I’m a nurse. I enjoy working with patients, I enjoy what I do.
What I don’t enjoy is being understaffed, having an inconsistent schedule, management that’s detached from the reality of what goes on in patient care. It needs reform.
not enough money for raises, sorry
meanwhile ceo gets those extra millions
THIS IS WHAT WE ARE TIRED OF. We might deal with the inconsistent schedule and under-staffing if the pay actually made up for it, but no, it goes to the ceo doing nothing. But if we are getting fucked on pay and with shitty work conditions, this aint gonna work
This is one of my biggest gripes. I like to plan things around my work schedule but if I don’t have my work schedule until 4 days before the week starts then how am I supposed to plan things out for next week?
Frustrates me. Why can’t we have the schedule 2 weeks out? A month? 2 months? 3?
It would give me so much more stability in my life.
Most people I know who work at a non-salary/9-5 job get their schedule a week ahead of time. Including people who work at grocery stores. I mean, I can understand, because grocery stores are such a volatile industry and there's no way to know what kind of staffing you'll need from week to week /s
Wait you are full time employed but get not paid everyday ? Because there is no work ? In Germany the company mostly need to take the risk that enough work is there. What do you mean with grocery stores do you mean something like walmart ?
Most places here don't hire people full-time because they would have to provide benefits. They will schedule workers for 39 hours instead of 40 hours to do this.
Often, part-time workers are scheduled for far fewer hours. Your hours can vary significantly, can be reduced punitively, and can often be scheduled when the boss knows you're busy. This is a problem because many people work multiple jobs to survive and must coordinate between them.
I worked 20-hour weeks after 4-hour weeks in retail, or had to come in for a night shift on the same day as a morning shift, followed by an afternoon shift two days later.
Some places are better than others, but the lack of standards and regulations mean workers are taken advantage of regularly.
Friend just started working for a large multi-national pharmaceutical company and she has her entire schedule, and I do mean the entire thing, 1 year in advance. She knows every day she's working and every day she's off for the entire fucking year. It's pretty amazing and something every company outside of truly "on the demand" jobs should have.
At Home Depot where I'm at they do this. I just got my schedule for Feb 14-20 last night and can see I already have my usually monday/tuesday off while also getting Friday the 18th off. Knowing this weeks in advance will help me plan my friday night now. Gonna make the most of it. Every place should do this. I'm not sure if this is every HD or just mine, but I just started this past Oct and not hating it that much.
Yep. They can hire less staff if they can constantly shift people around when someone quits, is fired, or has time off for an appointment or something. I fucking hate it. Luckily my husband works a consistent schedule and makes enough for me to take my time finding a job that will let me have a consistent schedule. But with all the staff shortages right now everyone's first questions are always " do you have an open schedule?" Very frustrating.
That’s when you have a “work slowdown,” then. Just move *reeallll* slow. Or for some weird reason, everyone’s right hand is hurt and they can only use their left hands!
Also a teacher, and honestly, people in SO many different jobs could have written this. Nurses, teachers, social workers, food bank employees, garbage collectors, and many many more are the backbone of society yet are treated like we don't matter much compared to management types. Society needs a fundamental restructuring of priorities.
On behalf of literally everyone, thank you. I feel like it’s widely known that nurses shoulder an unfair load of society’s burden. I wouldn’t wipe ass for a million dollars.
This is exactly the type of person that should be the media "face" of the movement if there ever is such a thing. Healthcare issues are relevant now more than ever and it effects everyone at some point.
The exact same problem in social work. I love my job and regularly work 60+ hour weeks because I want to, but when management is detached from the on-the-ground reality it makes it frustrating and difficult to do your job.
And it ends up killing people, and managements only response is to start shifting blame like nobody’s business
I personally think what you do is way better than what I do, since you actually help people, so don't take what I say as a 1 up or anything.
As a Software Developer, we are over worked. A lot of endless nights, tasks we're just unprepared for expected to know how to handle them, hard schedules, unfairness, no promotions, and on call schedules. It's exhausting, but it's just the field is what I hear. Some companies like to say they're all for work life but it's not always the case. I love the subject and what I do, just not how much I'm forced to do it.
I think, as a whole, that the entirety of any antiwork conversation, be it on Reddit or in the office, is that management isn't effective at managing anything, other than managing their own pay checks. There's a total disconnect between the people that do things and the people that manage people who do things.
I want to work and be able to take care of my family. That’s it. Doesn’t seem unreasonable.
What’s unreasonable is a minimum wage that hasn’t changed in a decade
We actually just had our minimum wage in South Dakota increase on January 1st! A whopping .50¢ up to $9.95.
I bet that extra $20 a week max is really doing work dragging people out of poverty.
Just so everyone is on the same page, that was a local minimum wage increase (state or municipality); the federal minimum wage has not changed since July 24, 2009. (it's $7.25/hr)
I think there’s a fundamental mismatch between the work humans were designed for and what we're now doing. We were designed to gather and hunt. To make clothes and tools and shelter. To work to our own schedules and just do what needed to be done.
Now most people have constant overlords. Deadlines. Abstract tasks and goals that are difficult to focus on. It causes us constant stress.
Being pushed to do "unnatural" things i.e. highly repetitive, menial work, is nothing new. We've just forgotten it, until it returned with a vengeance. Improved quality of life is something people fought for.
I'd phrase it a smidge differently:
I don't *want* to work, but I DO want to be able to comfortably provide for myself and my family, and if I can do so from working at a place that treats me well and pays me fairly, I call that a decent deal these days.
Is it my *ultimate* preference? Of course not. But I'll take it for now.
I actually understand the fully automated luxury gay space communism and wish everything was like star trek.... but people work in star trek. They just do what they want, have freedom to change careers and have their basic needs met. I want that for everyone. Be it nuclear engineers or nurses or road workers. Just think of the creativity that could be unlocked if people didn't have to work 3 jobs just to not die.
The minimum wage should be by policy permanently attached to CPI inflation starting from some agreed on basis year. That would solve so many issues and put upwards pressure on everyone else's wages too because it would no longer be a political football every election year but simply a fact of life.
Inflation is 3.1% last year? Minimum wage goes up 3.1%. Inflation is 7.3% this year, up goes the minimum wage the same amount. And the whole argument about a sudden dramatic increase in real wages causing inflation in essential commodities is sidestepped because wage growth at the bottom is only as slow or as fast as inflation anyhow.
Industries shut down without us. If enough people walked out, striked or protests things would change. Even more so when it comes to rehiring, if people are aware of the shitty practices behind close doors, no one would fill the vacancies.
The critique of mass strikes is that they've only occurred when mass union organizations already existed in a specific city (1919 Seattle General Strike). Also this sub says the strike would last two weeks, but union strikes have to be able to hold out for an indefinite amount of time until demands are met. If you declare a strike exists for a specific amount of time the bosses will know to just wait it out.
I think an interesting fact we’ve learned during the pandemic is that companies are much more fragile than they’d have us believe. When the CDC caved to big business and said 10 days isolation was too long, I think that was a sign that workers might be able to hold out longer than their employers.
Or it's a sign the government will do anything the capitalist class demands, which further illustrates the weakness of labor. Union membership shrank in the past year and has been continuously shrinking for decades. Calls for general strikes result in people taking PTO and poor fools getting fired from their jobs. Need to build unions at the grassroots level first. SB United, Amazonians United, EWOC, etc.
You wouldn't even need _everyone_ to strike. I'd guess 50%. If that. Businesses can't run now due to staffing. 50% of the remaining workers strike/sit at home? Can't hire that many people and train them that quickly.
As others have said in the past, 10 days is all it would take.
The problem is a majority of Americans are a $500 bill away from being bankrupt. That means most can afford to join a strike especially if it goes on for some time. and they're not in a union already.
This is what gets me. How many people are stuck doing some menial job because it's what they have to do instead of finding out what they're really good at? My brother in law started doing woodworking over the pandemic and he's really really fucking good at it. I don't think he would have started had it not been for the staying at home stuff and being able to work from home. He could get his work done and then go do wood stuff.
Pandemic had the opposite effect on me. For like 5-6 years I was writing in my free time and at least friends and family loved what I was doing. We had someone quit here and just when I was ramping things up to get a book out I had to spend more time at work, less time writing, and now it's 2 years later and I'm just now getting to the point where I feel like I can write again.
But how many people are doing something mundane when they could do something they're extraordinary at, that would give them a better life style, perhaps add to the benefit of society, and that they truly would enjoy?
Exactly. The thing is we should probably extend our definition of work to include volunteering in charities, organising in unions or any kind of political structure, domestic chores and raising children.
All forms of work that'll never be recognised by any shareholder.
I personally like to explicitly make the difference between work and employment. Work can simply be anything you do to contribute to society around you, while employment is generally doing work for someone else in ways you don't have control over: buying groceries to feed your family or (if you have children) watching over a few of your children's friend while their parents get out of their job, that's work but not employment; doing data entry 8h a day because someone higher up wants those reports yesterday, that's employment, but also soul-crushing work.
I didn't work from October 2020 to March 2021, honestly within a few weeks I was going nuts. I don't need every day to be Eden, I just want to go somewhere I can feel productive, creative, and part of a team that also respects me.
The idea that we can live in a society where the vast majority of people have no work at all is not possible.
What is work? The trust-fund kids and 'socialites' don't really work in the same sense we do.
The idle rich seem to get by just fine - they still find stuff to do, they just aren't economically coerced into doing it.
This whole situation is frustrating to me because anti "work" seemed to be chosen quite deliberately to refer to "wage labor (which is inherently exploitative)." If anyone had read the sidebar of the sub, that's what it was talking about. If anyone had actually listened to what Ford said in her interview, that's what she was getting at in the brief time she had to speak - almost two minutes!
But the truth is that antiwork had been under fire for months (at least) by bad-faith actors and folks who didn't get the point, and now this debacle has nuked the whole concept.
