Office jobs are still jobs. If a business genuinely was wasting vast amounts of money on fake work, then these jobs would be eliminated already. They are gradually being automated away, same as physical labor, but they still exist because they are still important for production.
The target of your ire should not be this or that subsection of the working class, but instead the capitalist class.
A lot of jobs are pure bullshit jobs that only exist because the corporation needed to hire inorder to appear growing. They then do mass firings to appear like they’re cutting costs. It’s all smoke and mirrors for the shareholders.
That doesn’t make the people filling those roles not working class, in fact it highlights how disposable the working class is to the capitalist class, and further reinforces my point: capitalists are the enemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs which cause psychological harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive (when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth) because workers are required to pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be.
I’m aware of Graeber’s work. I don’t really agree with much of his conclusions or analysis, as he is an anarchist and I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but we would agree that much of office work is indeed socially unproductive, if we were to pivot to a socialist economy. That being said, we exist in capitalism, and thus office workers are working class, regardless of how necessary the work they do is beyond helping generate profit.
Yeah, I’m an anarchist who generally does agree with Graeber, but I do think that it’s vital to understand that he did see office workers, including ones in bullshit jobs, as working class. He resented the bureaucracy not the bureacrat. And it’s important to note that plenty of office work isn’t inherently within his definition of bullshit jobs. Hell, I’d argue there’s a fair chance that the largest portion of people working bullshit jobs are in the category of “industry does more harm than good and the worker knows it”.
The word meaningless is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it meaningless to sort and file reports? In the grand scheme of things, and to society, maybe. But not to the company that’s paying you. They have value from it.
I’m not saying the companies are hyper efficient with only purposeful work. I’m saying that companies aren’t intentionally throwing out money on work that they know is useless. They’re too greedy for that.
Once a company reaches a certain size, being able to micro manage individual workloads to max efficiency become impossible and individual middle managers have an incentive to appear like their whole workforce is necessary.
They’re not intentionally throwing money away because to them, the appearance of growth has to come before actually growth. They consider useless hires the cost of doing business. And when it fails, “they can just make the though decisions” and do the layoff the shareholders want. Otherwise, how to do explain the waves of mass hirings and mass firings?
Right. But back to the context of this thread: they’re all given work and they’re all real workers, even if their work isn’t ultimately providing dollars to the balance sheet. They still have a value to the company.
And all workers should have labor day off.
The original comic is being needlessly divisive.
I doubt that. You could do the same thing with fake job postings if you really wanted, and it’s cheaper.
But let’s say you’re right. Those people would still be given lots of work and be busy, because if they were allowed to be not busy everyone else would see and not want to work.
They do do that with fake job listings.
Americans will attack other workers for minor differences in lifestyle rather than attack their boss for failing to provide basic quality of life in exchange for full time work.
Just like the ruling class wants…
Just because our cage is slightly nicer and we get fed slightly better slop doesn’t mean we’re not in this together.
Most of us are sticking with you … the real problem is the 1%
I mean y’all could stick it to the one percent by forgoing going to the store or eating out on labor day
PSA, Labour day is the first of may.
Mayday like the rest of the world
Weird. It was yesterday in Canada. Funny that.
Yes, let’s pit workers against each other, very helpful
someone unironically told me yesterday ‘you must be so busy with everyone off!’
I WAS busy, nothing changed on my end compared to every other Monday of the year. which is basically I’m given a job that’s too much for one person, but I struggle to get help so often than even getting my legally required breaks can be like pulling teeth.
anyway I just said ‘except for me! (:’ and she didn’t say anything else after that.
it’s like these people forget that we too are humans working behind the counter. People that are WORKING on LABOR day.
it’s curious that the US does not observe it in that day since the events that commemorates it happened in Chicago, during a series of protests for a 8 hour work day.
But of course, that is not accident. They put a lot of effort in framing workers’ movements as a communist plot. At one point they even instituted a “loyalty day” on 1st of May to counteract any labour movement.
Idk the factory shut down for the holiday, just like every factory I’ve ever worked in. Yeah I’m an intellectual laborer, but the folks on the floor doing manufacturing also got the day off
“Fake email job” I guess this is just a weird spin on “office job”?
Are you really going to gatekeep Labor Day, op?
No that’s what the middle class is doing, did you learn nothing?
White collar jobs are still jobs. If you have to trade hours of your life to afford the things you need to live you are part of the working class… That’s why it’s called the working class and not the blue collar class.
No, we need to divide society so we can keep everyone at each other’s throats!
Ignoring factory and warehouse workers as per usual
Yes, because we unionized. At least I did. With my beer. And my burger.
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