Gen Z’s war on modern-day work
April 24, 2022 1:33 PM Subscribe
"American workers across various ages, industries, and income brackets have experienced heightened levels of fatigue, burnout, and general dissatisfaction toward their jobs since the pandemic’s start. The difference is, more young people are airing these indignations and jaded attitudes on the internet, often to viral acclaim." (previously)
Related:
/r/antiwork
/r/WorkReform
Why "I Don't Dream of Labor" Doesn't Work by F.D Signifier
Related:
/r/antiwork
/r/WorkReform
Why "I Don't Dream of Labor" Doesn't Work by F.D Signifier
I was reading a NYT piece earlier on how the kids are not ok, and the parents of the teenager featured had installed a homework monitoring app on their phone so they could always be apprised of their child’s progress. I’m assuming this was to appease the parents anxiety about their getting into a good college and therefore getting a good job. It was causing extreme anxiety. No wonder teens and 20s are 100% over the rat race before it starts, and good luck to them. Hopefully their slightly younger peers will follow suit by refusing to sit for any more standardized tests.
posted by acantha at 1:52 PM on April 24, 2022 [29 favorites]
posted by acantha at 1:52 PM on April 24, 2022 [29 favorites]
Where are you now Gen X, when we need you the most?
We weren’t even supposed to be here today.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [256 favorites]
We weren’t even supposed to be here today.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [256 favorites]
Every generation are feckless bums when they're in their 20s, unpropertied and engaging in social activities that their elders regard as incomprehensible if not distasteful. The survivors become the models of stolid, conservative responsibility in a few decades' time, having built up their investment portfolios.
posted by acb at 2:09 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
posted by acb at 2:09 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
We did what now?
posted by fedward at 2:22 PM on April 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by fedward at 2:22 PM on April 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
You know how one of the concerns about social media is that, on Instagram, it can look like absolutely everyone else is having an epically good time all-the-time, and is always looking sexy on a foreign beach drinking expensive champagne? And that this can create a warped and harmful sense of reality when people feel they're the only ones not having a blast?
I worry about the phenomenon this thread is about, as being maybe equally harmful, from the other direction. Lots of young people really are actually doing just fine. Not everyone, of course, but many. Many have jobs they mostly like (with occasional frustrations, of course), where they're treated and paid fairly. Plenty can, and do, afford a pleasant and comfortable lifestyle, without relying on parental support or a trust fund. You'll never get upvoted on Reddit for saying that, though. This warps reality, too, in the opposite, but perhaps equally dangerous, direction. If people are bombarded every day with the idea that people in their generation have absolutely no chance at happiness, that they are certain to experience a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration, of course a lot of them will feel like absolute shit all the time.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:37 PM on April 24, 2022 [69 favorites]
I worry about the phenomenon this thread is about, as being maybe equally harmful, from the other direction. Lots of young people really are actually doing just fine. Not everyone, of course, but many. Many have jobs they mostly like (with occasional frustrations, of course), where they're treated and paid fairly. Plenty can, and do, afford a pleasant and comfortable lifestyle, without relying on parental support or a trust fund. You'll never get upvoted on Reddit for saying that, though. This warps reality, too, in the opposite, but perhaps equally dangerous, direction. If people are bombarded every day with the idea that people in their generation have absolutely no chance at happiness, that they are certain to experience a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration, of course a lot of them will feel like absolute shit all the time.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:37 PM on April 24, 2022 [69 favorites]
Fucking A, it seems like the media has latched onto the term "zoomers" now, haven't they? I try to avoid these bullshit generational articles and despite that, these odious labels slip through the filter.
posted by jeremias at 2:46 PM on April 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by jeremias at 2:46 PM on April 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers.
posted by migurski at 2:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [25 favorites]
posted by migurski at 2:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [25 favorites]
Where are you now Gen X, when we need you the most?
Don't drag us into this! We hollered for a while until we becamemodels of stolid, conservative responsibility in a few decades' time, having built up their investment portfolios disheartened by flaccid retirement plans that were gutted by crashing markets three times now. Maybe four times? Whatever.
But without any cynicism at all, I love the activism GenZ is trying to make happen. They're a great bunch and they're going to be okay.
posted by kimberussell at 2:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [72 favorites]
Don't drag us into this! We hollered for a while until we became
But without any cynicism at all, I love the activism GenZ is trying to make happen. They're a great bunch and they're going to be okay.
posted by kimberussell at 2:58 PM on April 24, 2022 [72 favorites]
What's the matter with kids today?
The nostalgia cycle is fast...seems like just yesterday we were seeing the same breathless pieces about millennials. At least these are somewhat sympathetic. I would like to think that today's young people will push us grownups (hah) to reshape what "work" looks like, but then I look at what happened to the baby boomers, and ... nah.
The thing about revolutions is that you always end up back where you started.
posted by basalganglia at 3:05 PM on April 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
The nostalgia cycle is fast...seems like just yesterday we were seeing the same breathless pieces about millennials. At least these are somewhat sympathetic. I would like to think that today's young people will push us grownups (hah) to reshape what "work" looks like, but then I look at what happened to the baby boomers, and ... nah.
The thing about revolutions is that you always end up back where you started.
posted by basalganglia at 3:05 PM on April 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
From this Gen-Xer, I’m absolutely going to be dragged into this. Worker solidarity can and must be inter-generational. Shit ain’t gonna fix itself, and me waiting on the sidelines for others to do the work is a mug’s game.
posted by sgranade at 3:05 PM on April 24, 2022 [55 favorites]
posted by sgranade at 3:05 PM on April 24, 2022 [55 favorites]
Where is Gen X? Here is where I am.
Seriously, I'm just quietly supporting, helping, encouraging my younger brethren and sistren. I got too tired out pushing against the impermeable layer of Boomers to achieve much progress myself but it could all be different this time around.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:13 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
Seriously, I'm just quietly supporting, helping, encouraging my younger brethren and sistren. I got too tired out pushing against the impermeable layer of Boomers to achieve much progress myself but it could all be different this time around.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:13 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
Generations are a social construct. If "the kids" are starting unions, and not taking any shit, I'm right there with them. And No, no one wants to work. Ever. Let go of some of that cash you've been grabbing with both fists and maybe you'll find people willing to work.
posted by evilDoug at 3:14 PM on April 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 3:14 PM on April 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
I hope the kids win in every way. But I wonder how many will be the first time there's a monster recession that eliminates jobs and employers identify and refuse to hire those who quit in such spectacular fashion. I hope they find or invent new ways of work I remember all the Boomers who went off to work and live on communes but rejoined the mainstream after a few years. Good luck, we are so, so overdue for real change.
posted by etaoin at 3:17 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by etaoin at 3:17 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
to reshape what "work" looks like,
Yeah then they're offered, with no experience, $120k in TikTok options, and $160k starting salary. Suddenly they're like, well they're giving us this much we could come in a few days a week. Then they realize ten years later those stock options are pretty much their entire net worth at $1.9 million which can kind of buy a pretty good apartment in NYC, obviously not Prospect Park that's too young but somewhere in the Upper West Side next to the school they like but that's another $50k a year and their salary is only $240k because they got so much in stock options and they're going in on work on Saturday not because they have to but because a project needs to get out and if that project gets out it'll be on CNBC and then the stock will rise up the 10%, so it is totally a choice, and they need to get that place in Cape Cod which they don't really want to go to but their friends from college are going and why aren't the young Generation As in here coming in on Saturday working 12 hours don't they know that if they work hard they can have all this?
posted by geoff. at 3:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [31 favorites]
Yeah then they're offered, with no experience, $120k in TikTok options, and $160k starting salary. Suddenly they're like, well they're giving us this much we could come in a few days a week. Then they realize ten years later those stock options are pretty much their entire net worth at $1.9 million which can kind of buy a pretty good apartment in NYC, obviously not Prospect Park that's too young but somewhere in the Upper West Side next to the school they like but that's another $50k a year and their salary is only $240k because they got so much in stock options and they're going in on work on Saturday not because they have to but because a project needs to get out and if that project gets out it'll be on CNBC and then the stock will rise up the 10%, so it is totally a choice, and they need to get that place in Cape Cod which they don't really want to go to but their friends from college are going and why aren't the young Generation As in here coming in on Saturday working 12 hours don't they know that if they work hard they can have all this?
posted by geoff. at 3:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [31 favorites]
(I also hope change happens and of course will be on their side.)
posted by kimberussell at 3:28 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by kimberussell at 3:28 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
you okay geoff?
posted by kokaku at 3:53 PM on April 24, 2022 [30 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 3:53 PM on April 24, 2022 [30 favorites]
The survivors become the models of stolid, conservative responsibility in a few decades' time, having built up their investment portfolios.