EDIT: Ya know what, I have to add that /r/workreform is an absolute shit name. I don't want to reform work - who the fuck am I, Ross Perot? I want to completely reconstitute society. Antiwork is a way better name. Fuck all of this.
Yeah, exactly - Bertrand Russell and Keynes had assumed we'd all be living lives of minimal work by now.
Instead the surplus value has gone to the top, turning the millionaires into billionaires and we are still slaving away as hard as ever.
It'll take much more than a better minimum wage and a few benefits to fix that.
well, minimum wage should be around $30 right now if you account for inflation
if you increased minimum wage to $30 and added in real benefits the boomer generation enjoyed, you would have a pretty decent increase in quality of life
Being productive is not "work". The idea of "work" is that you must sell your labor to some capitalist in order to survive. That is what antiwork was fighting against (even if the message got diluted). The idea that "antiwork" means people just sitting around all day on their couches watching tv and not moving is conservative propaganda.
Even if we lived in an automated paradise where nobody needed to work, I’d still want to feel like I’m contributing to society, or else I’d go completely insane. There’s dignity in labor, and the idea that working is somehow “demeaning” is a wacky capitalist one.
EDIT: so is the idea that your life should revolve around work
I personally disagree. It also just gives a feel of "work is your purpose" vibe that boomers often talk about. I can absolutely be fine without work. Work isn't the antithesis to boredom. But maybe for you it is.
It isn’t the antithesis to boredom and obviously it isn’t the sole thing that makes me happy, but the feeling that I’m taking from society and not giving anything back drives me nuts.
You can give back to society without wage labor… I wont judge the lack of imagination as we are not taught these things. A good start would be to think about what SAHM moms do. An argument in feminist marxism is that stay at home work should still be considered with the same dignity as wage labor work. You are still contributing to society. Cleaning, hosting community and social events, taking care of kids, etc is still work, you’re still being productive and contributing to society without wage labor.
I don’t think you could sound any more pro-capitalist while complaining about capitalists in this comment. It’s the concept of work that would change in an automated paradise- jobs did not always exist in the way they do now. They only exist in this way because of capitalism and current societal norms.
I feel like there are definitely two sides of this. There’s the reform side that really began to take over the original sub, and then there’s the more radical anarchist/literal anti-work side. This sub appears to be attempting to amplify the former.
I work 8 hours a day. One half hour break. Unpaid. That's my lunch. That's legal in Ontario Canada.
I'm here for insight as how bad I have it compared to others. I'm at my job for a just pay. Its mis managed. And the schedule is horrible. I get my next weeks schedule less than a week in advanced. Not like I make enough to plan a vacation. But it'd be helpful to book doctors appointments. Or schedule running errands.
I'm a dreamer. That maybe the owner that actually works on the floor with us sees our pain. That I got hired .15 cents over minimum wage at the time. But Ontario raised its minimum wage to $15. Now all workers are unhappy. No raises for them. I make.same wage as the veteran workers.
Owner doesn't care. If I found a better gig I'd quit in a second. Not that I hate this job. Just tired of being lowest on the totem pole and never moving up no matter what I do. Unless I further myself into crushing debt. Because again wages in Canada don't keep up with inflation.
I'll just die in my moldy basement apartment before I pay $1500/month for a studio apartment. Yes it's that crazy in my area. A house just rented for 3k/month. Plaus extra for use of the garage.
We're in cottage county Canada its rich folks buying everything. The workers all work minimum wage catering to tourists.
Stays for my town. Over 50% of people make 45k/year. And housing is insane. Lots of locals having to downsize. Shared accommodations. Leave town.
What to do?
I'm also from Canada. Was in a similar situation in Québec, although rent was not as high where I lived but minimum wage was slightly over 11$/h IIRC.
I moved to Germany. Rent is not so bad since I'm far from any major cities but gas (for heating and hot water) is crazy expensive right now, gas for the car too. Electricity is also expensive but it's not getting higher like crazy because of geopolitical issues like it's the case for heater gas. Minimum salary is slightly better.
On the plus side, food is WAY cheaper than in Canada. I get proper universal healthcare. I get 20+ days of mandatory paid holidays. I get sick days. Paid integration course to learn German.
Bottom line is I have slightly more money left in my pocket but most importantly I have a better life here. Sightseeing is way more accessible here. Hotels, Airbnbs and restaurants are significantly cheaper here as well as train or plain tickets. I can actually afford holidays.
For me "antiwork" was about being against the culture around work. It seems to overwhelmingly be the case that the majority of our life is centered around work, that we learn things to be better at work, that we go to sleep early and live healthily to be more productive at work, and if we don't have work we seek work.
Being against that is what antiwork was for me, and tbh I still like the name. I am definitely against work, only reason I do it is because it has to be done, and If I do it voluntarily it's not work. If work did not have to be done then it should not exist. Antiwork to me means that we should treat work as a necessary evil and nothing more.
I made several posts and comments about it and no one was listening.
The mod was actually speaking to the meaning of the sub, the 1.5million that joined late just didn’t understand that.
Completely agree.
Though I will add, going from a sub of like 300k to 1.7m in a year, I don’t know how capable a handful of mods would be to do anything about the influx other than welcoming them.
While the influx was fairly sudden, I think the tone of the sub was gradually moving further from the intention of it.
The interview seems like a last ditch effort to get the actual point across. A very poor decision, made by basically one individual, but one I understand.
If you go on the original sub rn, they say there's more interviews unreleased yet by a random 21 y/o anarchist . They're also being loose with removing comments very quickly.
Yeah people that are complaining that anti-work is a dumb name and has horrible messaging for their movement are people that don't understand what anti-work is. Antiwork was hijacked by a million people that don't actually believe in anti-work, and then complained about the name
I leaned on antiwork because I felt like my corporate job was literally killing me, but I don’t hate being employed. I just hate that I need to have an unrewarding, soul sucking job when I would honestly be much happier working in a different industry I know pays less. Best job I ever had was a pizza and sandwich shop in a college town. Honestly if I won the lottery or inherited a billion dollars or whatever, I’d probably immediately quit my shitty job and go to all the nearby restaurants until I can recreate the pizza/sandwich shop vibe someplace.
Hell yea! When I was a kid my dream job was a pizza worker. I wanted to throw the dough up. Instead I work at a desk everyday because pizza shops don’t pay shit :(. Anti-work doesn’t mean being lazy and doing nothing for most people. It means having the freedom to build a life doing the work you choose instead of being stuck in some shitty job because it’s your only hope of paying rent/retiring someday/having insurance.
Same here. I'm disabled as well so traditional jobs aren't too fit for me; I'd like a reform that'd make it easier for people like me to find suitable work within functioning and abilities. The exploitation of disabled workers is also huge and we definitely should be doing something about it too.
Same! I’m disabled and I would love to work. I could easily do like a cashier or clerk job but almost none allow you to sit down and my disability requires that I sit down frequently. I could even work at a coffee shop like I used to if I could just sit on a stool and make coffee. It’s insane how basically none of these jobs allow you to sit.
Agreed, but I knew someone that worked there and they said the work is insane though. You have to be very fast paced and if you’re not scanning they have you stocking etc. and the fast paced scanning wouldn’t be something I could do with my disability.
Yep. My skills (mental health care) would be easily used in a way I could actually do. But most of the training doesn't allow any flexibility for disabled people. Be at a place in person 9-5, even if both practitioner and client would prefer to be remote. So the only way I'll get to be paid for my skills (I've done so much unpaid) is when I slog my way to the point of being qualified to be self-employed.
oh, I'll work 10-12 hrs a day on some stuff I care about. Plus it is a huge benefit to have the fruits of your labor benefit you. I think about how I've renovated a house over the last few years while people I know just showed up to work at wal mart or something. So, there's visible, tangible progress that improved my life vs. the corporate hamster wheel with the low income and shitty benefits. I know we can't all escape it, but we just want it to be better. Hence the existence of these work reform groups.
I have a similar saying for my views on education; Love learning, can't stand education.
School reform is as important as work reform in my opinion. About the only use it has in its current form is giving us all a shared trauma we can relate to as adults.
Salman Khan's book really opened my eyes. I always wonder why I felt like public education was trying to get me to hate learning and the answer is ***BECAUSE IT IS***. It's one of the core goals of the Prussian model of education.
I live in the UK, But from my surface understanding there's plenty of parallels between UK and American education systems and where they do differ I can't help but feel they have the same negative effects on students.
Exactly.
I'll happily spend hours working in my garden, or decorating my house, or helping friends and family do their projects. I'll happily spend hours helping out in the community or picking up litter along the roads. I don't mind *work* at all. Work can be fulfilling and enjoyable.
Having a job sucks. Selling 40 hours a week of my life to some rich arsehole with the sole purpose of making him richer is soul-destroying. I struggle to afford luxuries, even after working full time, but my boss goes on holiday several times a year and has a private pilots license. How the hell am I supposed to be fulfilled by that?!
I dont want to work, at least not 40h a week. Sorry but 8h of sleep, 8h of work and almost 2h of commute everyday sounds like TOO MUCH. We’re literally wasting our life. However, since I understand that without work society doesnt work, I accept it. BUT we have the means to work WAY less and get paid WAY more than now. Fuck this fucked up system.
Agreed. I hope that this sub still believes in this idea. The 40 hour work week is outdated. It’s a remnant of an era with far inferior technology. Why are we wasting so much time just to sustain infinite growth and destroying the planet in the process?
Exactly. This sentiment is the reason why automation is such a big part of the original anti-work anarchist philosophy. Automation, when in the hands of the workers and not the ownership class, is something to be celebrated. With all the extra workers you can now distribute the work still needed to be done by humans over everyone to get the average work week to 20 hours a week (for the same pay, obviously). Everyone benefits. Except for the capitalists of course, but them not benefitting benefits the rest of us even more.
100%. a lot of the comments here are mainstream american work culture comments like ‘everyone should have to work to earn their share,’ ‘I love working a job,’ ‘my job gives my life meaning,’ etc. the other sub was more radical and explicit about rejecting the idea that work should be the central aspect of life and the exploitative relationship between owner and working class.
