On the job

the long version

It is Christmas Eve, 1970. In the shipping room of a Montreal dress factory, the workers get drunk and decide to go on strike. "So many of the guys I knew on the street are gone dead or crazy, man. There's no escape. This whole country is just one big factory, one big jail, Billy ... Either you're a good nigger or ya die. Know what I mean? ... Black, yellow, white. We're all niggers down on Rockefeller's Plantation, man." "Punks, Billy. All we get now is punks ... I used to have this shipping room running like a new machine, remember, Billy? ... No trouble, no fuss, 'cause everybody did their job and knew their place, but now ... In the last five years, the kids been getting more and more like that Gary Boyce. Shit disturbers. They all got that look in their eye. Know what I mean? Like they don't give a damn." This play is the author's post-mortem on the 60's and a look at the Canadian class structure.