Who, at least under 50 (60?), are you talking about? I'm doing well enough that they'll call me a kulak and expropriate my shit, but not well enough that I think think that's worth fighting.
posted by wotsac at 4:06 PM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
Who, at least under 50 (60?), are you talking about? I'm doing well enough that they'll call me a kulak and expropriate my shit, but not well enough that I think think that's worth fighting.
posted by wotsac at 4:06 PM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
As an official Millennial, I do have a decent life. But I have worked incredibly hard to get it and avoid the yawning pit-of-doom on either side of the tiny path I've carved out to get there.
Maybe my opinion is influenced by having multiple autoimmune disorders that can be treated (ie won't kill me) as long as I keep getting very expensive medications since before the ACA made preexisting conditions less of a death sentence, or maybe graduating college right after 2008 exploded and stable jobs almost disappeared or maybe being immunocompromised and having a young family during the pandemic now.... But employers certainly aren't protecting me and its always been one mistake means doom which makes it hard to feel safe. So why should there be gratitude or loyalty to them?
I've made it work by planning very carefully (ie deciding what course work and fields were most likely to provide health insurance by 18 years old). But it shouldn't require super human carefulness to be ok and a single mistake shouldn't be able to wreck someone forever. Some of the risk should be on employers not just employees or there should be social programs to offset that risk.
But that's just me.
posted by scififan at 4:15 PM on April 24, 2022 [42 favorites]
Maybe my opinion is influenced by having multiple autoimmune disorders that can be treated (ie won't kill me) as long as I keep getting very expensive medications since before the ACA made preexisting conditions less of a death sentence, or maybe graduating college right after 2008 exploded and stable jobs almost disappeared or maybe being immunocompromised and having a young family during the pandemic now.... But employers certainly aren't protecting me and its always been one mistake means doom which makes it hard to feel safe. So why should there be gratitude or loyalty to them?
I've made it work by planning very carefully (ie deciding what course work and fields were most likely to provide health insurance by 18 years old). But it shouldn't require super human carefulness to be ok and a single mistake shouldn't be able to wreck someone forever. Some of the risk should be on employers not just employees or there should be social programs to offset that risk.
But that's just me.
posted by scififan at 4:15 PM on April 24, 2022 [42 favorites]
Lots of young people really are actually doing just fine. Not everyone, of course, but many. Many have jobs they mostly like (with occasional frustrations, of course), where they're treated and paid fairly.
Citation Needed
posted by Bottlecap at 4:18 PM on April 24, 2022 [23 favorites]
Citation Needed
posted by Bottlecap at 4:18 PM on April 24, 2022 [23 favorites]
The generation or two before mine always had that "I fought Natzis" thing to fall back on when ever the subject of mowing lawns came up.
Worked everytime.
posted by clavdivs at 4:29 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Worked everytime.
posted by clavdivs at 4:29 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Every generation are feckless bums when they're in their 20s, unpropertied and engaging in social activities that their elders regard as incomprehensible if not distasteful.
I survived. I'm still an unpropertied, feckless bum and the only reason I'm not engaging in social activities that my elders regard as incomprehensible if not distasteful is because I'm too damn tired. Well, that and the global pandemic.
Seriously, I think you're vastly overestimating the number of comfy middle-aged people with investment portfolios and underestimating broke, angry middle-aged folks like me. According to this article from last year, only 46% of Gen Xers would be able to pay for a $1000 emergency. (And that's up from a few years earlier, when people didn't have $400 to spare.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:31 PM on April 24, 2022 [46 favorites]
I survived. I'm still an unpropertied, feckless bum and the only reason I'm not engaging in social activities that my elders regard as incomprehensible if not distasteful is because I'm too damn tired. Well, that and the global pandemic.
Seriously, I think you're vastly overestimating the number of comfy middle-aged people with investment portfolios and underestimating broke, angry middle-aged folks like me. According to this article from last year, only 46% of Gen Xers would be able to pay for a $1000 emergency. (And that's up from a few years earlier, when people didn't have $400 to spare.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:31 PM on April 24, 2022 [46 favorites]
If people are bombarded every day with the idea that people in their generation have absolutely no chance at happiness, that they are certain to experience a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration, of course a lot of them will feel like absolute shit all the time.
A reminder to take a break from Metafilter regularly.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:34 PM on April 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
A reminder to take a break from Metafilter regularly.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:34 PM on April 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
in Cape Cod
The only things in Cape Cod are rocks, tree roots, and the dead in the historic graveyards. Houses and people are on, not in Cape Cod.
Gen X-er here. I work hard. I'm lucky to own a cute little house. I work with a lot of younger people who want to work and make money, so much so that I sometimes chide them for greed. I'm not wealthy but me and my SO both work and don't have, or want kids, so we do ok.
I'm all for Gen z doing whatever it is they are doing. The last two years have shown a lot of cracks in the system, and there has been a lot of innovation and adaptation, in my line of work. Hospitality workers moving to 9-5 office jobs, or starting their own small business, has been a thing.
posted by vrakatar at 4:46 PM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
The only things in Cape Cod are rocks, tree roots, and the dead in the historic graveyards. Houses and people are on, not in Cape Cod.
Gen X-er here. I work hard. I'm lucky to own a cute little house. I work with a lot of younger people who want to work and make money, so much so that I sometimes chide them for greed. I'm not wealthy but me and my SO both work and don't have, or want kids, so we do ok.
I'm all for Gen z doing whatever it is they are doing. The last two years have shown a lot of cracks in the system, and there has been a lot of innovation and adaptation, in my line of work. Hospitality workers moving to 9-5 office jobs, or starting their own small business, has been a thing.
posted by vrakatar at 4:46 PM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
Post-war America made an unspoken agreement with the millions of people returning from the front: dedicate 40 hours a week of your life to serving capital, and in exchange you can have a house with a 2-car garage and a white picket fence in suburbia. Nearly everyone took them up on that deal, and for 40 years they were rewarded with the greatest prosperity that the masses had ever known.
Then Reagan and Thatcher and a bunch of other shit happened, and the terms of that deal started to slip. Real wages stopped climbing, the owners of capital consolidated their position, and living conditions for most people started to deteriorate. Mostly, though, the idea underpinning it lived on in memory, long after it had stopped being true: if you shut up, buckle down, and work hard, you'll be taken care of.
It took another 30 years, and a pandemic that killed 10+ million people and shuttered the world for 2 years, for the mask to be ripped off the machine. People who left the workforce, or weren't old enough to join it yet, are heading to their jobs and realizing that their 40 hours a week is barely earning them enough to make rent. The idea of a house and a couple of cars is totally unthinkable for huge swathes of folks who were middle-class just a generation ago. Folks are chided to work harder, or work more, to claw their way back up to where their parents were at the same age. "Union" is a dirty word in most places, and it's just sort of quietly accepted that we all serve at the pleasure of our bosses, who can turn us out onto the street on a whim.
But sure, let's look at the trends evolving around us, and write a thinkpiece for Vox decrying the work ethic of an entire generation of young adults. Let us never question the deal that capital made with labor 80 years ago, or the fact that capital has completely reneged on their end of the bargain. Let us instead pray that they do not further alter the deal, and urge labor to work even harder to prove themselves worthy of economic security.
posted by Mayor West at 4:59 PM on April 24, 2022 [104 favorites]
Then Reagan and Thatcher and a bunch of other shit happened, and the terms of that deal started to slip. Real wages stopped climbing, the owners of capital consolidated their position, and living conditions for most people started to deteriorate. Mostly, though, the idea underpinning it lived on in memory, long after it had stopped being true: if you shut up, buckle down, and work hard, you'll be taken care of.
It took another 30 years, and a pandemic that killed 10+ million people and shuttered the world for 2 years, for the mask to be ripped off the machine. People who left the workforce, or weren't old enough to join it yet, are heading to their jobs and realizing that their 40 hours a week is barely earning them enough to make rent. The idea of a house and a couple of cars is totally unthinkable for huge swathes of folks who were middle-class just a generation ago. Folks are chided to work harder, or work more, to claw their way back up to where their parents were at the same age. "Union" is a dirty word in most places, and it's just sort of quietly accepted that we all serve at the pleasure of our bosses, who can turn us out onto the street on a whim.
But sure, let's look at the trends evolving around us, and write a thinkpiece for Vox decrying the work ethic of an entire generation of young adults. Let us never question the deal that capital made with labor 80 years ago, or the fact that capital has completely reneged on their end of the bargain. Let us instead pray that they do not further alter the deal, and urge labor to work even harder to prove themselves worthy of economic security.
posted by Mayor West at 4:59 PM on April 24, 2022 [104 favorites]
Post-war America made an unspoken agreement with the millions of people returning from the front: dedicate 40 hours a week of your life to serving capital, and in exchange you can have a house with a 2-car garage and a white picket fence in suburbia. Nearly everyone took them up on that deal, and for 40 years they were rewarded with the greatest prosperity that the masses had ever known.
