I need a brief moment to make this about me. Overall I recognize and appreciate my luck, and recognize my privilege, while dismantling it, up to this point in my life. Without either I know I wouldn't have my home and family now. However…
The anxiety and stress in this profit driven world is literally psychosis inducing. I'm resilient and will get through but recently my mental health has been on the verge of collapse because of work. Not my current job, thankfully, but my previous employer is coming after me. I can't share any more details but suffice to say it's going to cost me a lot of money to keep this quiet. All I'm allowed to say is: I deny any negative claims by my previous employers and stand by my statement that my professional actions have always been guided by my interest in maintaining fair and ethical practices at all times with my clients and my interest in preserving my right to serve my community through my labor.
It feels like any and all ambition by the lower class is systemically rooted out and punished. For me it recently came in the form of a really bad contract coupled with a firm engaging in behavior I didn't agree with. I'm just a simple farm kid that got bought out by the city and got swept up by the system. I labored for years in factories while taking all the OT, training, and licensing I could get. I springboarded into the business and tech worlds. I'm a weird mishmash between an engineer and a business person. I've leveraged every advantage I've gotten and every step is an uphill battle against both people and systems with some way of siphoning off the gains of my hard work.
I'm just trying to earn enough to buy a couple acres where I can build a couple hundred square foot home. Maybe a thousand square feet. Have a barn and a field big enough to provide for my family and give to the community. I want to go on vacations backpacking into the woods, not luxury cruises and ski resorts. Yet at every turn there's someone taking away what I've earned or someone trying to convince me I REALLY need to buy their widget.
Keep your wits about you. Join a union; I wouldn't be in my current mess if I had been in one. Read your contracts carefully. Don't be afraid to negotiate and hold your ground as an employee. Report wage problems IMMEDIATELY. Walk away from bad job offers; make them more desperate than you are for the labor so they pay you and agree to your terms. Help build up your local community however you can. Never trust a corporation.