Shaun Richman

December 22, 2006July 17, 2023

Rise of the Loompa Proletariat

In the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Willy Wonka employs in his factory Oompa Loompas, strange little orange men who seemingly work for free. The Oompa Loompas, who sing while they work, seem to be charged with much manual labor.

They mix the chocolate and other confections, carry out Wonka’s orders, manually power his personal yacht and otherwise do his bidding-all at the beck and call of his whistle. After seeing just one minute of the movie with the Oompa Loompas on the screen, one obsesses about this work arangement. Are these Oompa Loompas slaves, or indentured servants? Are they salaried employees? Is this some Stalinist work camp?

Wonka answers this question himself early on when several visitors on a tour of his factory raise these troubling issues. The Oompa Loompas, he explains, come from a far off place called “Lumpaland,” where, because of their diminutive size, they were in constant danger of being gobbled up by assorted “fierce creatures.” And so, in what he would have us believe was an altruistic gesture, he “freed” them from their native land and had them brought to his factory in the “greatest of secrecy,” where they could live in “peace and safety”…and become his new source of labor.

Were the pint-sized immigrants scabs? It is explained earlier in the movie that years ago Wonka had fired all of his employees, charging them with industrial espionage; trading secrets with his chief competitor, Slugworth, Inc. Wonka closed his doors and ceased production. Three years later, the factory began production again, but, mysteriously to the public, without hiring workers and without opening its doors. At this point, it seems clear that Wonka brought in the Oompa Loompas to solve his labor problems, and kept his doors closed to keep nosy government investigators out in order to keep his little sweat shop running.

The Oompa Loompas certainly seem to be property. In fact, one of the guests on the tour of the plant, bratty Veruca Salt, demands that her father buy her one. He complies and actually haggles with Wonka to purchase one of the little orange men. But Willy Wonka strangely refuses! Is this mere greed, a desire to keep all the hard working Oompa Loompas to himself? The answer comes shortly when Wonka takes his guests to his top secret laboratory. On the door is a large sign, clearly stating, “Top Secret: No Unauthorized Oompa Loompas Allowed Inside.” Behind the door toil dozens of Oompa Loompas. Clearly not your average slaves, they’re actually busy mixing and inventing new candies! These Oompa Loompas are skilled artisans, setting their own hours and work loads.

Evil slave-driver?
How is it that Wonka trusts the Oompa Loompas with such trade secrets as the formula of the “Everlasting Gobstopper,” but fired his human workers out of mistrust. Wonka openly fears that Slugworth will learn his secret formulas. Either international patent and copyright laws don’t exist here, or they don’t apply to these candies. (A third possibility that Wonka never thought to patent his creations seems too far-fetched.) In any event, the result is clear: in order to maintain the massive rent on his products, the kind of rent that makes new products and marketing schemes t.v. news and causes panics in candy stores when the supply “Scrum Diddlyumptious” bars has run out, Wonka must rely on secrecy. He shows that he will go to any length to
maintain secrecy. He has already displaced hundreds of factory workers.
He uses fear and intimidation on his guests on the tour, as well as the general public. And yet he trusts the Oompa Loompas with his trade secrets.

Abused worker?
This was doubtless part of his arrangement with the Oompa Loompas when
he brought them to work for him. Freedom from fierce creatures in exchange for labor. Labor in exchange for housing. And since the Oompa Loompas remain within the Wonka factory and on the Wonka property at all times, there was no way they could trade secrets with the enemy. Wonka, a true capitalist, had fully exploited the immigrant workers!

Or had he? There is a clear dichotomy between the unskilled Oompa Loompas who mix the candy, power Wonka’s yacht and otherwise toil away, and the skilled artisan Oompa Loompas who invent the candy, set their own hours and have the run of the place. These Oompa Loompas are clearly the intellectual superiors of the unskilled variety. Surely, they must appreciate their own situation. They hold in their minds and hands the very information that could ruin Wonka. If they were displeased with the pay or treatment they got from him, they could easily find work elsewhere. Slugworth would, in Wonka’s own words, “give his false teeth” to learn Wonka’s trade secrets, as well as double the pay and benefits of the Oompa Loompas who could be the key to a greater market share.