I am STRONGLY flashing back to when I learned that the Roman Empire started to crap out after it couldn't fulfill the "be a soldier, have a farm" promise in an honest way.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:04 PM on April 24, 2022 [30 favorites]
I am STRONGLY flashing back to when I learned that the Roman Empire started to crap out after it couldn't fulfill the "be a soldier, have a farm" promise in an honest way.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:04 PM on April 24, 2022 [30 favorites]
Post-war America made an unspoken agreement with the millions of white people returning from the front:
Fixed that for you.
posted by praemunire at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [86 favorites]
Fixed that for you.
posted by praemunire at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [86 favorites]
I am STRONGLY flashing back to when I learned that the Roman Empire started to crap out after it couldn't fulfill the "be a soldier, have a farm" promise in an honest way.
Just noting that the US does, in fact, have full public employment, subsidized education and government funded health care programs … provided you enlist.
posted by mhoye at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Just noting that the US does, in fact, have full public employment, subsidized education and government funded health care programs … provided you enlist.
posted by mhoye at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Post-war America made an unspoken agreement with the millions of people returning from the front: dedicate 40 hours a week of your life to serving capital, and in exchange you can have a house with a 2-car garage and a white picket fence in suburbia.
Unless you were Black.
posted by tclark at 5:12 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
Unless you were Black.
posted by tclark at 5:12 PM on April 24, 2022 [28 favorites]
Lots of young people really are actually doing just fine.
If this were a post about, say, homelessness, would there be similar comments pushing back that "many people have homes, actually," or is it the social media aspect of the article that allows us to more readily dismiss the lived experience of others as merely confirmation bias?
If people are bombarded every day with the idea that people in their generation have absolutely no chance at happiness, that they are certain to experience a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration, of course a lot of them will feel like absolute shit all the time.
I took out loans to go to college in order to avoid the wage-slave jobs my (loving, well-intentioned) boomer parents told me I was doomed to have if I didn't go to college. Then the bottom fell out of the economy just before I graduated, and thus far I've been consigned to a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration. I can assure you that exploitative managers, toxic work environments, and wage theft exist outside of social media.
I've just started on antidepressants, though, so hopefully I'll feel less like shit all the time.
posted by rustybullrake at 5:33 PM on April 24, 2022 [34 favorites]
If this were a post about, say, homelessness, would there be similar comments pushing back that "many people have homes, actually," or is it the social media aspect of the article that allows us to more readily dismiss the lived experience of others as merely confirmation bias?
If people are bombarded every day with the idea that people in their generation have absolutely no chance at happiness, that they are certain to experience a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration, of course a lot of them will feel like absolute shit all the time.
I took out loans to go to college in order to avoid the wage-slave jobs my (loving, well-intentioned) boomer parents told me I was doomed to have if I didn't go to college. Then the bottom fell out of the economy just before I graduated, and thus far I've been consigned to a lifetime of debt-slavery and drudgery and immiseration. I can assure you that exploitative managers, toxic work environments, and wage theft exist outside of social media.
I've just started on antidepressants, though, so hopefully I'll feel less like shit all the time.
posted by rustybullrake at 5:33 PM on April 24, 2022 [34 favorites]
A major part of the deal was that you can get a house! You can have property! And it will always appreciate in value, and your property values will never, ever be permitted to fall.
And if you can't spot the problem with a society built in large part around assuring the neverending appreciation of a class of assets, to the point of being willing to burn the world to death in pursuit of that appreciation...
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:38 PM on April 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
And if you can't spot the problem with a society built in large part around assuring the neverending appreciation of a class of assets, to the point of being willing to burn the world to death in pursuit of that appreciation...
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:38 PM on April 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
Seriously, I think you're vastly overestimating the number of comfy middle-aged people with investment portfolios and underestimating broke, angry middle-aged folks like me.
I feel ya, babe. I feel ya.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:03 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
I feel ya, babe. I feel ya.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:03 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
I absolutely hate the narrative "young people don't want to work". It's used to smear those who endeavor to improve working conditions as lazy dilettantes. Sure, you can always cherry-pick people who really are like this: as this article does, and as that smirking Fox News host did when he interviewed the /r/antiwork mod. When these people are highlighted in the media, it is misdirection. It serves to draw attention away from the very real grievances that young people have. They're not against work; they're against jobs-that-treat-you-like-shit. As we all should be.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 6:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 6:11 PM on April 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
One thing that I don't think gets enough focus in these discussions is that much of the outrage is directed not at pay, benefits, or even anything to do with the actual work. Rather, its directed at the unblinking assumptions of hierarchy on the part of owners and managers and all that entails in terms of deference and obsequiousness. Workers are expected to unquestioningly devote themselves to transparently stupid corporate bullshit and asshole managers, and the total compensation package is obviously a problem (particularly relative to increasing costs of living) but the kicker is when they're expected to be grateful.
People will put up with a lot of shit if they think you're on their side and understand them, but if you're condescending and they have any kind of exit option, they're out.
The straightforward reading of this is that, basically anyone in an owner or management position has spent the majority of their last 15 years in a very loose labor market, that had been chugging along for long enough for them to internalize a lot of power and status (and condescension) vis-a-vis workers. But that has significantly eroded in the past few years, and newer workers (still on their parents' health care plans) entering the labor market without all the baggage of the financial crisis and its aftermath have rejected that new 'normal'. Labor markets continued to tighten under Trump but then there was a huge disruption at the start of covid that showed everyone exactly how expendable they were and gave managers a final kick of power, before labor market re-tightened with the government stimulus packages and labor's current bargaining power became clearer.
Now that the Fed is raising interest rates again we'll see how things go, I guess.
posted by ropeladder at 6:22 PM on April 24, 2022 [24 favorites]
People will put up with a lot of shit if they think you're on their side and understand them, but if you're condescending and they have any kind of exit option, they're out.
The straightforward reading of this is that, basically anyone in an owner or management position has spent the majority of their last 15 years in a very loose labor market, that had been chugging along for long enough for them to internalize a lot of power and status (and condescension) vis-a-vis workers. But that has significantly eroded in the past few years, and newer workers (still on their parents' health care plans) entering the labor market without all the baggage of the financial crisis and its aftermath have rejected that new 'normal'. Labor markets continued to tighten under Trump but then there was a huge disruption at the start of covid that showed everyone exactly how expendable they were and gave managers a final kick of power, before labor market re-tightened with the government stimulus packages and labor's current bargaining power became clearer.
Now that the Fed is raising interest rates again we'll see how things go, I guess.
posted by ropeladder at 6:22 PM on April 24, 2022 [24 favorites]
Perhaps the real corporate treasure is the inter-generational animosity we generated along the way.
posted by fairmettle at 6:35 PM on April 24, 2022 [34 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 6:35 PM on April 24, 2022 [34 favorites]
Have they ever checked in with the original Kids are Alright from 1966? I'm sure the 18-24s of that era might could have a lot to contribute to understanding how we got where we are. I mean, how long has it been since the last punching-down on job mobility story? A month? Oh, no. Almost three weeks. The full-court press continues.
posted by rhizome at 6:47 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 6:47 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
that smirking Fox News host did when he interviewed the /r/antiwork mod. When these people are highlighted in the media, it is misdirection.
Perhaps, but the /r/antiwork mod had no business setting themselves up as a face of the work reform movement, should have known better than to talk to Fox News, and probably should never have been a mod of the subreddit in the first place. I expect someone might say this comment is dogpiling or blaming a victim, but I disagree. The Dunning-Krueger effect may not be real, but that fiasco sure does point anecdotally to a subset of people who truly, vastly overestimate their capability and savviness.
Misdirection? Maybe. I'd classify it as an idiotic own-goal.
posted by tclark at 6:59 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Perhaps, but the /r/antiwork mod had no business setting themselves up as a face of the work reform movement, should have known better than to talk to Fox News, and probably should never have been a mod of the subreddit in the first place. I expect someone might say this comment is dogpiling or blaming a victim, but I disagree. The Dunning-Krueger effect may not be real, but that fiasco sure does point anecdotally to a subset of people who truly, vastly overestimate their capability and savviness.
Misdirection? Maybe. I'd classify it as an idiotic own-goal.
posted by tclark at 6:59 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
They're not against work
I mean, some of them are, and some of them aren't. I personally think that that reducing work should be one of our goals; we don't need to work nearly as much as we do in order to survive and be comfortable, as a species. We could be taking small steps toward that goal now, such as reducing hours in the standard work week.