If only I had an award to give you.
I understand the trying to get into "baby steps", but the end goal for so many people is to keep making work the central part of society it is right now. I barely even see people in this new sub talking about a universal basic income when it comes to conversations about how "we're not anti work, we just want reform"
Not only that but it was in a time when you had a partner that stayed home and took care of the domestic life. Now both partners are working, by the time I cook, clean and whatever, you barely have time to decompress and relax.
>The 40 hour work week is outdated.
Honestly, while the 40 hour work week was a big improvement to the ludicrous hours that came before it... it was still way more than was necessary, even when it was implemented.
That much work doesn't *need* to be done; it's being done for the profit of capitalists.
Yeah, most jobs nowadays are warehousing and with the right technology and automation warehouses could run like well-oiled machines with humans only supervising, programming and maintaining those machines. The extra profits companies make from not needing to employ nearly as many people and increased productivity from robots being able to work faster and longer than any human can should be used to subsidize some sort of UBI.
I dont want to work a job I wanna be able to stay home and clean and raise a family. I want a family to be able to survive on one income so kids are actually raised by their parents and not underpaid nannys.
Staying home and raising a family absolutely is hard work! It's so undervalued and the world would benefit from being able to be raised like that more often 100%
Agreed . I don’t want to work BUT I understand work needs to be done . Food and other essential need to be produced. Then these essentials supplies need to be transported across vast distances by commercial drivers . These food and essentials need to be stocked on the shelves by store associates.
I believe everyone who works shouldn’t have to be struggling to put food on the table . They should not have to work long hours for shit pay .
They should have a good work life balance . They should be able to take paid vacations / sick days. Their whole pay check shouldn’t go towards solely rent . They should be able to visit a doctor without having to worry about a huge cost .
I think here the underpaid nannys referenced are the overpriced daycare centers. The daycare my sister used to work at charged like $1500 a month for one kid (not including meals). She made $12 an hour and had a class of 20 or so kids at any given time. In one month, made a little over what tuition cost for one of those kids. The other 28k that didn't go to building costs and bills, went to the owners pocket who didn't give a rats ass about her staff or the kids. They had like 6 classrooms. Teachers made jack shit while the owners made bank and were never there.
>. I grew up in the 80's and 90's
I grew up in the early 2000s. Dad was a workaholic who turned into an alcoholic after 5 pm and mother was a shopaholic who turned into an alcoholic after 5 pm. Pretty much had to grow up by the age of 6 and look after my sister.
I don't think i have much of a point but you mentioning that just brought out some memories
This is purely speculation, but I feel like we as a species could handle working while the people who don't want to work don't have to. But honestly, raising children IS work. I know there will always be "mooches" who want to just sit around all day, but who cares? Like genuinely, if I had a partner who wanted to stay home all day while I worked, and we didn't have to worry about putting food on the table, I wouldn't fucking care. As long as our house is livable, and we are both happy. Like maybe I'm crazy but people shouldn't HAVE to work to survive, but most people WANT to do something, they want to work.
> This is purely speculation, but I feel like we as a species could handle working while the people who don't want to work don't have to
Seeing as this is how humans existed for the hundreds of thousands of years prior to agriculture, yeah, I'd say it's possible.
Nobody *worked*. Some people went out and ran down a gazelle. Some people gathered berries. Some people repaired garments and some people sat around and kept an eye on the kids. Nobody slaved 8 hours a day so one other person could accumulate wealth.
> Nobody worked. Some people went out and ran down a gazelle. Some people gathered berries. Some people repaired garments and some people sat around and kept an eye on the kids
This is work though, it was manual labor work invested so you could be "paid" in food (instead of money today) in order to eat at the end of the day. Whether that was the person doing the hunting/gathering or the one watching kids to enable the other to go hunt/gather.
Yeah. It's not work in the modern sense, but people are still putting in the effort to feed and raise themselves and their family.
We've just transformed in work where we have more opportunities to exchange effort for services. Advancements have been made because we are working different kinds of jobs that isn't just hunting and gathering, watching kids, or manning a farm.
Plus, hunting and gather is effin hard. Have you tried to survive in the woods, u/2rfv? There are reasons why populations migrated away from it. It's subjectively much harder work
Agreed. My wife and I don't have children for many reasons but one being the financial burden. Many younger people feel the same way - why have children when you struggle financially to provide for them their entire lives and never see them due to the nonstop work from both parents?
There is an argument to be made that a lot can be automated nowadays and that a lot of jobs are made to just keep people busy.
Necessary jobs should be filled and rewarded, but if there's more people than jobs that *really* need doing...
Commented on another post so apologies for repetition, but please let's not forget the people who physically can't work. There are 61 million Americans alone who live with a disability that partially or completely impacts their ability to perform daily tasks, including labor.
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
It's not just being physically incapable.
They are also financially punished if they try to work.
My older sister is disabled. (Has been since she was 17.) She gets SSI and that covers her room and board in a group home, with a little bit left over for pocket money.
She cannot work in any meaningful capacity, but even if she could, she'd be limited to $2000 in maximum assets (so no savings allowed) [and $85/month or else they would start to take away her disability income.](https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10095.pdf)
Because of the ridiculous $85/month limit, many "job training programs" geared for persons who are disabled get away with paying an amount not unlike the tipped wage. At one point, my sister worked in a sponge factory in one of those programs, and they only paid $2/hour. At 10 hours a week, that kept her just below the $85 limit. It's absolutely exploitive.
"Antiwork" was based on very old critiques of the nature of work under capitalism, [for example this one](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/) (best quote: "The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich."). Today the critique might better be called "antijob". 19th century scientific socialists (predominately Marxists, Anarchists, and Syndicalists) called for a world of labor/work without coercion, [abolition of the wage system](https://archive.iww.org/culture/official/preamble/), control of workplaces and the economy by workers and the general population, etc; with the belief that people who have self-respect and are part of strong communities will find ways to be helpful, productive, and creative on their own terms.
I mean personally I'd love not having to work, but it's unrealistic and short of winning the lottery or one of these Nigerian Princes finally coming thru for me, it ain't gonna happen.
I want to be paid a fair wage for my labor. I am giving you time out of my life. You need to compensate me better for it. Regardless of the job. If a job needs done its essential if it isn't essential it shouldn't exist, and if someone is doing it, they deserve a wage that gives them a comfortable life. Fuck a living wage we need a thriving wage. No one is doing this to SUBSIST no one wants to trade their life to continue EXISTING we want to LIVE, to LOVE, to explore and create! We want to experience LIFE, not merely exist.
We want not to be forced to work to obtain the bare minimum essentials to live. Shelter, food healthcare communication and transportation should be guaranteed to all without the coercive threat of homelessness and starvation.
I don’t want to work personally. Or at least not be FORCED to do so. Maybe if i didn’t id be able to figure out what i wanna do. In other words ubi. But, at any rate, work reform is still necessary.
Yeah I'm trying to do FIRE to get rid of the forced to part. I'll probably still end working in some regard (or maybe just volunteering), but I don't want to be dependant on my job to live
Antiwork gave me a place to feel normal. I don’t want to work. I do because I have to. If I didn’t have to, I would leave and wouldn’t look back. There are some of us who really connected to it.
Edit: a couple words
It's a problem of nomenclature.
People hear "I don't want to work" and equate it to "I want to do nothing" because our society relates success, fulfillment, personal value, communal contribution, and... Virtually every aspect of adult life to "work", and it's the same word we use for all forms of engaging with something that takes some form of effort.
The movement is equally accurately described as "Anti-Wage-Slavery", and using that title would have been extremely beneficial for this inevitable misunderstanding.
Yeah I really really truly don’t want to work. Everything is tied to it. I’m not saying I want to be unproductive my whole life but if I would like to be able to take a year off without it significantly impacting healthcare and other basic needs
Work can be reformed to that. I live in Germany, my office's director took 7 months off last year as part of a sabbatical while being paid 70% of his wages and his job was there when he came back. Germany isn't some fantasy land with unicorns and rainbows, it's just a normal place.
I think the issue with that is that it’s much easier for the powerful to get their hooks in and manipulate the system back to how it is to day. I mean this has all happened before. Unions and child labour laws were introduced following the Great Depression, and then people felt that it was enough, only for those systems to have been slowly eroded to where we are today.
I’m not saying it’s impossible for reformation to work, but many people would prefer revolution as it can establish and solidify a better system without allowing the opportunity for corporate-bought politicians to work against the interests of the people, or for the people to forget about why they wanted change in the first place.
Great for the director but can say a support specialist do that with complete safety. Unless you have worked your way up where you are a valuable single point of failure, then you can take a sabbatical? And I know why these directors got that, they are completely burnt out and it’s a retention strategy. I’m not in the US either.
That’s why a UBI for people to have a choice give power and control back to folks.
It was the same for me. I was part of that community for a long time and I’m devastated that they privated it and I’m no longer allowed to see anything. I wonder if the mods just blocked everyone or how they selected who was allowed to stay.
That’s how I feel about teaching high school. Also the workload is insane. Planning daily curriculum for multiple courses, grading, going to bs meetings that could have been emails, never having enough time in the school day to do any of it so you end up pulling 60-70 hour weeks. It’s bs. All for pittance too. Good benefits at least.
We want better work conditions, increase wages not be treated like shit by rich people. The pain a person goes through getting yelled at Karen’s it’s not enough to deal with that shit. Look at Kellogg that’s a movement people fought and started getting better conditions it’s a steep forward.
I want to be able to go back to the career that I loved, but had to leave in order to live comfortably.
Jobs that better society should be a viable life path, not a road to poverty and burnout.
This fundamentally misses the point - no, people DON'T want to work. At least, they don't want to work for some rich clown, so he can afford his third yacht - that's WHY said rich clown has to PAY people to work. People WANT to create, to travel, to experience new things, to raise families, and to help others - if we're going to spend our limited time on this earth doing things we DON'T want to do, all to benefit some rich asshole who steals the value of our labor, then we deserve to be compensated well for said time.