It would seem that these Oompa Loompas had come to appreciate their fortunate situation and made a deal with Wonka, a little “partnership between labor and capital if you will. And all they had to do was sell out their brother workers, the unskilled Oompa Loompas to achieve it. So, the skilled Oompa Loompas got the best pay, hours, and, one would assume, choice lodging, while the unskilled variety got the shaft.

And yet, they seem so happy. They actually sing while they work. They sing, in fact, about how great it is to work for Wonka and how everyone should be like the “Oompa Loompa doopity doo.” (Okay, they’re not the best songwriters in the world.) This is what gave the impression at first that Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory was a Stalinist work camp, that the workers believe their exploitation to be freedom. The Oompa Loompa’s songs could be characterized as agit-prop.

It isn’t Stalinist propaganda, but something very similar. The workers are singing about labor’s goals being the same as management’s. That’s how Wonka and the skilled Oompa Loompas got them to go along with the
agreement! You’re job security depends on the success of this company, they must have been told. Sacrifices had to be made for profits. After all, if the company made no profits, the Oompa Loompas would be out of a job, and thrown back to Lumpaland. Now that’s motivation!

There seems to be one thing missing from this whole scenario. I used the term “brother worker” intentionally. All the Oompa Loompas we see in the film are males. Discounting the possibility that Oompa Loompas are radically different from us anatomically, there must be female Oompa Loompas. Where are they? It may be safe to assume that this is the final part of the arrangement between Wonka and the Oompa Loompa overseers. It is, by this point, clear that they are salaried workers, paid, albeit unequally, in food, shelter, clothing and protection. These payments for their work is not only for them, but their families. Wonka only puts the adult males to work. The women and children do not have to work.

Now, let’s put on our econimist hats and put this little arrangement into perspective. From the little we see of the world outside the Factory, using Charlie (who doesn’t seem to have a last name) and his family as an example of the typical family, women and children had to work as well. Charlie has a paper route, and his mother took in laundry. These two incomes had to provide for six people: Charlie, his mother, and four bedridden grandparents. (All four in the same bed. Kinky.) There is no father evident in this family. He presumably had to leave town when Wonka closed his factory and the job market soured. But, assuming that the father was in the picture three years prior and worked at the Wonka factory, his earnings would not have to provide for seven people alone. That burden was shared with his wife and son. So, previously, Wonka was paying his human workers enough money necessary to produce and reproduce just themselves for another day of labor.
Given the population density of this area and its presumed saturation of the job market, the existence of a labor union is doubtful, and the wages doubtlessly depressed, so Wonka could easily pay his workers that little. Let’s use as the sum of the wages paid ten Wonka dollars per worker per day. This labor afforded Wonka a commanding share of the chocolate market, however, it was beginning to cost him his rent. So Wonka downsized his entire workforce.

Now, with the Oompa Loompas employed as labor, Wonka had to pay enough money to produce and reproduce each Oompa Loompa and his family.
Assuming a typical Oompa Loompa family of husband, wife and 2.3 children, and assuming that an Oompa Loompa, being half the size of a human worker needs only half the food, shelter and clothing, Wonka would be paying each Oompa Loompa 21 and a half Wonka dollars per day, or, its equivalent in food, shelter and clothing. This is also assuming that Wonka employed an equivalent number of Oompa Loompas as humans. For this increase of $11.50W per worker per day, Wonka gets serious increases in productivity.