"They don't want to work" sounds like a smear and works like a smear because it's just too radical to question the value of work.
But not wanting to work, and being against unnecessary work, is a perfectly sensible way to be, actually.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:08 PM on April 24, 2022 [53 favorites]
I mean, some of them are, and some of them aren't. I personally think that that reducing work should be one of our goals; we don't need to work nearly as much as we do in order to survive and be comfortable, as a species. We could be taking small steps toward that goal now, such as reducing hours in the standard work week.
"They don't want to work" sounds like a smear and works like a smear because it's just too radical to question the value of work.
But not wanting to work, and being against unnecessary work, is a perfectly sensible way to be, actually.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:08 PM on April 24, 2022 [53 favorites]
I was just reading this excellent interview with John Darnielle:
posted by praemunire at 7:10 PM on April 24, 2022 [40 favorites]
The word “work” is degraded by capitalism—capitalism takes work and makes it the thing you’re doing to get money so you can do the stuff you enjoy doing when you’re not working. But I don’t think of it that way. Some of that is because I have a gig that I want. But some of it, in a much more mundane and probably more productive sense, I think, working is just one of the things we do. Psychologists say that play is the work of children. You do not have to teach children to play—they just go out and do it, and they love it. That’s how I feel about work: I want to be working. I’m not miserable when I’m idle; I’m able to be idle, and I enjoy it. Work is one good thing and rest is the other one, but it’s a balance of those two that I think inspires the spirit.He's a senior Gen-Xer, though. Note that this is basically the vision of Star Trek.
When I say work is self-expression, I don’t mean it’s anything automatic, like this idea of when people say, “Well, the book was writing itself.” I never believe that. No, you were writing the book, you were doing your work. I cherish the notion of all art as labor, because I think labor has an inherent dignity. There’s a version of human labor where we’d all be just extraordinarily happy to be working, because we’d be contributing to one another’s welfare, and it would feel incredible.
posted by praemunire at 7:10 PM on April 24, 2022 [40 favorites]
If you are comfortable, you are wealthy. If you desire more, you are poor. A consumer economy always wants you to feel poor...
posted by jim in austin at 7:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 7:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Where are you now Gen X, when we need you the most?
Same place I was in 1994, coming up with hopefully-not-totally-bogus sounding excuses to explain why I can't do a work thing so I can leave town and see Jawbreaker play this weekend.
posted by thivaia at 7:52 PM on April 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
Same place I was in 1994, coming up with hopefully-not-totally-bogus sounding excuses to explain why I can't do a work thing so I can leave town and see Jawbreaker play this weekend.
posted by thivaia at 7:52 PM on April 24, 2022 [21 favorites]
It has occurred to me that Gen Z is replaying the values they learned from their Gen X parents who taught them the game is rigged and shared their cynicism about work and striving, with an added dose of climate betrayal and fatalism. This is Gen X contribution: the way we brought up our children.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:48 PM on April 24, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:48 PM on April 24, 2022 [17 favorites]
Every generation thinks they invented tutting about the younger generation's work ethic.
posted by biogeo at 9:01 PM on April 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 9:01 PM on April 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
I am on the tail-end of Gen X. Middle class in the poorest state in the nation. I worked my ass off to get an almost full-ride to the good state school, then anxiety/ADHD-or-am-I-just-lazy/not knowing what I needed to do to get out of the black hole that was my home town led to me getting kicked out of school a couple of times, then right into the workforce.
My first post-college job (after 5 years of school, mind you!) paid me $6.75 an hour. A year later, I moved 11 hours away to do the same job for a mind-boggling $10 an hour. I could pay rent and go out! I was able to save a little money! Until I quit, because I couldn't stomach lying to make other people rich. Then I got another job! This was $28k a year! That's almost $30k! Then I was downsized three weeks before Christmas. And so on, and so on, and so on until I ran out of luck in 2007 and began spending more time unemployed and looking than employed.
Lucky for me, I met my soon-to-be-wife and she made enough money to keep us afloat until I got a job making $11 an hour running the front end of a Wal-Mart. I was 35, and right back to where I started at 23. Then she got pregnant, had 4 kids in 4 years (the first cost us $50k in hospital bills and didn't survive labor, the last two cost us $15k and came out as twins). Somehow, I managed to land an entry-level job with the DoD for a eye-popping $32k a year. Somehow that didn't stretch as far as it did almost 15 years earlier.
Now, I've had 4 promotions and my wife no longer has to commute 90 minutes to the next town for her job. Our kids are in school and somehow we were able to save enough to buy a house. (The house-aversary was 5 days ago. A year as a homeowner. It boggles my mind.)
But! I'm 44. I'll retire at 75, if my pension still exists then. So yeah. I'm all for supporting the young'uns but let's not wonder where Gen X is in all this. We are suffering too.
posted by gwydapllew at 9:18 PM on April 24, 2022 [29 favorites]
My first post-college job (after 5 years of school, mind you!) paid me $6.75 an hour. A year later, I moved 11 hours away to do the same job for a mind-boggling $10 an hour. I could pay rent and go out! I was able to save a little money! Until I quit, because I couldn't stomach lying to make other people rich. Then I got another job! This was $28k a year! That's almost $30k! Then I was downsized three weeks before Christmas. And so on, and so on, and so on until I ran out of luck in 2007 and began spending more time unemployed and looking than employed.
Lucky for me, I met my soon-to-be-wife and she made enough money to keep us afloat until I got a job making $11 an hour running the front end of a Wal-Mart. I was 35, and right back to where I started at 23. Then she got pregnant, had 4 kids in 4 years (the first cost us $50k in hospital bills and didn't survive labor, the last two cost us $15k and came out as twins). Somehow, I managed to land an entry-level job with the DoD for a eye-popping $32k a year. Somehow that didn't stretch as far as it did almost 15 years earlier.
Now, I've had 4 promotions and my wife no longer has to commute 90 minutes to the next town for her job. Our kids are in school and somehow we were able to save enough to buy a house. (The house-aversary was 5 days ago. A year as a homeowner. It boggles my mind.)
But! I'm 44. I'll retire at 75, if my pension still exists then. So yeah. I'm all for supporting the young'uns but let's not wonder where Gen X is in all this. We are suffering too.
posted by gwydapllew at 9:18 PM on April 24, 2022 [29 favorites]
Sorta tangential to this nontraversy, but the kids are alright.
posted by sjswitzer at 9:25 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sjswitzer at 9:25 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gen Z’s war on modern-day work
People don't like conflict, I get it. But as a wise person summarized, "Reality is violence on every level. Dissimulation of this is just another form of violence."
Ie, just like the Dems often get smoked because they fail to realize what kind of activity is going on (it's a guerilla war), similarly economic activity IS a class war. You can call it different things if you want. I haven't read enough Marx to care. But it's a war, a fight, a conflict.
If Gen Z has declared war, that just means they're awake.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:43 PM on April 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
People don't like conflict, I get it. But as a wise person summarized, "Reality is violence on every level. Dissimulation of this is just another form of violence."
Ie, just like the Dems often get smoked because they fail to realize what kind of activity is going on (it's a guerilla war), similarly economic activity IS a class war. You can call it different things if you want. I haven't read enough Marx to care. But it's a war, a fight, a conflict.
If Gen Z has declared war, that just means they're awake.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:43 PM on April 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
Gen z are much more protective of their mental health, and one of the main stressors of that is going to work. What’s the point of working your ass off, when it’ll make you sick, won’t provide you a home, and your retirement will be postponed until climate change is irreversible? Damn straight work needs to change.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:19 AM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 12:19 AM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
Note that this is basically the vision of Star Trek.
Sadly, you don't get Star Trek (or Fully Automated Luxury Pansexual Inclusive Space Communism) without replicators, or some equivalent post-scarcity-inducing technology.
And TBH, I have always thought that the optimism inherent in Star Trek wasn't that replicators exist, it's that replicators exist and humans don't just immediately find another way to play high-stakes zero-sum status games with each other from which you aren't allowed to just opt out. Because that's where I think it would actually go.
Doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to work towards, even if only partway. But I'm skeptical that any amount of technology will be resistant to the hedonic treadmill, and human beings' innate desire to construct hierarchies and tribes.
But even if that's true, it doesn't mean we still can't make things markedly less shitty for ourselves along the way.
Going from a 40-hour workweek to a mandatory 35-hour workweek would be a start, as would a minimum wage pegged to inflation. A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century—productivity improvements just need to be retained by workers, rather than given away in increased employer profit. And I think there's still probably amazing increases in productivity possible, if you actually incentivized most workers to maximize their effort in return for more time doing what they wanted.