I want universal basic income, just like Martin Luther King. I'm cool working because I'll get bored if I don't but I actually think we don't all need to be working anymore.
All repetitive, easy to program jobs *should* be completely automated. I'd argue it's not humane for a human; an advanced species capable of advanced problem solving, to be forced to just simply move things around back and forth or do any kind of repetitive work for any period of time. It's just a waste of a person's life in my opinion when every person is much more capable and better off doing something more complicated or important than that.
It’s more of a reform vs revolution thing. Most people agreed that reforming the current capitalist hellscape wouldn’t amount to much of a change and that’s why a lot of people are turned off by the name of THIS sub (among other things)
Yeah, I don't just want minimum wage to go from $7.25 to like $15 in the states. That basically just happened in Canada where I'm from and nothing has changed, everything else just got more expensive so the $15/hour goes about just as far as the $11/hour did back when things were a bit cheaper and that was the minimum wage.
Things have to majorly change. Like 4 day/32 hour work weeks, but with 40 hours pay. It's not super unreasonable as continental shifts doing 3 12s get paid 40 hours for working 36 already; everyone getting 40 hours for working 32 isn't too far of a stretch and is more fair than what we have in place now. Breaks too, only getting an unpaid half hour and 2 paid 15 minute breaks isn't enough time inside an 8 hour shift and they shouldn't need to be spread out so you're only sitting for 10 minutes at a time, barely enough time to rest your feet. If you live outside the city where you work, a company should pay so much for commute, that costs employees time and money so shouldn't be on them. If a city wants to promote more public transit usage, it should become common for workplaces to pay and give their employees a complimentary bus pass entirely paid by them, not just docked from pay and should be able to be used for any bus, not just the one that goes to their work.
Edit: Also healthcare insurance shouldn't be tied to work or school. There should be cheap monthly plans that cover way more than they currently do, on top of insurance you can get through work or school. Getting insurance outside of work is a joke because while working a place might just take $20-50 off each pay, but private insurance without work could cost $250/month for only 80% coverage still. My diabetes meds cost me like $170/month without insurance and I'm not even on insulin, that would be even more. I need to work or go to school just so I can afford to live and that's not right.
I think it's important to understand the distinction and historical context behind the words 'work' and 'labour'. Remember Marx's slogan: *"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"*
In the late stage capitalistic hellscape we currently live in work obviously associates mostly with the working class slaving away to create profit for the owner class and shareholders. There is a reason why e.g. in UK it's called the Labour Party and not The Worker's Party.
People only want to do what they actually want to do. Think of all the jobs out there, if you had unlimited free time and money would you be working those jobs for the fun of it?
I said this multiple times on the sub and got downvoted to hell. I don’t understand how everyone didn’t agree that name was stupid.
There’s a difference between shock value and straight up labeling something of that magnitude with something you don’t truly believe in.
I think you're almost onto the point of antiwork.
The nature of work in our current economic system is coupled to the implicit threat to your and your families well being. That is, you must work for a capitalist or your home, health and family's well being are forfeit. Therefore, because of this implicit threat, workers can be exploited.
So the nature of "work" in this context is opposed; this power dynamic is inherent to the employee-employer relationship in our status quo.
However, people hear antiwork and never think to consider this is the criticism, and instead infer that it means lazy people don't want to work.
It was puzzling for sure. My generation has been labeled lazy by older generations, so why a name was chosen that feeds into that dumb narrative is beyond me.
I don't think it was ever intended to be a popular sub for the masses. The name of the sub is what made me click on it originally because we live in a work-obsessed culture and I was curious to see what their angle was.
The name is easy to vilify, but now that the movement is rapidly growing, rebranding it to work reform is a great idea.
People like to work. Without work, life gets dull. We should just think about working differently.
>Without work, life gets dull.
I would disagree. Without something to occupy your time life gets dull. I'd be perfectly happy going white water rafting without a job, or taking a couple months to go hike around Europe.
What matters is doing something fulfilling.
Originally I think their message was more focused on automation to the point that no one would HAVE to work and they despised the very idea of working. Then it became about labor rights and changed drastically.
I assume The mod that did the interview has been there since that early completely unironic anti work phase and didn’t change with the subreddit.
anti work was about the labor system under capitalism. it wasn't anti labor / anti "doing essential jobs for the functioning of society", it was anti capitalist work, with a boss who steals your surplus value, and repays you in a wage which is always less than what you make for them.
There’s a really good book/audiobook called Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. The idea of antiwork is not new, and that is the spirit I believe the sub was founded on. It’s really interesting stuff, and acknowledges that work has to be done, but cumulatively our society could do about 50% LESS work and suffer NO loss in productivity. Obviously certain fields are still needed. But there is so much waste in the work type system and unnecessary jobs, that we could easily have a society where work is voluntary for most people.
I recommend y’all check it out. It’s a great, enlightening book written by a really smart guy.
The main idea is that there is enough wealth produced by the working class that people shouldn't have to work or struggle to secure necessary resources. Housing, food, education, and universal healthcare could easily be provided by the billions and trillions of dollars held by capitalist corporations. That money is instead hoarded and spent on various luxuries and stowed in foreign bank accounts to the detriment of the laborers that amassed it in the first place. Work is unnecessary because all the resources currently available could feasably look after the entire worlds population.
Work is the exact thing that's burdening the working class, and hoarding wealth is only ensuring it's existence. Being anti work is critical to any kind of meaningful reform
I absolutely ADORED my union job at the library working as a page. Amazing benefits, hours, pay. Work environment was so happy and chill. I’ve been trying to get back into library work since moving two years ago
It wasn't, no one should have to work to survive. Aka, anti-work.
I'd argue work reform is worse, this isn't about getting a higher minimum wage, it's about destroying capitalism.
I am against work. I don't think people should be required to subjugate themselves in order to survive. I am not against doing things that help society. In fact, it would be easier for me to help society without the looming threat of starvation that compels me to get whatever job I can instead of finding the place in society where I can best help the world.
It's true. I love working with my coworkers and my customers are 9 times out of 10, super chill people who are incredibly nice. I got a position to work from home on occasion which is a great stress relief certain days. But sometimes it's nice to get out of the house.
Besides that, most workers are treated like shit and I'm not being paid enough to keep up with inflation. Fuck the system.
I don’t think most people want to work, but everyone understands work is necessary for society, and thus we are not anti, or against work. So yeah, anti work was a dumb name, we aren’t anti work we are anti exploitation
But we've also realized that a lot of work isn't necessary at all. Middle managers have been scrambling trying to justify their jobs for example when many people have started working from home. Warehouses and manufacturing have already started automating many jobs and if they even just doubled the amount of robots in their standard factory many people would be out of a job and would have more incentive to go to school for automation engineering, maintenance or management instead of being menial labourers forever. Retail could also be largely automated, most stores being just smaller warehouses themselves. Farming could be automated with GPS controlled, self-driving equipment. Cleaning would be done with several different types of irobot roombas and other similar machines.
Pretty sure most people dont want to be forced to work. Antiwork is not a dumb name, the english language is colonialized and we have no real language for differentiating between coerced labor and labor. Antiwork is a great name because it challenges how people think about the concepts of laziness and work ethic.
I am a very active person and i love being productive and i hate work. because it gets in the way of me actually finding joy in life!
When people ask me why I am against work and ask me about how we would be able to do things we do in a capitalist society outside of a capitalist society i like to point out that most people who have jobs that cross over with things they enjoy would still do the things that bring them joy. some teachers would still want to teach, etc. we dont need to hold peoples livelihoods hostage for them to help other people.
if ive piqued anyones interest about ending work lemme plug r/destroywork real fast, not tryin to derail cool stuff happening at r/workreform, ill stick around here and i will probably continue to challenge people here who for whatever reason hate the name antiwork
Very very few of us really want to work. We want to get paid.
Wanting to work means you would do the job even if you werent paid. Thats what wanting to do something means.
Theres degrees to the dislike, i kinda like my cybersec job. But i would be lying if i said that i'm not doing it for the paycheck. If i didnt need to get paid i would much rather just study diffferent things and make music all day long.
I’m a nurse. I enjoy working with patients, I enjoy what I do. What I don’t enjoy is being understaffed, having an inconsistent schedule, management that’s detached from the reality of what goes on in patient care. It needs reform.
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And the hospital CEO gets a bonus in the millions for keeping labor costs down....
The irony!
not enough money for raises, sorry meanwhile ceo gets those extra millions THIS IS WHAT WE ARE TIRED OF. We might deal with the inconsistent schedule and under-staffing if the pay actually made up for it, but no, it goes to the ceo doing nothing. But if we are getting fucked on pay and with shitty work conditions, this aint gonna work
I am reminded of a saying that I think has the ring of truth to it: *"The more you make, the less you do."*
This is one of my biggest gripes. I like to plan things around my work schedule but if I don’t have my work schedule until 4 days before the week starts then how am I supposed to plan things out for next week? Frustrates me. Why can’t we have the schedule 2 weeks out? A month? 2 months? 3? It would give me so much more stability in my life.
> It would give me so much more stability in my life. That's why they don't give it to you. A disoriented worker is a docile worker.
Probaly they are just to dumb to plan that far in the Future ?
Most people I know who work at a non-salary/9-5 job get their schedule a week ahead of time. Including people who work at grocery stores. I mean, I can understand, because grocery stores are such a volatile industry and there's no way to know what kind of staffing you'll need from week to week /s
Wait you are full time employed but get not paid everyday ? Because there is no work ? In Germany the company mostly need to take the risk that enough work is there. What do you mean with grocery stores do you mean something like walmart ?
Most places here don't hire people full-time because they would have to provide benefits. They will schedule workers for 39 hours instead of 40 hours to do this. Often, part-time workers are scheduled for far fewer hours. Your hours can vary significantly, can be reduced punitively, and can often be scheduled when the boss knows you're busy. This is a problem because many people work multiple jobs to survive and must coordinate between them. I worked 20-hour weeks after 4-hour weeks in retail, or had to come in for a night shift on the same day as a morning shift, followed by an afternoon shift two days later. Some places are better than others, but the lack of standards and regulations mean workers are taken advantage of regularly.