For the human worker, Wonka got ten hours work for $10W pay. This is
assuming that Wonka is a fairly liberal employer in a rather Dickensian
atmosphere. Given that the Oompa Loompa worker lives where he works, and also given that the Oompa Loompa sees a personal stake in the success of the company, he obviously works harder and longer than the human worker. At this point, any speculation as to the amount of the increase in productivity would go way beyond merely bordering on absurdity, but sufficed to say, it would be substantial. And it would give Wonka a permanent edge over competitor Slugworth, whose human workers could never keep up.

The other edge it would give Wonka is the aforementioned rent. With workers that can not only be counted on to create new candies but to keep the formulas for said candies top secret, Wonka can retain his huge market share and status as a popular icon of confectionery capitalism, and leave Slugworth permanently in a distant second. The benefits to Wonka are obvious.

For the Oompa Loompas, they get the leave a country where they would have died. For the Oompa Loompas in charge, it means freedom, respect and the necessities of life for them and their families. The unskilled Oompa Loompas are duped into believing that this labor is gratitude and payment for their very lives and the lives of their families. With that artificial outlook, it’s easy to see why they would be so happy. Maybe Oompa Loompa ignorance is bliss.

[This article originally appeared in Vol. 6, issue #11 (April 1998) of Lumpen.]

December 22, 2006July 17, 2023

We Are Improving to Serve You Better

I’m in the process of switching the blarg from Blosxom software to WordPress, which might involve a radical overhaul of the ancient content on the dot org. To prepare, just in case, I’m posting some older writing on the blarg, so that it can be archived here, instead of as dusty old html.

First up is my oft-reproduced Marxist analysis of the film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The article began life as a term paper for my Labor Studies 101 course when I was a wee little snot (I got an A). It was shortly thereafter published in the awesome zine, Lumpen. David Raffin has also published it in Vision?Nary!

Please excuse our appearance during renovations. We are still open to the public!

December 10, 2006July 17, 2023

Health Care’s “Death Spiral”

In “Uninsured in America,” Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle attempt to find out “where the bodies are buried” in our health care system where over 45 million people have no insurance. The book is a patchwork of profiles of people who got sick at times when they lacked insurance and the often devastating effects this had on their lives. The authors, who describe this phenomenon as the “death spiral,” don’t find so many bodies buried (although they do find many in jails or on the street) but they do find health problems that are allowed to become critical before state assistance will kick in and doctors actually pay attention, and emergency rooms used as primary care resulting in crippling debts.

Without getting bogged down in dry facts and figures, the authors provide a pretty good understanding of how the number of uninsured Americans hides how many Americans are functionally uninsured, covered by plans that have expensive premiums, deductibles and co-pays, that refuse to pay for the very “pre-existing conditions” that people most need health care for and slipping in and out of the patchwork system of Medicaid, charity, clinics and emergency rooms.

The book reminds me of an experience working for the health care workers union, doing community organizing among poor souls on Long Island whose medical debts were referred to collection agencies. Although the non-profit hospital where they went to the emergency room was required by law to provide a certain amount of charity care, these patients were never informed of the option to apply for the charity. Instead they were treated, charged tens of thousands of dollars that they could not possibly afford and had their lives turned into nightmares of bill collectors, bankruptcy and foreclosure. One family actually had good health insurance won through a union contract, but a bureaucratic error at the hospital resulted in the patient – not the insurance company – being billed. The insurance company and the hospital fought, refusing to admit error, and the hospital simply referred the matter to a collection agency. The rest of the people had no insurance. A surprising number of them had children with asthma who had bad attacks that required a visit to the emergency room. Just like that, the family became poor.

This patchwork system results in poor health care for all of us, I think. I hate going to the doctor with any kind of health complaint. I never get any kind of satisfying diagnosis. Usually, the doctor just guesses at a diagnosis and prescribes some kind of medication, without running any tests, and there’s no follow-up. I think the paperwork and bureaucracy is too much of a hassle. Fortunately for me, if my doctors miss something big, the care will be paid for by insurance so I won’t have to wait until I get so poor and so near-death that the state will finally pick up the bill, like the people profiled in “Uninsured in America.” Of course, why would I really want to push for tests that would confirm a medical condition, if that will only be used against me in seeking insurance in the future?