I don't know that we'll ever get to "tea, Earl Grey, hot", but we can potentially get to the point where having another human being prepare and serve me that tea would be significantly more expensive. The more expensive we can make human labor, the better off we are.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:19 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
Sadly, you don't get Star Trek (or Fully Automated Luxury Pansexual Inclusive Space Communism) without replicators, or some equivalent post-scarcity-inducing technology.
And TBH, I have always thought that the optimism inherent in Star Trek wasn't that replicators exist, it's that replicators exist and humans don't just immediately find another way to play high-stakes zero-sum status games with each other from which you aren't allowed to just opt out. Because that's where I think it would actually go.
Doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to work towards, even if only partway. But I'm skeptical that any amount of technology will be resistant to the hedonic treadmill, and human beings' innate desire to construct hierarchies and tribes.
But even if that's true, it doesn't mean we still can't make things markedly less shitty for ourselves along the way.
Going from a 40-hour workweek to a mandatory 35-hour workweek would be a start, as would a minimum wage pegged to inflation. A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century—productivity improvements just need to be retained by workers, rather than given away in increased employer profit. And I think there's still probably amazing increases in productivity possible, if you actually incentivized most workers to maximize their effort in return for more time doing what they wanted.
I don't know that we'll ever get to "tea, Earl Grey, hot", but we can potentially get to the point where having another human being prepare and serve me that tea would be significantly more expensive. The more expensive we can make human labor, the better off we are.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:19 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
They're not against work; they're against jobs-that-treat-you-like-shit.
For this millennial, and most others that I know, that Venn diagram* is a circle. Some get paid better than others, is all.
(*Technically an Euler diagram but you get the point.)
posted by Dysk at 1:53 AM on April 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
For this millennial, and most others that I know, that Venn diagram* is a circle. Some get paid better than others, is all.
(*Technically an Euler diagram but you get the point.)
posted by Dysk at 1:53 AM on April 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
Who, at least under 50 (60?), are you talking about? I'm doing well enough that they'll call me a kulak and expropriate my shit, but not well enough that I think think that's worth fighting.
Entire generations in general. Nowadays the Boomers are the byword for the dead hand of wealth accumulation and its associated conservatism, but in the day they were dismissed as pot-smoking hippie longhairs who probably had commie sympathies. When they shuffle off their mortal coils, the grunge-slackers of GenX will take their turn as the Greatest Generation Standing, and after them, the avocado-toast-addicted millennials, and so on.
Of course, just as not all boomers tuned in, turned on and dropped out (apparently most of them supported the Vietnam War, but we don't remember the boring ones), not all Xers/millennials will graduate to becoming Republican dragons sitting atop hoards of real-estate wealth. Even if hedge funds buy out all the foreclosed housing and turn 99.9% of them into a permanent underclass of serfs, the 0.1% who managed to rise above that will become the spokesfigures for their generation, because just as conservative young people are boring, so are poor old people.
posted by acb at 2:03 AM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
Entire generations in general. Nowadays the Boomers are the byword for the dead hand of wealth accumulation and its associated conservatism, but in the day they were dismissed as pot-smoking hippie longhairs who probably had commie sympathies. When they shuffle off their mortal coils, the grunge-slackers of GenX will take their turn as the Greatest Generation Standing, and after them, the avocado-toast-addicted millennials, and so on.
Of course, just as not all boomers tuned in, turned on and dropped out (apparently most of them supported the Vietnam War, but we don't remember the boring ones), not all Xers/millennials will graduate to becoming Republican dragons sitting atop hoards of real-estate wealth. Even if hedge funds buy out all the foreclosed housing and turn 99.9% of them into a permanent underclass of serfs, the 0.1% who managed to rise above that will become the spokesfigures for their generation, because just as conservative young people are boring, so are poor old people.
posted by acb at 2:03 AM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century
Try middle of the decade.
posted by acb at 2:05 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Try middle of the decade.
posted by acb at 2:05 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I really think it's the bosses who are at war with workers, and the wealthy at war with everyone else. To pick one example: Wage theft drops 302,000 families below the poverty line every year
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:44 AM on April 25, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:44 AM on April 25, 2022 [10 favorites]
Post-war America made an unspoken agreement with the millions of white people returning from the front:Fixed that for you.
You might not believe me when I tell you this, but I had that sentence written exactly the way you edited it in a draft, but then deleted the one word because I was worried it would be too derail-y. It was absolutely an exercise in white supremacy, and I doubt anyone of color (even the Black soldiers returning from WWII) thought it was ever meant to include them. 80 years later, the bargain is even more unjustly treating POC, but now that a whole lot of white people are suffering, we're all sitting up and collectively taking notice.
posted by Mayor West at 5:27 AM on April 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
If you are comfortable, you are wealthy. If you desire more, you are poor.
While I understand the point you're trying to make, you've got to be pretty high up Maslow's Hierarchy already for this to be a meaningful comment about spirituality, and this sort of spiritualization of relative wealth has been used to scold the destitute for having the temerity to want more than destitution for centuries.
In modernity being comfortable without, say, health or dental care doesn't mean you're wealthy or spiritually fulfilled. It means that so far you've been lucky.
posted by mhoye at 5:49 AM on April 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
While I understand the point you're trying to make, you've got to be pretty high up Maslow's Hierarchy already for this to be a meaningful comment about spirituality, and this sort of spiritualization of relative wealth has been used to scold the destitute for having the temerity to want more than destitution for centuries.
In modernity being comfortable without, say, health or dental care doesn't mean you're wealthy or spiritually fulfilled. It means that so far you've been lucky.
posted by mhoye at 5:49 AM on April 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
Once you get to where you can buy whatever you want, further wealth becomes about power. Elon Musk isn't trying to buy Twitter because he thinks he can make it more profitable, but because he sees it as a driver of social trends that he can manipulate. Peter Thiel's using his money to fund young neoreactionaries and fascists. Bill Gates is using his wealth to replace community control of health and education decisions with his own judgment and desires. The Scaifes and Kochs have spent untold amounts of money over the past decades on influencing the national thought processes about things from taxes to religion.
Part of the reason wealth redistribution is so urgently, burningly necessary is to make the means of survival and thriving available to everybody, yes, but a large part of that necessity is to eliminate the ability of the people who control concentrations of wealth to exert their malign influence on the world.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:21 AM on April 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
Part of the reason wealth redistribution is so urgently, burningly necessary is to make the means of survival and thriving available to everybody, yes, but a large part of that necessity is to eliminate the ability of the people who control concentrations of wealth to exert their malign influence on the world.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:21 AM on April 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
Bill Gates...I am sure there is some evil shit there I don't know about. Because that much wealth is immoral. But at least he's given hundreds of millions fighting malaria. I've never heard one positive thing Musk has done.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:31 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:31 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Musk is a deeply shitty person who has done some very worthwhile things.
He's made electric cars a thing probably a decade before the big auto companies would have been able to on their own. They've been messing about with alternate fuels and hybrids and all kinds of shit for decades now, but never been willing to abandon the ICE and actually go all in on a new technology. That's possibly his biggest thing, buying Tesla and taking it big. That's given us a jumpstart on a key technology that will allow us to mitigate climate change.
He's basically created the private space access market, and is in the process of developing a decent world-wide internet service. I've seen native elder in tears as to how transformative Starlink is for their communities. It may not seem like a lot to people in metro areas, but good internet means healthcare, education, business opportunities and even just human connection to people in less well-served communities. Even a single, shared satellite uplink is enough.
We can never forget or forgive his idiocy around covid, his embrace of toxic masculinity, his union busting. He's a narcissist that is way too high on his own supply. He doesn't seem to actually give a damn about people in particular. But there's at least two, perhaps two and a half things he's done that have been a great benefit to society.
posted by bonehead at 6:57 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
He's made electric cars a thing probably a decade before the big auto companies would have been able to on their own. They've been messing about with alternate fuels and hybrids and all kinds of shit for decades now, but never been willing to abandon the ICE and actually go all in on a new technology. That's possibly his biggest thing, buying Tesla and taking it big. That's given us a jumpstart on a key technology that will allow us to mitigate climate change.
He's basically created the private space access market, and is in the process of developing a decent world-wide internet service. I've seen native elder in tears as to how transformative Starlink is for their communities. It may not seem like a lot to people in metro areas, but good internet means healthcare, education, business opportunities and even just human connection to people in less well-served communities. Even a single, shared satellite uplink is enough.