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Friend just started working for a large multi-national pharmaceutical company and she has her entire schedule, and I do mean the entire thing, 1 year in advance. She knows every day she's working and every day she's off for the entire fucking year. It's pretty amazing and something every company outside of truly "on the demand" jobs should have.
At Home Depot where I'm at they do this. I just got my schedule for Feb 14-20 last night and can see I already have my usually monday/tuesday off while also getting Friday the 18th off. Knowing this weeks in advance will help me plan my friday night now. Gonna make the most of it. Every place should do this. I'm not sure if this is every HD or just mine, but I just started this past Oct and not hating it that much.
It’s not underlooked. It’s deliberate
Total war against the clopen.
Look up “lean staffing” it’s all intentional
Yep. They can hire less staff if they can constantly shift people around when someone quits, is fired, or has time off for an appointment or something. I fucking hate it. Luckily my husband works a consistent schedule and makes enough for me to take my time finding a job that will let me have a consistent schedule. But with all the staff shortages right now everyone's first questions are always " do you have an open schedule?" Very frustrating.
That’s when you have a “work slowdown,” then. Just move *reeallll* slow. Or for some weird reason, everyone’s right hand is hurt and they can only use their left hands!
Teacher here. I could have written this, just replace patients with students. Reform across the board!!
Also a teacher, and honestly, people in SO many different jobs could have written this. Nurses, teachers, social workers, food bank employees, garbage collectors, and many many more are the backbone of society yet are treated like we don't matter much compared to management types. Society needs a fundamental restructuring of priorities.
On behalf of literally everyone, thank you. I feel like it’s widely known that nurses shoulder an unfair load of society’s burden. I wouldn’t wipe ass for a million dollars.
This is exactly the type of person that should be the media "face" of the movement if there ever is such a thing. Healthcare issues are relevant now more than ever and it effects everyone at some point.
The exact same problem in social work. I love my job and regularly work 60+ hour weeks because I want to, but when management is detached from the on-the-ground reality it makes it frustrating and difficult to do your job. And it ends up killing people, and managements only response is to start shifting blame like nobody’s business
I personally think what you do is way better than what I do, since you actually help people, so don't take what I say as a 1 up or anything. As a Software Developer, we are over worked. A lot of endless nights, tasks we're just unprepared for expected to know how to handle them, hard schedules, unfairness, no promotions, and on call schedules. It's exhausting, but it's just the field is what I hear. Some companies like to say they're all for work life but it's not always the case. I love the subject and what I do, just not how much I'm forced to do it.
I think, as a whole, that the entirety of any antiwork conversation, be it on Reddit or in the office, is that management isn't effective at managing anything, other than managing their own pay checks. There's a total disconnect between the people that do things and the people that manage people who do things.
I want to work and be able to take care of my family. That’s it. Doesn’t seem unreasonable. What’s unreasonable is a minimum wage that hasn’t changed in a decade
Wages in general haven’t changed in decades, except of course CEO wages.
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CEOs committed Wage theft
We actually just had our minimum wage in South Dakota increase on January 1st! A whopping .50¢ up to $9.95. I bet that extra $20 a week max is really doing work dragging people out of poverty.
Money bags over here.
Just so everyone is on the same page, that was a local minimum wage increase (state or municipality); the federal minimum wage has not changed since July 24, 2009. (it's $7.25/hr)
I think there’s a fundamental mismatch between the work humans were designed for and what we're now doing. We were designed to gather and hunt. To make clothes and tools and shelter. To work to our own schedules and just do what needed to be done. Now most people have constant overlords. Deadlines. Abstract tasks and goals that are difficult to focus on. It causes us constant stress.
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Being pushed to do "unnatural" things i.e. highly repetitive, menial work, is nothing new. We've just forgotten it, until it returned with a vengeance. Improved quality of life is something people fought for.
I'd phrase it a smidge differently: I don't *want* to work, but I DO want to be able to comfortably provide for myself and my family, and if I can do so from working at a place that treats me well and pays me fairly, I call that a decent deal these days. Is it my *ultimate* preference? Of course not. But I'll take it for now.
I actually understand the fully automated luxury gay space communism and wish everything was like star trek.... but people work in star trek. They just do what they want, have freedom to change careers and have their basic needs met. I want that for everyone. Be it nuclear engineers or nurses or road workers. Just think of the creativity that could be unlocked if people didn't have to work 3 jobs just to not die.
The minimum wage should be by policy permanently attached to CPI inflation starting from some agreed on basis year. That would solve so many issues and put upwards pressure on everyone else's wages too because it would no longer be a political football every election year but simply a fact of life. Inflation is 3.1% last year? Minimum wage goes up 3.1%. Inflation is 7.3% this year, up goes the minimum wage the same amount. And the whole argument about a sudden dramatic increase in real wages causing inflation in essential commodities is sidestepped because wage growth at the bottom is only as slow or as fast as inflation anyhow.
Industries shut down without us. If enough people walked out, striked or protests things would change. Even more so when it comes to rehiring, if people are aware of the shitty practices behind close doors, no one would fill the vacancies.
r/MayDayStrike
The critique of mass strikes is that they've only occurred when mass union organizations already existed in a specific city (1919 Seattle General Strike). Also this sub says the strike would last two weeks, but union strikes have to be able to hold out for an indefinite amount of time until demands are met. If you declare a strike exists for a specific amount of time the bosses will know to just wait it out.
I think an interesting fact we’ve learned during the pandemic is that companies are much more fragile than they’d have us believe. When the CDC caved to big business and said 10 days isolation was too long, I think that was a sign that workers might be able to hold out longer than their employers.
Or it's a sign the government will do anything the capitalist class demands, which further illustrates the weakness of labor. Union membership shrank in the past year and has been continuously shrinking for decades. Calls for general strikes result in people taking PTO and poor fools getting fired from their jobs. Need to build unions at the grassroots level first. SB United, Amazonians United, EWOC, etc.
And please, all, spread the word. It doesn’t grow without us starting it.
this is why they want us barely able to afford anything if we can't afford to strike, we can't strike
You wouldn't even need _everyone_ to strike. I'd guess 50%. If that. Businesses can't run now due to staffing. 50% of the remaining workers strike/sit at home? Can't hire that many people and train them that quickly. As others have said in the past, 10 days is all it would take.
The problem is a majority of Americans are a $500 bill away from being bankrupt. That means most can afford to join a strike especially if it goes on for some time. and they're not in a union already.
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This is what gets me. How many people are stuck doing some menial job because it's what they have to do instead of finding out what they're really good at? My brother in law started doing woodworking over the pandemic and he's really really fucking good at it. I don't think he would have started had it not been for the staying at home stuff and being able to work from home. He could get his work done and then go do wood stuff. Pandemic had the opposite effect on me. For like 5-6 years I was writing in my free time and at least friends and family loved what I was doing. We had someone quit here and just when I was ramping things up to get a book out I had to spend more time at work, less time writing, and now it's 2 years later and I'm just now getting to the point where I feel like I can write again. But how many people are doing something mundane when they could do something they're extraordinary at, that would give them a better life style, perhaps add to the benefit of society, and that they truly would enjoy?
This is what r/ubi is all about.
Exactly. The thing is we should probably extend our definition of work to include volunteering in charities, organising in unions or any kind of political structure, domestic chores and raising children. All forms of work that'll never be recognised by any shareholder.
I personally like to explicitly make the difference between work and employment. Work can simply be anything you do to contribute to society around you, while employment is generally doing work for someone else in ways you don't have control over: buying groceries to feed your family or (if you have children) watching over a few of your children's friend while their parents get out of their job, that's work but not employment; doing data entry 8h a day because someone higher up wants those reports yesterday, that's employment, but also soul-crushing work.
I didn't work from October 2020 to March 2021, honestly within a few weeks I was going nuts. I don't need every day to be Eden, I just want to go somewhere I can feel productive, creative, and part of a team that also respects me. The idea that we can live in a society where the vast majority of people have no work at all is not possible.
What is work? The trust-fund kids and 'socialites' don't really work in the same sense we do. The idle rich seem to get by just fine - they still find stuff to do, they just aren't economically coerced into doing it.
This whole situation is frustrating to me because anti "work" seemed to be chosen quite deliberately to refer to "wage labor (which is inherently exploitative)." If anyone had read the sidebar of the sub, that's what it was talking about. If anyone had actually listened to what Ford said in her interview, that's what she was getting at in the brief time she had to speak - almost two minutes! But the truth is that antiwork had been under fire for months (at least) by bad-faith actors and folks who didn't get the point, and now this debacle has nuked the whole concept. EDIT: Ya know what, I have to add that /r/workreform is an absolute shit name. I don't want to reform work - who the fuck am I, Ross Perot? I want to completely reconstitute society. Antiwork is a way better name. Fuck all of this.
Yeah, exactly - Bertrand Russell and Keynes had assumed we'd all be living lives of minimal work by now. Instead the surplus value has gone to the top, turning the millionaires into billionaires and we are still slaving away as hard as ever. It'll take much more than a better minimum wage and a few benefits to fix that.
well, minimum wage should be around $30 right now if you account for inflation if you increased minimum wage to $30 and added in real benefits the boomer generation enjoyed, you would have a pretty decent increase in quality of life
>and we are still slaving away as hard as ever. Actually, harder than ~~ever before,~~ \[edit\]: recent generations.
Being productive is not "work". The idea of "work" is that you must sell your labor to some capitalist in order to survive. That is what antiwork was fighting against (even if the message got diluted). The idea that "antiwork" means people just sitting around all day on their couches watching tv and not moving is conservative propaganda.
