has opened my eyes to see how I am exploited each day in my work place without necessarily questioning it.