We can never forget or forgive his idiocy around covid, his embrace of toxic masculinity, his union busting. He's a narcissist that is way too high on his own supply. He doesn't seem to actually give a damn about people in particular. But there's at least two, perhaps two and a half things he's done that have been a great benefit to society.
posted by bonehead at 6:57 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
And TBH, I have always thought that the optimism inherent in Star Trek wasn't that replicators exist, it's that replicators exist and humans don't just immediately find another way to play high-stakes zero-sum status games with each other from which you aren't allowed to just opt out. Because that's where I think it would actually go.
I've mentioned this here before and every time someone brings up the Star Trek future in conversation, but: the reason they don't do that in Star Trek is because they have recent-ish historical memory of a nuclear world war that nearly destroyed all of humanity.
They didn't just "do better" for no reason, they did it because the alternative was extinction.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:02 AM on April 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
I've mentioned this here before and every time someone brings up the Star Trek future in conversation, but: the reason they don't do that in Star Trek is because they have recent-ish historical memory of a nuclear world war that nearly destroyed all of humanity.
They didn't just "do better" for no reason, they did it because the alternative was extinction.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:02 AM on April 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
Musk has, by some reports, just bought Twitter.
If he succeeds in driving away everyone who's not a right-wing troll and driving it into the ground, some would argue that that would be, in the long run, a good thing as well.
posted by acb at 7:06 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
If he succeeds in driving away everyone who's not a right-wing troll and driving it into the ground, some would argue that that would be, in the long run, a good thing as well.
posted by acb at 7:06 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century
...
Try middle of thedecade afternoon.
posted by majick at 7:20 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
...
Try middle of the
posted by majick at 7:20 AM on April 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
The four-day work week is a reality for way too many people, or three-day. Jobs that pay by the hour won't give anyone full time work because then they'd have to offer benefits. That's the problem with the headlines of "A person working full-time at minimum wage makes only...." They don't even make that much. But you still don't have a three-day weekend or the flexibility to work another job, or even make an appointment with a dentist or lawyer, because it's an ever-changing swing shift.
Someone at church actually said, "Nobody wants to work." So I said "You can't blame them. I don't want to work. Do you want to work?" The answer: "I'm retired." My response: "Exactly."
posted by Miss Cellania at 7:33 AM on April 25, 2022 [13 favorites]
Someone at church actually said, "Nobody wants to work." So I said "You can't blame them. I don't want to work. Do you want to work?" The answer: "I'm retired." My response: "Exactly."
posted by Miss Cellania at 7:33 AM on April 25, 2022 [13 favorites]
The plan is for four days of work for full-time pay, i.e., what five days of work gets you.
posted by acb at 7:41 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 7:41 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century
Really? We (well not me) have to wait for almost 80 years for this tiny improvement?
posted by octothorpe at 7:51 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Really? We (well not me) have to wait for almost 80 years for this tiny improvement?
posted by octothorpe at 7:51 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
If he succeeds in driving away everyone who's not a right-wing troll and driving it into the ground,
Why would this be a goal of his.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:51 AM on April 25, 2022
Why would this be a goal of his.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:51 AM on April 25, 2022
Doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to work towards, even if only partway. But I'm skeptical that any amount of technology will be resistant to the hedonic treadmill, and human beings' innate desire to construct hierarchies and tribes.
Sure, it's a utopian vision. Darnielle is a musician, not an economist or social scientist. But it's a vision that can inspire, and I think less off-putting to many than "I don't dream of labor," a framing which tends to deny the human drive towards purpose.
posted by praemunire at 8:01 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sure, it's a utopian vision. Darnielle is a musician, not an economist or social scientist. But it's a vision that can inspire, and I think less off-putting to many than "I don't dream of labor," a framing which tends to deny the human drive towards purpose.
posted by praemunire at 8:01 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
>Some creators have claimed that explicitly political or pro-labor TikToks are often placed under review, which means they’re likely to receive less traction than more apolitical QuitToks. Still, this content is often a scroll or a click away, and digital organizers are hopeful that social media can be harnessed to affect real change.
Given the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, that's a lot to expect from the algorithm. Especially when "free for me, not free for thee" speech is coming to Twitter as the collective-corporate overlords seem to be handing it over to a singular billionnaire overlord. And this 'lets you and them fight' generational nonsense is generating clicks but is so unhelpful to ...uh ...actually dismantling the master's house.
(I'd like the hope of retirement, please, and some alternative to burning the world along the way by investing prospective retirement money in growth-obsessed corporations, thanking you and please.)
posted by k3ninho at 8:12 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Given the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, that's a lot to expect from the algorithm. Especially when "free for me, not free for thee" speech is coming to Twitter as the collective-corporate overlords seem to be handing it over to a singular billionnaire overlord. And this 'lets you and them fight' generational nonsense is generating clicks but is so unhelpful to ...uh ...actually dismantling the master's house.
(I'd like the hope of retirement, please, and some alternative to burning the world along the way by investing prospective retirement money in growth-obsessed corporations, thanking you and please.)
posted by k3ninho at 8:12 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Why would this be a goal of his.
He has been banging along about “freedom of speech” and eliminating moderation, in between shitposting alt-right memes.
If/when he takes control, the first thing that will happen is that moderation of far-right/anti-vaxer/QAnon content will end, and Trump (and various banned Nazis) will get their accounts restored, all in the name of the grand and glorious marketplace of ideas. (Accounts pushing for unionisation at Tesla may not be so lucky, but not to worry; the marketplace of ideas is a broad church, and the left will be more than represented by idiotic tankie shitposters with Soviet avatars posting things no sensible person would agree with.)
Of course, the right-wing idea of Free Speech implies a right to be listened to, so they'll have to also bust open the filter bubbles. You have a nice follow list of people who talk about social justice, knitting and cat memes? Sorry, but that's a filter bubble. Have some @RealDonaldTrump and a couple of TERFs, we insist.
posted by acb at 8:12 AM on April 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
He has been banging along about “freedom of speech” and eliminating moderation, in between shitposting alt-right memes.
If/when he takes control, the first thing that will happen is that moderation of far-right/anti-vaxer/QAnon content will end, and Trump (and various banned Nazis) will get their accounts restored, all in the name of the grand and glorious marketplace of ideas. (Accounts pushing for unionisation at Tesla may not be so lucky, but not to worry; the marketplace of ideas is a broad church, and the left will be more than represented by idiotic tankie shitposters with Soviet avatars posting things no sensible person would agree with.)
Of course, the right-wing idea of Free Speech implies a right to be listened to, so they'll have to also bust open the filter bubbles. You have a nice follow list of people who talk about social justice, knitting and cat memes? Sorry, but that's a filter bubble. Have some @RealDonaldTrump and a couple of TERFs, we insist.
posted by acb at 8:12 AM on April 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
Exactly. No good motives here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:34 AM on April 25, 2022
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:34 AM on April 25, 2022
The four-day work week is a reality for way too many people, or three-day.
It's also a reality for a lot of people who are very happy with it. I work a 42 hour "week" doing four-on/four-off for example. Lots of factories and warehouses that run 24/7 or near enough run shift patterns like this. You could easily fit a full working week's worth of hours into three days, and then have four days off a week (one of the shift patterns my workplace runs for people with degrees and extensive postgraduate education, and pay to match is exactly that).
This is without even considering whether it may be possible to work more efficiently and thus have to do fewer hours for the same pay (this is always possible, employers just tend to pocket the difference, or keep workers around idling out of sheer spite) or whether the fruits is labour could be more evenly distributed, meaning you could e.g. pay twice as many people the same wage to work half as long each (again, usually yes, but it doesn't take a genius to see why employers and shareholders aren't keen to do this).
posted by Dysk at 9:20 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's also a reality for a lot of people who are very happy with it. I work a 42 hour "week" doing four-on/four-off for example. Lots of factories and warehouses that run 24/7 or near enough run shift patterns like this. You could easily fit a full working week's worth of hours into three days, and then have four days off a week (one of the shift patterns my workplace runs for people with degrees and extensive postgraduate education, and pay to match is exactly that).
This is without even considering whether it may be possible to work more efficiently and thus have to do fewer hours for the same pay (this is always possible, employers just tend to pocket the difference, or keep workers around idling out of sheer spite) or whether the fruits is labour could be more evenly distributed, meaning you could e.g. pay twice as many people the same wage to work half as long each (again, usually yes, but it doesn't take a genius to see why employers and shareholders aren't keen to do this).
posted by Dysk at 9:20 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
This discussion makes me want to go touch grass but I live in NYC and a dog peed on it.
Middle millennial here. I had some corporate track jobs that paid ok. I couldn't handle it during covid and quit to do my own thing. That own thing has some future earning potential but currently can't afford healthcare or enough extra to move or raise a kid or buy a car. Certainly not buy a house anywhere close enough to still meet with my clients.
Not sure where it's all heading and not quite sure what to do about it. I'm having a hard time being hopeful about the future, and that's not even considering the bigger, rapidly warming picture...
