By Christopher Persampieri, Roofing Laborer, Abingdon, MA

Being a supervisor for five years at a Fortune 500 company made me a socialist. When I first entered management I was a Republican and honestly believed that if you worked hard and the company prospered, you would prosper as well.

Over the years of being in management, I slowly became disgusted with the capitalist mode of production. I watched bosses constantly lie to workers (and to young and naïve entry-level supervisors like myself) about better-paying job opportunities that were never there. Managers did this just to keep workers from quitting due to the poor working conditions. I watched bosses shave minutes off time cards daily just to make the almighty “”production numbers.”” We were intentionally understaffed, which led to unsafe working conditions and fights amongst workers who were already killing themselves to keep up. During one of the days we were understaffed, a new employee who didn’’t have enough time to be properly trained had his finger cut off by the equipment. And the bosses even had the nerve to call him to see if he’’d come in to work the next day since we wanted to maintain our “”Safe Work Days”” numbers!

And all this happened while the company was making record profits in the billions! All the bad things I watched and went through were done for stockholders and executives in Atlanta I never met.

I clearly wasn’’t “”management material”” due to my working class background and social conscience. Now, I’’m working hard to put roofs on houses and struggling for working class people’’s rights and conditions through my activism with Socialist Alternative.