S4E14: Labor Movement - The Introduction

Margaux: She's frozen. Harjit, why are you offline?

Harjit: Oh, sorry, there's the mark. One minute. One minute. Let's go back one minute. Okay, what about this? Is that okay, Chloe? Do you like that? Or should I reduce the speed?

Chloe: Okay, perfect.

Margaux: So just curious question for . . . Oh, let me . . . you know, let me introduce the topic. Hey everyone, welcome to "Bundle of Hers." It's Margaux here. And I'm actually sitting in a room with Harjit and Leen, which is so exciting. Whoo. Whoo. We're here in the studio, "Bundle of Hers," . . . not a studio, makeshift studio. So question for you both. Do you know where your clothes that you're wearing right now were made? And who made them?

Harjit: I actually do not know the answer to that question.

Leen: I always try to ignore that topic.

Margaux: Why, Leen, why do you try to ignore it?

Leen: I know it's going to end up going back to some poor child labor issue that I have no control over. And then I just feel depressed about wearing things.

Margaux: Yes, thank you for the introduction. So the topic today, Leen, which is going beyond doing no harm to our patients, but like doing no harm for everyone in our global community. And yes, you're right, Leen, a lot of times the supply chain for our clothes and quite honestly all of the products that we use in our everyday lives is not transparent. And we don't often see, and we're shielded from the people who are actually making those products for us.

And we see this nicely packaged, beautifully marketed product, and we consume it without ever having to think or face the reality of the people and the humanity that went into making that product. So that's something I want to talk about today. And I think it has a lot of different technicalities and aspects that might not all fit into one podcast.

You know, per our season standards this year, we are doing a three-part episode, so make sure you have tuned into all three. But for this episode topic, we want to talk about labor movements, specifically the garment workers' labor movement, and the farm workers' labor movement. So stay tuned. We hope you'll enjoy this conversation, and maybe be triggered to think about these things more, Leen.

Harjit: I think it's super vulnerable, what Leen said because I think a lot of the times we . . . I'm tired, how many things can I think of, right? Like, a lot of the times we think that way. But honestly, sometimes we do need to know that there's, like, also other people that are tired. We're all just tired people trying to make things together. And there's so many things to think about. But I think that I didn't realize how interconnected all of these movements are to even our practice as physicians. And that's something I think that will become evident as we go through these three episodes on understanding what labor is and what it provides for us.

Margaux: Yeah, I agree with that, Harjit. And I think the pandemic and quarantines gave us a lot of time, and social media gave us access to start questioning the supply chains and allowing these laborers and people behind our products to have power to speak and use their voices to sort of bypass the oppression in the system that has kept them -- talk about being tired -- that has kept them quiet, right, and kept that aspect of their lives hidden from us.

And so for me, social media has been a huge way to learn about these laborers and these people . . . Basically, the humanitarian side of the products that I use, whether that's clothing or food, and one post on Instagram, so it's @flower in Spanish, showed this video of farm workers in California who were literally running as fast as they could with buckets of strawberries because they're paid a minuscule amount per crate of strawberries that they pick.

Harjit: Yeah, like it's based on how much they're getting to the people in charge. Whoever can pick the most strawberries is making the most money, rather than just being paid for being there a certain amount of time. Is that correct, Margaux?

Margaux: Yeah, exactly. And you know, when I went to the grocery store the next time, and I saw the packet of strawberries, think about it in a whole different way of, like, how is the person who picked these strawberries okay? Do they have access to water and health care? And the other thing that this Instagram also highlighted for me was that these farm workers also don't have proper PPE for being around pesticides so directly. And you know, when I think back to medical school, and we learned about all those phospho organic acids, is that right?

Harjit: Yeah, I think that's correct, Margaux.

Margaux: And all the badness that comes from those, these people are exposed to that every day.

Harjit: And that's like a direct example of how that supply chain is directly impacted with health. And that's how we get involved. So us thinking that we're not involved in even the smallest things, it's actually like, yeah, that's what we're involved in, right? And I'm thinking that a lot of us go into this field thinking we're going to like "help people." But I think it takes a lot to examine . . . Like, we've talked about everything. Every topic is so complex.

Actually, Margaux, when you were talking about that, that just reminded me of something. I was watching this documentary. And it was, basically, about the fishing markets and corporations. And it was about this guy who was, like, you know, I grew up around the sea really passionate about, you know, sea life. And in recent time, there's been a lot of plastic in the oceans, right? And you think that people are, like, putting these plastics in the ocean, right? Like, they're going to the beach, and they're just, like, throwing their plastic, which is a part of it is true.

But that whole documentary ended up uncovering that majority of the plastic that was in the sea is actually from fishing nets. And fishing nets is for actually people who go fishing to eat fish. It's also interesting as how things are marketed, and that's where I think supply chains do, like, a job too. Like, they keep being silent in a way because, basically, fishing is causing plastic in the sea. But we're thinking it's people just throwing stuff in the sea, right? But it was just a really cool documentary because it made me shift the way that I was thinking about something.

Margaux: No, that's exactly the point that I wanted to make, Harjit, is that a lot of these supply chains and a lot of our capitalistic models that we function in today are based on linear economies, which means you're not thinking about what happens to the waste, or how the whole cycle of what you're doing will come back to literally bite you in the ass, right? So, like, these people, they're going to fish. They leave the fishing nets not realizing, like, it's going to kill the fish that they want to collect, you know, or catch in the next of couple years.

Then the consumer buys the fish that's wrapped in plastic, and they throw that plastic back in the ocean. And like, it's so wasteful and harmful. But yeah, we're protected from that cycle, and never allowed . . . Not allowed but like . . .

