300 jobs open in SST debt collection
Is the economy on the rise? I wondered this when news of three hundred jobs to open up at SST in St Joseph was announced. Surely, this means we can all give a sigh of relief hearing news of large job growth. But what does SST do? Is debt their means of production? Is debt a job creator?
Naturally, it makes sense that if more people have debt in collections, more people are needed to collect this debt. This does not necessarily mean all job growth is good. Certainly, the SST location was chosen based on proven successes and we should feel gratitude for the opportunity to continue our successes; and certainly, any job is better than no job when you have mouths to feed and debts to pay, but how destructive should we be with a means to an end? That’s assuming there is an end.
A hiring boom in debt collection is only possible if a huge pool of people can’t pay their debts, which means SST employees must root for a continuous stream of people unable to pay those debts in hopes of themselves remaining gainfully employed—of which they no doubt need to pay down their own mounting debts.
SST is owned by NCO Group which is turn in owned by One Equity Partners, the private investment arm of JP Morgan Chase; the largest of the too-big-to-fail megabanks, and a recipient of 25 billion dollars in bailout funds. This private investment arm of JP Morgan Chase buys and sells credit default swaps—a confusing web of financial derivatives they created in the early 1990s—and they too root for people, governments and corporations to default on their debts to stir personal and corporate profits.
Asking for payment on a debt is self-explanatory, but with derivatives, hoping for failure is now more profitable. When the credit default swaps JP Morgan Chase buy and insure go into default by means of payment failure, restructuring, or bankruptcy then the seller of the debt repays the face value of the insurance with no concern whether the debt is paid.
Debt is not a good or a service, it is an idea. Buying and selling insured, immaterial ideas is not sustainable, as proven by the last crash and will be proven again by the next crash.
In all of 2011, the manufacturing sector of St Joseph only saw tiny growth spurts spread over multiple industries, so who could argue 300 jobs in an office-based communications industry is a bad thing?
Now I’m not asking SST employees to put themselves in financial jeopardy by walking off the job or to boycott applying. I’m asking for applicants and employees to be aware of their vulture bosses maintaining a new unspoken class relation, not between rich and poor, but between those with delinquent debt and those in default. This is America’s phantom limb. The tingling pain is felt but not seen, invisible but not ignored. Class war is all around us and we don’t even notice because they have paid half the working class to collect the debts of the other half.
The very definition of a too-big-to-fail bank comes from allowing them to covertly enmesh in every aspect of life and exercising their power through employment and the control of markets. Megabanks have pitted us against our neighbors while simultaneously making us dependent on them and indentured to them.
Considering the fact that 1 in 7 Americans is hounded by debt collection agents, it takes no small stretch of the imagination to think SST debt collectors don’t also have debts in collection—possibly to JP Morgan Chase. Thus creating indentured servants of debt, and while these banks buy and sell highly profitable default derivatives, it is impossible to metabolize debt on a servant’s wage.
If being a class traitor is the most burgeoning job opportunity for the foreseeable future, then perhaps collective bargaining of the debt collection and communication workers of America is the only—and maybe the last—defense of a life worth living.