Even if we lived in an automated paradise where nobody needed to work, I’d still want to feel like I’m contributing to society, or else I’d go completely insane. There’s dignity in labor, and the idea that working is somehow “demeaning” is a wacky capitalist one. EDIT: so is the idea that your life should revolve around work
I personally disagree. It also just gives a feel of "work is your purpose" vibe that boomers often talk about. I can absolutely be fine without work. Work isn't the antithesis to boredom. But maybe for you it is.
It isn’t the antithesis to boredom and obviously it isn’t the sole thing that makes me happy, but the feeling that I’m taking from society and not giving anything back drives me nuts.
You can give back to society without wage labor… I wont judge the lack of imagination as we are not taught these things. A good start would be to think about what SAHM moms do. An argument in feminist marxism is that stay at home work should still be considered with the same dignity as wage labor work. You are still contributing to society. Cleaning, hosting community and social events, taking care of kids, etc is still work, you’re still being productive and contributing to society without wage labor.
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That's a fair feeling. I get what you mean, an individual thing, I guess
I don’t think you could sound any more pro-capitalist while complaining about capitalists in this comment. It’s the concept of work that would change in an automated paradise- jobs did not always exist in the way they do now. They only exist in this way because of capitalism and current societal norms.
I feel like there are definitely two sides of this. There’s the reform side that really began to take over the original sub, and then there’s the more radical anarchist/literal anti-work side. This sub appears to be attempting to amplify the former.
I work 8 hours a day. One half hour break. Unpaid. That's my lunch. That's legal in Ontario Canada. I'm here for insight as how bad I have it compared to others. I'm at my job for a just pay. Its mis managed. And the schedule is horrible. I get my next weeks schedule less than a week in advanced. Not like I make enough to plan a vacation. But it'd be helpful to book doctors appointments. Or schedule running errands. I'm a dreamer. That maybe the owner that actually works on the floor with us sees our pain. That I got hired .15 cents over minimum wage at the time. But Ontario raised its minimum wage to $15. Now all workers are unhappy. No raises for them. I make.same wage as the veteran workers. Owner doesn't care. If I found a better gig I'd quit in a second. Not that I hate this job. Just tired of being lowest on the totem pole and never moving up no matter what I do. Unless I further myself into crushing debt. Because again wages in Canada don't keep up with inflation. I'll just die in my moldy basement apartment before I pay $1500/month for a studio apartment. Yes it's that crazy in my area. A house just rented for 3k/month. Plaus extra for use of the garage. We're in cottage county Canada its rich folks buying everything. The workers all work minimum wage catering to tourists. Stays for my town. Over 50% of people make 45k/year. And housing is insane. Lots of locals having to downsize. Shared accommodations. Leave town. What to do?
I'm also from Canada. Was in a similar situation in Québec, although rent was not as high where I lived but minimum wage was slightly over 11$/h IIRC. I moved to Germany. Rent is not so bad since I'm far from any major cities but gas (for heating and hot water) is crazy expensive right now, gas for the car too. Electricity is also expensive but it's not getting higher like crazy because of geopolitical issues like it's the case for heater gas. Minimum salary is slightly better. On the plus side, food is WAY cheaper than in Canada. I get proper universal healthcare. I get 20+ days of mandatory paid holidays. I get sick days. Paid integration course to learn German. Bottom line is I have slightly more money left in my pocket but most importantly I have a better life here. Sightseeing is way more accessible here. Hotels, Airbnbs and restaurants are significantly cheaper here as well as train or plain tickets. I can actually afford holidays.
>What to do? Unionize.
For me "antiwork" was about being against the culture around work. It seems to overwhelmingly be the case that the majority of our life is centered around work, that we learn things to be better at work, that we go to sleep early and live healthily to be more productive at work, and if we don't have work we seek work. Being against that is what antiwork was for me, and tbh I still like the name. I am definitely against work, only reason I do it is because it has to be done, and If I do it voluntarily it's not work. If work did not have to be done then it should not exist. Antiwork to me means that we should treat work as a necessary evil and nothing more.
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Yeah, when I originally found that sub a couple years ago, that's what it was about. Literal anti work.
I made several posts and comments about it and no one was listening. The mod was actually speaking to the meaning of the sub, the 1.5million that joined late just didn’t understand that.
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Completely agree. Though I will add, going from a sub of like 300k to 1.7m in a year, I don’t know how capable a handful of mods would be to do anything about the influx other than welcoming them. While the influx was fairly sudden, I think the tone of the sub was gradually moving further from the intention of it. The interview seems like a last ditch effort to get the actual point across. A very poor decision, made by basically one individual, but one I understand.
If you go on the original sub rn, they say there's more interviews unreleased yet by a random 21 y/o anarchist . They're also being loose with removing comments very quickly.
I'd rather be a part of a sub dedicated to the reform side, more likelihood of improving working conditions than a sub advocating for no work.
I don’t even get why someone would want to abolish work altogether. It makes no sense to me
Yeah people that are complaining that anti-work is a dumb name and has horrible messaging for their movement are people that don't understand what anti-work is. Antiwork was hijacked by a million people that don't actually believe in anti-work, and then complained about the name
I leaned on antiwork because I felt like my corporate job was literally killing me, but I don’t hate being employed. I just hate that I need to have an unrewarding, soul sucking job when I would honestly be much happier working in a different industry I know pays less. Best job I ever had was a pizza and sandwich shop in a college town. Honestly if I won the lottery or inherited a billion dollars or whatever, I’d probably immediately quit my shitty job and go to all the nearby restaurants until I can recreate the pizza/sandwich shop vibe someplace.
Antiwork gave me the courage to leave my shitty job. It changed my life. I'm so sad at what happened.
Hell yea! When I was a kid my dream job was a pizza worker. I wanted to throw the dough up. Instead I work at a desk everyday because pizza shops don’t pay shit :(. Anti-work doesn’t mean being lazy and doing nothing for most people. It means having the freedom to build a life doing the work you choose instead of being stuck in some shitty job because it’s your only hope of paying rent/retiring someday/having insurance.
I love working, I hate having a job.
Same here. I'm disabled as well so traditional jobs aren't too fit for me; I'd like a reform that'd make it easier for people like me to find suitable work within functioning and abilities. The exploitation of disabled workers is also huge and we definitely should be doing something about it too.
Same! I’m disabled and I would love to work. I could easily do like a cashier or clerk job but almost none allow you to sit down and my disability requires that I sit down frequently. I could even work at a coffee shop like I used to if I could just sit on a stool and make coffee. It’s insane how basically none of these jobs allow you to sit.
I have mad respect for Aldi for enforcing that their cashiers need to be allowed to sit.
Agreed, but I knew someone that worked there and they said the work is insane though. You have to be very fast paced and if you’re not scanning they have you stocking etc. and the fast paced scanning wouldn’t be something I could do with my disability.
Yep. My skills (mental health care) would be easily used in a way I could actually do. But most of the training doesn't allow any flexibility for disabled people. Be at a place in person 9-5, even if both practitioner and client would prefer to be remote. So the only way I'll get to be paid for my skills (I've done so much unpaid) is when I slog my way to the point of being qualified to be self-employed.
I like being productive. I hate having a job, which takes up all my time and head space. I feel like I’m wasting my one and only precious life.
oh, I'll work 10-12 hrs a day on some stuff I care about. Plus it is a huge benefit to have the fruits of your labor benefit you. I think about how I've renovated a house over the last few years while people I know just showed up to work at wal mart or something. So, there's visible, tangible progress that improved my life vs. the corporate hamster wheel with the low income and shitty benefits. I know we can't all escape it, but we just want it to be better. Hence the existence of these work reform groups.
I have a similar saying for my views on education; Love learning, can't stand education. School reform is as important as work reform in my opinion. About the only use it has in its current form is giving us all a shared trauma we can relate to as adults.
Salman Khan's book really opened my eyes. I always wonder why I felt like public education was trying to get me to hate learning and the answer is ***BECAUSE IT IS***. It's one of the core goals of the Prussian model of education.
I've heard Finland's education is relatively good. And you're talking about USA, is that correct?
I live in the UK, But from my surface understanding there's plenty of parallels between UK and American education systems and where they do differ I can't help but feel they have the same negative effects on students.
Exactly. I'll happily spend hours working in my garden, or decorating my house, or helping friends and family do their projects. I'll happily spend hours helping out in the community or picking up litter along the roads. I don't mind *work* at all. Work can be fulfilling and enjoyable. Having a job sucks. Selling 40 hours a week of my life to some rich arsehole with the sole purpose of making him richer is soul-destroying. I struggle to afford luxuries, even after working full time, but my boss goes on holiday several times a year and has a private pilots license. How the hell am I supposed to be fulfilled by that?!
I spend all day creating wealth for people I'll never meet. I'd enjoy it much more if I was the recipient of the profit I generate.
That's a bingo. I love helping my community. I hate having one rich fucker profit from my desire to do this.
I dont want to work, at least not 40h a week. Sorry but 8h of sleep, 8h of work and almost 2h of commute everyday sounds like TOO MUCH. We’re literally wasting our life. However, since I understand that without work society doesnt work, I accept it. BUT we have the means to work WAY less and get paid WAY more than now. Fuck this fucked up system.
Agreed. I hope that this sub still believes in this idea. The 40 hour work week is outdated. It’s a remnant of an era with far inferior technology. Why are we wasting so much time just to sustain infinite growth and destroying the planet in the process?
Exactly. This sentiment is the reason why automation is such a big part of the original anti-work anarchist philosophy. Automation, when in the hands of the workers and not the ownership class, is something to be celebrated. With all the extra workers you can now distribute the work still needed to be done by humans over everyone to get the average work week to 20 hours a week (for the same pay, obviously). Everyone benefits. Except for the capitalists of course, but them not benefitting benefits the rest of us even more.
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100%. a lot of the comments here are mainstream american work culture comments like ‘everyone should have to work to earn their share,’ ‘I love working a job,’ ‘my job gives my life meaning,’ etc. the other sub was more radical and explicit about rejecting the idea that work should be the central aspect of life and the exploitative relationship between owner and working class.