Harjit: It's like something that we don't have to consciously think about because we're just out there going buying the product because it's there. It's ready. Right. And like, Margaux, also another interesting point in the story about these fishing markets that I thought was really interesting is there was this whole, like, area where, like, dolphins were being killed, right? And the dolphins actually weren't being killed because they were being used for meat, they were literally being killed and all of their stuff wasted because they were, like, the predators, or top of the food chain, so that there'd be more fish for fishers to use.

Like, you're literally killing dolphins. You're not even getting anything out of it, but just so you can make more money off of these fishes that eventually will be sold. But we don't think about all these things, right, because we don't have to. And I think the common argument is that, you know, I don't want to think about it. This is so much to think about. If I think about this, then everything is so, like, you know, depressing. And this comes back to the point that Leen said, and also Leen is not the only one who shares that sentiment. I share that sentiment myself. I'm like, "Oh, my God, now I have to think about this, and this. I'm so tired."

Leen: I think it extends further even into all fields in the sense. I mean, capitalism is a big, overarching theme, right? And it reaches from all the way from whether you're picking strawberries, to fish, to even being as residents, if you think about it. I mean, there's a reason that unions are being pushed forward. And if you think about, like, what is the whole purpose of working in a capitalistic system is that you work, work, work, and then you're rewarded at the end with maybe a retirement, right?

And so, at the end of the day, though, everything you do, whether it's in medicine, every lab you order, every test, you order, every patient you see, and how you write your note always ends up in some type of business model, which ends up to feed into this capitalistic thing. But these are things we don't necessarily think about because at the base level, we enter thinking, no, we're here to help patients. And we are. I think we have good intentions.

But it's hard to fight a system that's so embedded in capitalism that at the end of the day is not meant to be for the benefit of the patient. And so it just extends into a rapid cycle. And I think we can put all these overarching themes into the big umbrella of capitalism, and how . . . You know, I've talked to various people through in medicine and out of medicine. They say, you know, it's a very strong belief. They say, well, how does the world work without it? You know, can you have a world that works without capitalism?

And I think that kind of goes back to how you can solve a lot of these issues, right? It's, like, how do you give people appropriate, and you know, I guess you can say healthy jobs per se, right? How can you give people healthy jobs that they're able to succeed in and thrive in and live off of, without utilizing them for buy low, sell high, right? And it's a huge struggle. That's why every time I going to buy a product, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so embedded in this monster. I don't know what to do.

Harjit: And, Leen, I think that's like, really good insight to the point that that's how important . . . you can't even ask the first question, without understanding that it's literally, like you said, embedded into everything.

Margaux: And I think that's kind of the point, right, what both of you said is we're (a) overworked and too tired. (b) it makes us feel really anxious to think about these supply chains and the way it's working. And the fact that it comes so easily, and we don't have to think about it. And we can just ignore it, makes the system work.

And if I think everybody was aware of the whole process, say, again, to the fishing example that you brought up, Harjit, people would be more outraged. But because it's so easy to ignore, because we have so many layers of stress in our own lives, and because it works, and we don't have to think about it, then we don't. And then the system can continue. But the reality is, it will only work for so long because eventually, all the fish are going to die, whether it's from the fishing nets, or us killing them, or polluting the earth. Like, whether we kill the dolphins or not, like, it won't work unless you're looking into the total ecosystem and the, like, circularness of life that we have, like, all learned about in medicine, too, right?

Leen: But at the end of the day, I mean, even if let's say the whole cycle ends, and it's like you're out of product to sell, the people at the top will still be okay for some time after everybody else, right? And I think that's the whole slave system of capitalism. It's, you work for us. You gain for us. And in order for you to live, you have to do this for us. Regardless, let's say the fish run out, climate started getting worse and worse. And now, you know, at the end of the day, who's going to be okay for longer?

It's not going to be us. It's not going to be people who even make less than us, right? We're definitely the first people to go. And I think that sounds very dystopian, but at the same time, it's like, well, if you sit down and you think about it, it's a raging machine, and it's terrifying. And it's embedded in everything we do. And there's so many barriers. Like you know, they always say, I don't know, growing up, I always heard, like, one person can change the world. But now that I'm older, and I'm thinking, it's not true, you need a group of people to change the world. And then from there, you need an effect that will be able to be passed on to other people, right? It has to be a lasting legacy. And that's just something really hard to do with the barriers in place.

Harjit: Yeah. And I think, Leen, you bring up a really important point of collective consciousness, and making it so we're all at that awareness and consciousness. But how do we get there? Right. And I think that's something we'll be exploring in our next episode. And I'm really excited for the next part.

Margaux: Yeah. So with that, I think that we can look towards other things away from a capitalistic model, but it is so embedded in us and we become so defensive and protective of the system by design that it will be hard to change that model. But exactly like you said, Leen, not one person can make the change. We have to do it as a collective. And so for our next episode, we will be talking about two examples of movements where collective voices have come to make changes in the system. Thank you for listening to "Bundle of Hers." Make sure you join our conversation @Bundleofhers on Instagram or on "Bundle of Hers" podcast on Facebook.

Thanks for tuning in. Here's a sneak peek of part two, and we hope you listen next time. Until then, bye-bye.

Margaux: These people died and they're the ones making our clothes. I think it was the first time we were really exposed to that.

Leen: Their whole livelihood depends on this job that, one, is cheap labor. But, two, you know, for an undocumented person who's just trying to make it in the United States, like, this is their livelihood.

Harjit: It's literally chipping away at your core, and like you don't even have it in you to be, like, I want to fight for something.