And yet I love my work, I just haven't figured out how to make a sustainable living from it.
posted by jellywerker at 9:33 AM on April 25, 2022
Middle millennial here. I had some corporate track jobs that paid ok. I couldn't handle it during covid and quit to do my own thing. That own thing has some future earning potential but currently can't afford healthcare or enough extra to move or raise a kid or buy a car. Certainly not buy a house anywhere close enough to still meet with my clients.
Not sure where it's all heading and not quite sure what to do about it. I'm having a hard time being hopeful about the future, and that's not even considering the bigger, rapidly warming picture...
And yet I love my work, I just haven't figured out how to make a sustainable living from it.
posted by jellywerker at 9:33 AM on April 25, 2022
According to this article from last year, only 46% of Gen Xers would be able to pay for a $1000 emergency. (And that's up from a few years earlier, when people didn't have $400 to spare.)
That's not a very good article, and 'don't have $1000 to pay for an emergency' specifically means "in cash". The real answer is 8% who would have to take a payday loan [terrible] plus some percent of 12% 'borrow from family or friends', as borrowing some money when you are 18 is not that strange but if you are 30+ borrowing from mom means more financially. So if we are being generous in that 12%, and say 11% count as questionable, then actually 81% can pay $1000 for an emergency.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:39 AM on April 25, 2022
That's not a very good article, and 'don't have $1000 to pay for an emergency' specifically means "in cash". The real answer is 8% who would have to take a payday loan [terrible] plus some percent of 12% 'borrow from family or friends', as borrowing some money when you are 18 is not that strange but if you are 30+ borrowing from mom means more financially. So if we are being generous in that 12%, and say 11% count as questionable, then actually 81% can pay $1000 for an emergency.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:39 AM on April 25, 2022
If I'm being cynical, a $1000 expense doesn't even count as some special emergency for lots, given the median rent is like $1400 for a 1-bedroom apartment across the US, so of course they would just put it on a credit card.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:42 AM on April 25, 2022
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:42 AM on April 25, 2022
A goal of a 4-day workweek and a 3-day weekend could probably be attainable by the end of the century
Really? We (well not me) have to wait for almost 80 years for this tiny improvement?
I don't think that ever could happen. I saw someone posting the other day "why aren't people more excited about someone in California trying to make it legal to have a four day workweek?" and I was all "because we're not totally stupid to actually think that will happen." This article even says why. Nobody's gonna lose/spend more money to make that happen.
"Fetch," Daylight Savings time all year, and male birth control options are more likely to catch on before that happens, and we're never getting any drastic changes in male birth control options (I see the same methods mentioned in every article for the last 20 years). Hell, I'm more likely to find true love, win an Oscar, and have a live pet unicorn show up on my lawn than that happening.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:00 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Really? We (well not me) have to wait for almost 80 years for this tiny improvement?
I don't think that ever could happen. I saw someone posting the other day "why aren't people more excited about someone in California trying to make it legal to have a four day workweek?" and I was all "because we're not totally stupid to actually think that will happen." This article even says why. Nobody's gonna lose/spend more money to make that happen.
"Fetch," Daylight Savings time all year, and male birth control options are more likely to catch on before that happens, and we're never getting any drastic changes in male birth control options (I see the same methods mentioned in every article for the last 20 years). Hell, I'm more likely to find true love, win an Oscar, and have a live pet unicorn show up on my lawn than that happening.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:00 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Some Gen Xers like me realized some time ago that there are two kinds of work -- (1) work that is meaningful and fulfilling, and (2) work that provides sufficient financial remuneration to live comfortably, support a family, buy a house, etc. There are rare circumstances in which the two categories overlap (like when you can be a successful musician/writer like John Darnielle) but mostly you have to choose one or the other.
I did the first kind of work for the entirety of my 20s. I was happy and in debt. It was ultimately unsustainable if I wanted to do anything but rent a 500 sq ft basement apartment in Brooklyn. I switched to the second kind of work when I was 29, and 17 years later, I'm comfortable but still paying off the debt from my 20s. I'm not fulfilled, but at least I'm not stressed every time bills come due, and I can send my kids to college without incurring their own debt. I'm very lucky, but I had to join the machine in order to access that luck.
If Gen Z can figure out another way, more power to them.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:06 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
I did the first kind of work for the entirety of my 20s. I was happy and in debt. It was ultimately unsustainable if I wanted to do anything but rent a 500 sq ft basement apartment in Brooklyn. I switched to the second kind of work when I was 29, and 17 years later, I'm comfortable but still paying off the debt from my 20s. I'm not fulfilled, but at least I'm not stressed every time bills come due, and I can send my kids to college without incurring their own debt. I'm very lucky, but I had to join the machine in order to access that luck.
If Gen Z can figure out another way, more power to them.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:06 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
Maybe we don't need me to add another "well, I'm Gen X and..." anecdote but it's hard for me to resist the urge to talk about myself excessively.
I've got a reasonably comfortable-paying full time job (though I do live in a HCOL area with roughly 50% of my take-home going directly to housing costs). I do work I find fulfilling for the most part with the exception of some toil I don't enjoy. I have a high degree of control over my schedule and availability, set my own priorities to an extent, and can make work/life balance decisions without a great deal of sacrifice. My employer is refreshingly nontoxic (although it has been slowly regressing to mean over the last decade in terms of corporate culture). I can make useful financial and attention contributions to my family's well-being and success. I have no debts beyond a mortgage and am slightly ahead on that.
I'm privileged as fuck. Many of my peers are deeply in debt from either their educations, survival of economic turndowns, extended unemployment stints, outrageous medical costs, or elder care costs. I have immediate family members that live hand-to-mouth without my direct intervention. Some are paying significant portions of their income as part of divorce decrees. Some struggle to make ends meet because of weak support from their union. Most have no power of collective bargaining at all. Many are two income families with children where the income of one partner just barely covers the cost of child care. Others have had to drop out of the working world due to disability, mental health crises, or to care for special needs children.
Things may be going pretty well for me at the moment -- despite the fact that it took fucking decades to lift myself out of homeless-level poverty and the lasting scars of a poverty mindset -- but my society and economic system is sick. It's broken. It's failing my peers, my children, my community, the very democratic foundations of my nation. I made out okay for myself due almost entirely to a series of impossibly good luck breaks, not my grit or work ethic; others will have no such chances because we are losing the goddamned class war at an ever-increasing rate.
Just because the system is working for some, it's not working for all. Share of middle income (as a proxy for the value of labor received by the worker) has been steadily declining over my entire lifetime as the capital class devours everything. I see people getting shit on by the very structure of an economic system that strongly incentivizes those who contribute to their misery.
I do not dream of labor, indeed. Why would I? Gambling with literally the very hours of your life on wage slavery -- a wage which often isn't even enough to offer a somewhat golden handcuff -- is betting against the house. The urge to opt out or fix it is not only reasonable, it's just about the only rational choice.
posted by majick at 11:17 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've got a reasonably comfortable-paying full time job (though I do live in a HCOL area with roughly 50% of my take-home going directly to housing costs). I do work I find fulfilling for the most part with the exception of some toil I don't enjoy. I have a high degree of control over my schedule and availability, set my own priorities to an extent, and can make work/life balance decisions without a great deal of sacrifice. My employer is refreshingly nontoxic (although it has been slowly regressing to mean over the last decade in terms of corporate culture). I can make useful financial and attention contributions to my family's well-being and success. I have no debts beyond a mortgage and am slightly ahead on that.
I'm privileged as fuck. Many of my peers are deeply in debt from either their educations, survival of economic turndowns, extended unemployment stints, outrageous medical costs, or elder care costs. I have immediate family members that live hand-to-mouth without my direct intervention. Some are paying significant portions of their income as part of divorce decrees. Some struggle to make ends meet because of weak support from their union. Most have no power of collective bargaining at all. Many are two income families with children where the income of one partner just barely covers the cost of child care. Others have had to drop out of the working world due to disability, mental health crises, or to care for special needs children.
Things may be going pretty well for me at the moment -- despite the fact that it took fucking decades to lift myself out of homeless-level poverty and the lasting scars of a poverty mindset -- but my society and economic system is sick. It's broken. It's failing my peers, my children, my community, the very democratic foundations of my nation. I made out okay for myself due almost entirely to a series of impossibly good luck breaks, not my grit or work ethic; others will have no such chances because we are losing the goddamned class war at an ever-increasing rate.
Just because the system is working for some, it's not working for all. Share of middle income (as a proxy for the value of labor received by the worker) has been steadily declining over my entire lifetime as the capital class devours everything. I see people getting shit on by the very structure of an economic system that strongly incentivizes those who contribute to their misery.