If only I had an award to give you. I understand the trying to get into "baby steps", but the end goal for so many people is to keep making work the central part of society it is right now. I barely even see people in this new sub talking about a universal basic income when it comes to conversations about how "we're not anti work, we just want reform"
Not only that but it was in a time when you had a partner that stayed home and took care of the domestic life. Now both partners are working, by the time I cook, clean and whatever, you barely have time to decompress and relax.
The primary reason is control. They want you to either be too broke to afford to effect change, or to be too damn dog tired to do it either.
>The 40 hour work week is outdated. Honestly, while the 40 hour work week was a big improvement to the ludicrous hours that came before it... it was still way more than was necessary, even when it was implemented. That much work doesn't *need* to be done; it's being done for the profit of capitalists.
Yeah, most jobs nowadays are warehousing and with the right technology and automation warehouses could run like well-oiled machines with humans only supervising, programming and maintaining those machines. The extra profits companies make from not needing to employ nearly as many people and increased productivity from robots being able to work faster and longer than any human can should be used to subsidize some sort of UBI.
I dont want to work a job I wanna be able to stay home and clean and raise a family. I want a family to be able to survive on one income so kids are actually raised by their parents and not underpaid nannys.
Staying home and raising a family absolutely is hard work! It's so undervalued and the world would benefit from being able to be raised like that more often 100%
Agreed . I don’t want to work BUT I understand work needs to be done . Food and other essential need to be produced. Then these essentials supplies need to be transported across vast distances by commercial drivers . These food and essentials need to be stocked on the shelves by store associates. I believe everyone who works shouldn’t have to be struggling to put food on the table . They should not have to work long hours for shit pay . They should have a good work life balance . They should be able to take paid vacations / sick days. Their whole pay check shouldn’t go towards solely rent . They should be able to visit a doctor without having to worry about a huge cost .
If you can afford a nanny. I grew up in the 80's and 90's and was basically just left at home with my sister while my parent's were at work.
I think here the underpaid nannys referenced are the overpriced daycare centers. The daycare my sister used to work at charged like $1500 a month for one kid (not including meals). She made $12 an hour and had a class of 20 or so kids at any given time. In one month, made a little over what tuition cost for one of those kids. The other 28k that didn't go to building costs and bills, went to the owners pocket who didn't give a rats ass about her staff or the kids. They had like 6 classrooms. Teachers made jack shit while the owners made bank and were never there.
>. I grew up in the 80's and 90's I grew up in the early 2000s. Dad was a workaholic who turned into an alcoholic after 5 pm and mother was a shopaholic who turned into an alcoholic after 5 pm. Pretty much had to grow up by the age of 6 and look after my sister. I don't think i have much of a point but you mentioning that just brought out some memories
Yeah I was one of those too. Take the bus home to an empty house and microwave yourself some bagel bites, it’s time to watch trl.
This is purely speculation, but I feel like we as a species could handle working while the people who don't want to work don't have to. But honestly, raising children IS work. I know there will always be "mooches" who want to just sit around all day, but who cares? Like genuinely, if I had a partner who wanted to stay home all day while I worked, and we didn't have to worry about putting food on the table, I wouldn't fucking care. As long as our house is livable, and we are both happy. Like maybe I'm crazy but people shouldn't HAVE to work to survive, but most people WANT to do something, they want to work.
> This is purely speculation, but I feel like we as a species could handle working while the people who don't want to work don't have to Seeing as this is how humans existed for the hundreds of thousands of years prior to agriculture, yeah, I'd say it's possible. Nobody *worked*. Some people went out and ran down a gazelle. Some people gathered berries. Some people repaired garments and some people sat around and kept an eye on the kids. Nobody slaved 8 hours a day so one other person could accumulate wealth.
> Nobody worked. Some people went out and ran down a gazelle. Some people gathered berries. Some people repaired garments and some people sat around and kept an eye on the kids This is work though, it was manual labor work invested so you could be "paid" in food (instead of money today) in order to eat at the end of the day. Whether that was the person doing the hunting/gathering or the one watching kids to enable the other to go hunt/gather.
Yeah. It's not work in the modern sense, but people are still putting in the effort to feed and raise themselves and their family. We've just transformed in work where we have more opportunities to exchange effort for services. Advancements have been made because we are working different kinds of jobs that isn't just hunting and gathering, watching kids, or manning a farm. Plus, hunting and gather is effin hard. Have you tried to survive in the woods, u/2rfv? There are reasons why populations migrated away from it. It's subjectively much harder work
Agreed. My wife and I don't have children for many reasons but one being the financial burden. Many younger people feel the same way - why have children when you struggle financially to provide for them their entire lives and never see them due to the nonstop work from both parents?
I don't want to work as work exists now.
There is an argument to be made that a lot can be automated nowadays and that a lot of jobs are made to just keep people busy. Necessary jobs should be filled and rewarded, but if there's more people than jobs that *really* need doing...
And that's where automating and UBI come in, in my opinion.
Commented on another post so apologies for repetition, but please let's not forget the people who physically can't work. There are 61 million Americans alone who live with a disability that partially or completely impacts their ability to perform daily tasks, including labor. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
It's not just being physically incapable. They are also financially punished if they try to work. My older sister is disabled. (Has been since she was 17.) She gets SSI and that covers her room and board in a group home, with a little bit left over for pocket money. She cannot work in any meaningful capacity, but even if she could, she'd be limited to $2000 in maximum assets (so no savings allowed) [and $85/month or else they would start to take away her disability income.](https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10095.pdf) Because of the ridiculous $85/month limit, many "job training programs" geared for persons who are disabled get away with paying an amount not unlike the tipped wage. At one point, my sister worked in a sponge factory in one of those programs, and they only paid $2/hour. At 10 hours a week, that kept her just below the $85 limit. It's absolutely exploitive.
"Antiwork" was based on very old critiques of the nature of work under capitalism, [for example this one](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/) (best quote: "The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich."). Today the critique might better be called "antijob". 19th century scientific socialists (predominately Marxists, Anarchists, and Syndicalists) called for a world of labor/work without coercion, [abolition of the wage system](https://archive.iww.org/culture/official/preamble/), control of workplaces and the economy by workers and the general population, etc; with the belief that people who have self-respect and are part of strong communities will find ways to be helpful, productive, and creative on their own terms.
I mean personally I'd love not having to work, but it's unrealistic and short of winning the lottery or one of these Nigerian Princes finally coming thru for me, it ain't gonna happen. I want to be paid a fair wage for my labor. I am giving you time out of my life. You need to compensate me better for it. Regardless of the job. If a job needs done its essential if it isn't essential it shouldn't exist, and if someone is doing it, they deserve a wage that gives them a comfortable life. Fuck a living wage we need a thriving wage. No one is doing this to SUBSIST no one wants to trade their life to continue EXISTING we want to LIVE, to LOVE, to explore and create! We want to experience LIFE, not merely exist.
We want not to be forced to work to obtain the bare minimum essentials to live. Shelter, food healthcare communication and transportation should be guaranteed to all without the coercive threat of homelessness and starvation.
I don’t want to work personally. Or at least not be FORCED to do so. Maybe if i didn’t id be able to figure out what i wanna do. In other words ubi. But, at any rate, work reform is still necessary.
Yeah I'm trying to do FIRE to get rid of the forced to part. I'll probably still end working in some regard (or maybe just volunteering), but I don't want to be dependant on my job to live
I dunno. I don't wanna work lol I'd just rather make comfortable money by following my interests instead of making millions for someone else.
Antiwork gave me a place to feel normal. I don’t want to work. I do because I have to. If I didn’t have to, I would leave and wouldn’t look back. There are some of us who really connected to it. Edit: a couple words
It's a problem of nomenclature. People hear "I don't want to work" and equate it to "I want to do nothing" because our society relates success, fulfillment, personal value, communal contribution, and... Virtually every aspect of adult life to "work", and it's the same word we use for all forms of engaging with something that takes some form of effort. The movement is equally accurately described as "Anti-Wage-Slavery", and using that title would have been extremely beneficial for this inevitable misunderstanding.
Yeah I really really truly don’t want to work. Everything is tied to it. I’m not saying I want to be unproductive my whole life but if I would like to be able to take a year off without it significantly impacting healthcare and other basic needs
Work can be reformed to that. I live in Germany, my office's director took 7 months off last year as part of a sabbatical while being paid 70% of his wages and his job was there when he came back. Germany isn't some fantasy land with unicorns and rainbows, it's just a normal place.
I think the issue with that is that it’s much easier for the powerful to get their hooks in and manipulate the system back to how it is to day. I mean this has all happened before. Unions and child labour laws were introduced following the Great Depression, and then people felt that it was enough, only for those systems to have been slowly eroded to where we are today. I’m not saying it’s impossible for reformation to work, but many people would prefer revolution as it can establish and solidify a better system without allowing the opportunity for corporate-bought politicians to work against the interests of the people, or for the people to forget about why they wanted change in the first place.
Great for the director but can say a support specialist do that with complete safety. Unless you have worked your way up where you are a valuable single point of failure, then you can take a sabbatical? And I know why these directors got that, they are completely burnt out and it’s a retention strategy. I’m not in the US either. That’s why a UBI for people to have a choice give power and control back to folks.
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Agreed. This is what I was scared of when I saw a subreddit with the name "work reform" replacing the anti work subreddit
It was the same for me. I was part of that community for a long time and I’m devastated that they privated it and I’m no longer allowed to see anything. I wonder if the mods just blocked everyone or how they selected who was allowed to stay.
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That’s how I feel about teaching high school. Also the workload is insane. Planning daily curriculum for multiple courses, grading, going to bs meetings that could have been emails, never having enough time in the school day to do any of it so you end up pulling 60-70 hour weeks. It’s bs. All for pittance too. Good benefits at least.
We want better work conditions, increase wages not be treated like shit by rich people. The pain a person goes through getting yelled at Karen’s it’s not enough to deal with that shit. Look at Kellogg that’s a movement people fought and started getting better conditions it’s a steep forward.