December 3, 2006July 17, 2023

Why No National Health Care?

The United States has the best health care that money can buy, provided one has the money to buy it. Jill Quadagno’s “One Nation Uninsured” answers the question “Why the U.S. has no national health insurance.” It’s a brisk, engaging read that neatly summarizes how 90 years of failed reform efforts have entrenched the powerful interests that profit from the system.

The most prominent early opponents of a national health service were the doctors themselves. Their lobby, the American Medical Association, fought against “socialized medicine” out of fear that it would lead doctors to lose their sovereignty to bureaucrats basing decisions on budgetary needs rather than medical needs. Allied with southern politicians who feared that a federal health system would force racial integration of hospitals, these forces successfully kept national health care out of Roosevelt’s original Social Security legislation. They favored market solutions like Blue Cross and commercial insurance. A new business was created, resulting in a more powerful lobby.

The trade union leaders of the time, many of whom were social democratic in their outlook, reluctantly shifted their efforts at creating a social safety net to the bargaining table, winning employer-sponsored health care plans. Some unions – notably Sidney Hillman’s Amalgamated Clothing Workers – created their own networks of health care clinics, socialized medicine in miniature. Wartime government policies that encouraged fringe benefits over wage increases greatly expanded the private welfare state so that by the 1950’s, most large employers (including non-union firms that aimed to remain non-union) provided health care benefits.

Trade unions continued to push for a government solution to health care, but by the 1960’s they narrowed their focus to the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent,” health insurance for the nation’s elderly. The Medicare program that the coalition of labor and seniors won had several unintended consequences. One was that with senior citizens covered through the program, and most working families fully covered by an employer’s plan, few voters clamored for a universal national health care system for the next few decades. Another consequence, happily, was the racial integration of most hospitals, under threat of being denied Medicare funding.

A regrettable consequence of Medicare was rampant inflation of cost of health care. Doctors and hospitals provided comprehensive care for senior citizens, ordering tests, procedures and drugs that they might not have before there was guaranteed funding, which was a boon not only to the health of senior citizens but to the corporate bottom line of the for-profit hospitals and insurance companies that joined the market for health care services. The cost of Medicare skyrocketed, until government efforts to control costs caused insurance companies to simply pass on the costs to employers in the form of higher premiums for their employees. Companies responded in turn by cutting benefits, introducing co-pays and turning to health maintenance organizations to control costs by denying care. The doctors’ worst fear, losing sovereignty over medical decisions, was realized through the insurance companies that they were responsible for creating.

This brings us to our current circle of hell, where an employer’s threat to cut benefits leaves many unions close to helpless in contract negotiations, where people with the dreaded “pre-existing condition” are denied meaningful coverage and where the existence (or non-existence) of national health care or employer-sponsored insurance goes a long way towards determining a company’s competitiveness in the global economy.

This January, I’ll be taking an elective class with Dean Robinson that will be exploring the United States’ lack of a national health service and its impact on our health, wealth and democracy. Quadagno’s “One Nation Uninsured” is the first book assigned. Others are Kawachi and Kennedy’s “Health of Nations: Why Inequality Is harmful to Your Health” and Sered and Fernandopulle’s “Uninsured in America.” For my paper, I will be taking a look at some trade union health clinics, particularly the Amalgamated’s (now UNITE HERE) and the NY Hotel Trades Council’s, which was inspired by Hillman’s example. These socialized medicine-in-miniature not only provide comprehensive health services, but they keep costs so low that employers actually offer up concessions in order to take part.

The lesson here, I think, is that while we might succeed in creating a single-payer health care system like Canada’s (particularly as health care becomes more of a crisis), inflation and price-gouging will be crippling until we take the profit out of the system and nationalize health care services to serve the interests of the people, not the corporations.