I do not dream of labor, indeed. Why would I? Gambling with literally the very hours of your life on wage slavery -- a wage which often isn't even enough to offer a somewhat golden handcuff -- is betting against the house. The urge to opt out or fix it is not only reasonable, it's just about the only rational choice.
posted by majick at 11:17 AM on April 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I had to pick door #2 two years into my career when my dream job gave me the boot. Which was rather fortunate at the time because people trying to stay in that career just lost their jobs later, whereas I at least got established elsewhere rather easily at the time. I have so many issues with my job, but insurance/financial stability aren't one of them. Things you love and care about are expendable and you're not going to get paid for that unless you become famous, which is a whole other hassle.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:41 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:41 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
(1) work that is meaningful and fulfilling, and (2) work that provides sufficient financial remuneration to live comfortably, support a family, buy a house, etc. There are rare circumstances in which the two categories overlap (like when you can be a successful musician/writer like John Darnielle) but mostly you have to choose one or the other.
Number 2 is an actual option for some people!? Would love to find one of those magic jobs. I'm certainly not working a #1. It's a shit admin job with more stress than it's worth but it still pays better than retail.
posted by carrioncomfort at 2:03 PM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Number 2 is an actual option for some people!? Would love to find one of those magic jobs. I'm certainly not working a #1. It's a shit admin job with more stress than it's worth but it still pays better than retail.
posted by carrioncomfort at 2:03 PM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
My son (cusp of Millennial and Gen Z, having been born in 1997) has a job that fits #2. He's making more now, 3 years out of college, than I ever will make. Ever. He's a programmer. I work for a non-profit. He also doesn't live in a super-high COL city, but that's a choice he was able to make; I know it's not a choice that is available to everyone.
posted by cooker girl at 3:13 PM on April 25, 2022
posted by cooker girl at 3:13 PM on April 25, 2022
Yeah, #3 option is "job(s) I hate AND I'm still broke."
I went to an audition this afternoon. I wasn't very good (oh well, not a biggie, doing it more for the fun of it than anything else) but the guy I was in with was spectacular. He was telling me he had to give up acting to have kids and now he is a UPS driver so he doesn't have a reliable schedule any more to be able to act. He was so good. It's just a fucking waste of talent to make that guy have to drive around all day for a living so he can continue to exist (and reproduce).
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:10 PM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
I went to an audition this afternoon. I wasn't very good (oh well, not a biggie, doing it more for the fun of it than anything else) but the guy I was in with was spectacular. He was telling me he had to give up acting to have kids and now he is a UPS driver so he doesn't have a reliable schedule any more to be able to act. He was so good. It's just a fucking waste of talent to make that guy have to drive around all day for a living so he can continue to exist (and reproduce).
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:10 PM on April 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
Going from a 40-hour workweek to a mandatory 35-hour workweek would be a start, as would a minimum wage pegged to inflation
This is a great example of why incrementalism won't work very well. Under our current system of monetary policy, this simply wouldn't be possible. That's because the way we target inflation is through pain. Inflation drives prices up faster than wages, this inflicts pain through reduced consumption and therefore acts as a brake on further inflation. If you index a substantial amount of total wages to inflation, you create a wage-price spiral so inflation indexation is essentially a political privilege for certain workers and for retirees which cannot be universally extended without a complete revision of our economic system.
Anyway, I'm super opposed to almost any kind of generational analysis because I think it conceals more than it reveals.
As others have noted above, it is not the case that Gen X / Boomers / whatever are all universally rich. When we say that "our parents" are rich, it is worth considering that this really means that some of us have wealthy parents from whom (assuming Medicare planning etc) we will inherit property, shares, and money and what looks like a much flatter Millennial/Zoomer wealth distribution just hasn't reflected all those future inheritances yet. If it is the case that wealth inequality is rising substantially then we go back to the world of the Victorian/Georgian novel. Plenty of Jane Austen characters do not "on paper" have any wealth but if they're the entailed heir of an elderly peer, well...
I've certainly seen this within my own late 30s social circle in the UK, ten years ago our incomes were all very similar and we lived in a series of shared houses and flats, did the same things for fun, went on the same holidays, etc so it was easy not to think about familial wealth disparities. Then suddenly people start buying houses in... implausible places and it becomes clearer where those fault lines are.
posted by atrazine at 6:30 AM on April 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is a great example of why incrementalism won't work very well. Under our current system of monetary policy, this simply wouldn't be possible. That's because the way we target inflation is through pain. Inflation drives prices up faster than wages, this inflicts pain through reduced consumption and therefore acts as a brake on further inflation. If you index a substantial amount of total wages to inflation, you create a wage-price spiral so inflation indexation is essentially a political privilege for certain workers and for retirees which cannot be universally extended without a complete revision of our economic system.
Anyway, I'm super opposed to almost any kind of generational analysis because I think it conceals more than it reveals.
As others have noted above, it is not the case that Gen X / Boomers / whatever are all universally rich. When we say that "our parents" are rich, it is worth considering that this really means that some of us have wealthy parents from whom (assuming Medicare planning etc) we will inherit property, shares, and money and what looks like a much flatter Millennial/Zoomer wealth distribution just hasn't reflected all those future inheritances yet. If it is the case that wealth inequality is rising substantially then we go back to the world of the Victorian/Georgian novel. Plenty of Jane Austen characters do not "on paper" have any wealth but if they're the entailed heir of an elderly peer, well...
I've certainly seen this within my own late 30s social circle in the UK, ten years ago our incomes were all very similar and we lived in a series of shared houses and flats, did the same things for fun, went on the same holidays, etc so it was easy not to think about familial wealth disparities. Then suddenly people start buying houses in... implausible places and it becomes clearer where those fault lines are.
posted by atrazine at 6:30 AM on April 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
The #2 jobs exist, in the software industry (designers, engineers and product managers will all get six figures at a publicly traded software company), in law and medicine, in some trades (plumbing and electrical can fetch you over 100k these days), and actuarial sciences. These are the things i can think of that pay well that don't require you to be management. Then there are management positions which millennials are definitely being promoted into now (ugh). The problem is that for a long time for my millennial generation, finding them meant moving to an expensive city where even 100k a year wasn't enough to afford to buy a house or even rent somewhere nice. 3k a month in rent means your take home pay is cut by 36,000! So much for making six figures. But yeah, these jobs exist and people in their 30s and 20s are getting them. That doesn't mean the majority of us are doing great, but it's wrong to say that corporate culture isn't creating these jobs for some people, it has to! Corporations have to reproduce themselves and they do that by reproducing the kind of people that they want to see around them: "happy", well off professionals with ownership stakes in the company, who can afford to dress fashionably and go to the right places etc. There will always be these people, even as the ranks of the underemployed and invisible workers who create most of the value for the elevated ones grow and grow...
posted by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on April 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on April 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
this really means that some of us have wealthy parents
This is a fair point. For that population of broke-ass 30-, 40-, and 50-somethings the generational wealth curve has flattened because their parents have good expected lifespans statistically speaking.
Many, many of us, though, will have no access to generational wealth whatsoever no matter the timeline. I could see how that might add to the feeling that the treadmill isn't leading anywhere and maybe running the rat maze is forced upon us to avoid sleeping in the snow or dying from disease.
posted by majick at 6:46 AM on April 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
This is a fair point. For that population of broke-ass 30-, 40-, and 50-somethings the generational wealth curve has flattened because their parents have good expected lifespans statistically speaking.
Many, many of us, though, will have no access to generational wealth whatsoever no matter the timeline. I could see how that might add to the feeling that the treadmill isn't leading anywhere and maybe running the rat maze is forced upon us to avoid sleeping in the snow or dying from disease.
posted by majick at 6:46 AM on April 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gates like a lot of rich people claims to be "donating" money to education, but in reality he's spending it on replacing local control over education spending in towns with tax bases depleted by extractive economics and right-wing tax-cutting with his own personal preferences on how children should be educated. He's not the only one; here's a 2016 article on the subject.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:11 AM on April 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:11 AM on April 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is maybe worth its own FPP, but the NYT is also on the case: The Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class (share link should work for 14 days).
posted by fedward at 11:56 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
“More education does two things — it inoculates you to some extent against employer scare tactics,” Ms. Milkman said. “And it’s not that big a deal to get fired. You know, ‘Who cares? I can get some other crummy job.’”That NYT piece links to this Huffpost piece on the Amazon Labor Union's tactics against Amazon's union busting consultants, which is also worth a read.
posted by fedward at 11:56 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
« Older Unclear and Present Danger | Don't forget the other Big Dig Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Where are you now Gen X, when we need you the most?
posted by geoff. at 1:52 PM on April 24, 2022 [25 favorites]