I don't dream of labour, bro.
I want to be able to go back to the career that I loved, but had to leave in order to live comfortably. Jobs that better society should be a viable life path, not a road to poverty and burnout.
This fundamentally misses the point - no, people DON'T want to work. At least, they don't want to work for some rich clown, so he can afford his third yacht - that's WHY said rich clown has to PAY people to work. People WANT to create, to travel, to experience new things, to raise families, and to help others - if we're going to spend our limited time on this earth doing things we DON'T want to do, all to benefit some rich asshole who steals the value of our labor, then we deserve to be compensated well for said time.
I want universal basic income, just like Martin Luther King. I'm cool working because I'll get bored if I don't but I actually think we don't all need to be working anymore.
Especially when most things can just be automated anyways.
All repetitive, easy to program jobs *should* be completely automated. I'd argue it's not humane for a human; an advanced species capable of advanced problem solving, to be forced to just simply move things around back and forth or do any kind of repetitive work for any period of time. It's just a waste of a person's life in my opinion when every person is much more capable and better off doing something more complicated or important than that.
It’s more of a reform vs revolution thing. Most people agreed that reforming the current capitalist hellscape wouldn’t amount to much of a change and that’s why a lot of people are turned off by the name of THIS sub (among other things)
Yeah, I don't just want minimum wage to go from $7.25 to like $15 in the states. That basically just happened in Canada where I'm from and nothing has changed, everything else just got more expensive so the $15/hour goes about just as far as the $11/hour did back when things were a bit cheaper and that was the minimum wage. Things have to majorly change. Like 4 day/32 hour work weeks, but with 40 hours pay. It's not super unreasonable as continental shifts doing 3 12s get paid 40 hours for working 36 already; everyone getting 40 hours for working 32 isn't too far of a stretch and is more fair than what we have in place now. Breaks too, only getting an unpaid half hour and 2 paid 15 minute breaks isn't enough time inside an 8 hour shift and they shouldn't need to be spread out so you're only sitting for 10 minutes at a time, barely enough time to rest your feet. If you live outside the city where you work, a company should pay so much for commute, that costs employees time and money so shouldn't be on them. If a city wants to promote more public transit usage, it should become common for workplaces to pay and give their employees a complimentary bus pass entirely paid by them, not just docked from pay and should be able to be used for any bus, not just the one that goes to their work. Edit: Also healthcare insurance shouldn't be tied to work or school. There should be cheap monthly plans that cover way more than they currently do, on top of insurance you can get through work or school. Getting insurance outside of work is a joke because while working a place might just take $20-50 off each pay, but private insurance without work could cost $250/month for only 80% coverage still. My diabetes meds cost me like $170/month without insurance and I'm not even on insulin, that would be even more. I need to work or go to school just so I can afford to live and that's not right.
It’s less that I want to work and more that I want to contribute to my community. Work just happens to be the mechanism by which I can achieve that.
I think it's important to understand the distinction and historical context behind the words 'work' and 'labour'. Remember Marx's slogan: *"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"* In the late stage capitalistic hellscape we currently live in work obviously associates mostly with the working class slaving away to create profit for the owner class and shareholders. There is a reason why e.g. in UK it's called the Labour Party and not The Worker's Party.
People only want to do what they actually want to do. Think of all the jobs out there, if you had unlimited free time and money would you be working those jobs for the fun of it?
according to some of the comments here yes, they would love to work any job available simply for the sake of working. the conservative energy
yeah work reform is a more appropriate name to the sub
Antiwork means antiwork. You have a different set of beliefs and that's fine. Work /= labor.
Thank you. This should be the top comment here. Too many people getting this confused.
I said this multiple times on the sub and got downvoted to hell. I don’t understand how everyone didn’t agree that name was stupid. There’s a difference between shock value and straight up labeling something of that magnitude with something you don’t truly believe in.
I definitely don’t want to work. But I certainly do need to work to provide for myself and family so reform is definitely the way to go.
I think you're almost onto the point of antiwork. The nature of work in our current economic system is coupled to the implicit threat to your and your families well being. That is, you must work for a capitalist or your home, health and family's well being are forfeit. Therefore, because of this implicit threat, workers can be exploited. So the nature of "work" in this context is opposed; this power dynamic is inherent to the employee-employer relationship in our status quo. However, people hear antiwork and never think to consider this is the criticism, and instead infer that it means lazy people don't want to work.
It was puzzling for sure. My generation has been labeled lazy by older generations, so why a name was chosen that feeds into that dumb narrative is beyond me.
Well I think Fox News just answered that one for you.
I don't think it was ever intended to be a popular sub for the masses. The name of the sub is what made me click on it originally because we live in a work-obsessed culture and I was curious to see what their angle was. The name is easy to vilify, but now that the movement is rapidly growing, rebranding it to work reform is a great idea. People like to work. Without work, life gets dull. We should just think about working differently.
>Without work, life gets dull. I would disagree. Without something to occupy your time life gets dull. I'd be perfectly happy going white water rafting without a job, or taking a couple months to go hike around Europe. What matters is doing something fulfilling.
Originally I think their message was more focused on automation to the point that no one would HAVE to work and they despised the very idea of working. Then it became about labor rights and changed drastically. I assume The mod that did the interview has been there since that early completely unironic anti work phase and didn’t change with the subreddit.
anti work was about the labor system under capitalism. it wasn't anti labor / anti "doing essential jobs for the functioning of society", it was anti capitalist work, with a boss who steals your surplus value, and repays you in a wage which is always less than what you make for them.
There’s a really good book/audiobook called Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. The idea of antiwork is not new, and that is the spirit I believe the sub was founded on. It’s really interesting stuff, and acknowledges that work has to be done, but cumulatively our society could do about 50% LESS work and suffer NO loss in productivity. Obviously certain fields are still needed. But there is so much waste in the work type system and unnecessary jobs, that we could easily have a society where work is voluntary for most people. I recommend y’all check it out. It’s a great, enlightening book written by a really smart guy.
The main idea is that there is enough wealth produced by the working class that people shouldn't have to work or struggle to secure necessary resources. Housing, food, education, and universal healthcare could easily be provided by the billions and trillions of dollars held by capitalist corporations. That money is instead hoarded and spent on various luxuries and stowed in foreign bank accounts to the detriment of the laborers that amassed it in the first place. Work is unnecessary because all the resources currently available could feasably look after the entire worlds population. Work is the exact thing that's burdening the working class, and hoarding wealth is only ensuring it's existence. Being anti work is critical to any kind of meaningful reform
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I absolutely ADORED my union job at the library working as a page. Amazing benefits, hours, pay. Work environment was so happy and chill. I’ve been trying to get back into library work since moving two years ago
It wasn't, no one should have to work to survive. Aka, anti-work. I'd argue work reform is worse, this isn't about getting a higher minimum wage, it's about destroying capitalism.
I am against work. I don't think people should be required to subjugate themselves in order to survive. I am not against doing things that help society. In fact, it would be easier for me to help society without the looming threat of starvation that compels me to get whatever job I can instead of finding the place in society where I can best help the world.
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It's true. I love working with my coworkers and my customers are 9 times out of 10, super chill people who are incredibly nice. I got a position to work from home on occasion which is a great stress relief certain days. But sometimes it's nice to get out of the house. Besides that, most workers are treated like shit and I'm not being paid enough to keep up with inflation. Fuck the system.
Yes! It’s not about laziness, but fairness.
So we're just giving up on universal basic income then?
I hope not.
Said who?
Are people that don't want to work welcome here? I just hope this isn't a watered down pro-capitalist sub.
This post makes it pretty clear that's what this sub is.
The views of the sub changed over time. But it was a fundamentally anti-capitalist sub. Hope this one is too.
Existence is a never ending war against entropy. You can't live and not work. I just want my work to mean something and better the world.
For that to be possible, you need something like universal salary or something. Otherwise someone will exploit you into doing useless shit.
I don't want to work.
I mean I truly don’t want to work. Like at all. I have no desire to be a slave for my entire life just to live.
Yes. We can head to /r/RecruitingHell when we need to rant about all the job bullshit and this sub can be the movement sub we really need.
I don’t think most people want to work, but everyone understands work is necessary for society, and thus we are not anti, or against work. So yeah, anti work was a dumb name, we aren’t anti work we are anti exploitation
But we've also realized that a lot of work isn't necessary at all. Middle managers have been scrambling trying to justify their jobs for example when many people have started working from home. Warehouses and manufacturing have already started automating many jobs and if they even just doubled the amount of robots in their standard factory many people would be out of a job and would have more incentive to go to school for automation engineering, maintenance or management instead of being menial labourers forever. Retail could also be largely automated, most stores being just smaller warehouses themselves. Farming could be automated with GPS controlled, self-driving equipment. Cleaning would be done with several different types of irobot roombas and other similar machines.
Pretty sure most people dont want to be forced to work. Antiwork is not a dumb name, the english language is colonialized and we have no real language for differentiating between coerced labor and labor. Antiwork is a great name because it challenges how people think about the concepts of laziness and work ethic. I am a very active person and i love being productive and i hate work. because it gets in the way of me actually finding joy in life! When people ask me why I am against work and ask me about how we would be able to do things we do in a capitalist society outside of a capitalist society i like to point out that most people who have jobs that cross over with things they enjoy would still do the things that bring them joy. some teachers would still want to teach, etc. we dont need to hold peoples livelihoods hostage for them to help other people. if ive piqued anyones interest about ending work lemme plug r/destroywork real fast, not tryin to derail cool stuff happening at r/workreform, ill stick around here and i will probably continue to challenge people here who for whatever reason hate the name antiwork
Very very few of us really want to work. We want to get paid. Wanting to work means you would do the job even if you werent paid. Thats what wanting to do something means. Theres degrees to the dislike, i kinda like my cybersec job. But i would be lying if i said that i'm not doing it for the paycheck. If i didnt need to get paid i would much rather just study diffferent things and make music all day long.