[NJFAC] David Graeber on BS jobs; David Gordon on "guard labor"

Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs

"Anthropologist David Graeber's celebrated theory of "bullshit jobs" continues to provide a critical window into why modern work is often so useless, soul-sucking, and absurd. By Christopher Pollard 15 Oct 2024

....Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, first published in 2018. A "bullshit job," according to Graeber, is a job where even the person doing it secretly believes the job shouldn't exist. But part of their condition of employment is to pretend it's not as pointless as they know it to be.

Bullshit jobbers, he writes, can include "box tickers," "flunkies," "goons," and "taskmasters" (more on them later). Such roles are prevalent in areas such as finance, admin, law, marketing, and human resources. The book has been translated into many languages, and while it has been criticized for some rather broad generalizations, he clearly struck a chord.

In the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes suggested we were fast approaching a time when our new "labor-saving technology" meant we'd have to confront the issue of "technological unemployment." Due to the prodigious gains in productivity, wrote Keynes, we'd soon be working half as much—or less. By the postwar period, this had become a widely held belief.

Keynes, writes Graeber, was right. But rather than embrace more leisure time for workers, our response was "to make up a raft of new jobs," resulting in large swaths "of people, in Europe and North America in particular," spending "their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe[d]" did not really need to be performed.

The "proliferation" of these "bullshit jobs," Graeber suggests, is a significant part of the reason we don't have a 20- or even 15-hour work week....."

This is a good partial discussion of the problems with work. The late David Gordon wrote of "guard labor," a category including police, prison guards, military, many supervisors, et al. These are socially determined, and not productive. See, for example, these comments from his article in the LA Times:

"By increasing economic inequality and insecurity, conservative economic policies have exacerbated social tensions. As a consequence, an ever-increasing fraction of the nation's productive potential must be devoted simply to keeping the have-nots at bay.

Similarly, on the international scene, hawkish foreign and military policies aimed at reasserting U.S. global power have a comparably high price tag: A mounting fraction of the labor force is not producing goods for consumption or for investment but is either producing military goods or working for the Pentagon....."

jz

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] shift to bonuses from salaries: comment from goodjobs member

I think this is a creepy development, for several reasons:

 

1.  It will make it more difficult for employees to budget, since they will not know what their pay will be.

 

2.  Who will define the targets?  The power to define targets will place enormous power in someone's hands.  The only way to avoid a concentration of arbitrary power would be to have the targets be the subject of collective decision-making, whether through unions or through employee ownership.

 

3.  Unless the target is shared and the bonus is awarded to a group that includes all the individuals whose work contributes to the accomplishment of a stated goal, the bonus system will tend to fragment efforts and discourage teamwork.

 

Mr. Leon  also sent comment and links on employment-related stress:

I think this kind of connection is not sufficiently discussed.  Stress underlies a variety of medical conditions and contributes significantly to health care costs.  Some part of the elevated health care bill in the US is attributable to anxiety about health insurance and health care- financial iatrogenesis!

 

Sandy

 

Santiago Leon

Thanks, Sandy. June

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] worker stress affects their health

The Association Between Precarious Employment and Stress Among Working Age Individuals in the United States

This study examines the association between precarious employment and stress among U.S. working-aged individuals using data from waves 4 (2008-2009) and 5 (2016-2018) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Precarious employment (PES) was measured based on factors like low wages, work hours, job instability, and lack of benefits. Higher PES was associated with increased perceived stress and higher levels of C-reactive protein, a biological stress marker. The results suggest that precarious employment, a psychosocial stressor, may contribute to poor mental and physical health. The researchers recommend policies like improved job stability, better wages, and healthcare benefits to mitigate these effects and reduce health disparities.

Job Insecurity and Health and Well-Being: What Happens When You Really Need or Love Your Job?

Thanks to a goodjobs list member for these links.

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
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[NJFAC] AI that could benefit workers

A worker-centered approach to policy in the era of AI, EPI 10/24 

The deployment of AI in the workplace has shined a light on long-standing problems: The deployment of AI-powered technologies in the workplace has been associated with an array of worker experiences and outcomes that warrant concern, including discrimination, unsafe working conditions, loss of privacy, and seemingly arbitrary disciplinary action or discharge, among others.

But these outcomes are not inherent to the use of AI. Employers' use of other technologies and even garden-variety management practices have perpetuated these outcomes for decades. The use of AI has shined a light on the challenges workers with little bargaining power and insufficient on-the-job protections face in our labor market.

Broader solutions are needed to improve worker outcomes in the era of AI: Policymakers should address the negative outcomes experienced by workers today, but they also should look beyond how the use of specific AI systems may degrade job quality and look deeper to the underlying conditions that enable employers to use AI in this manner: the imbalance of power between businesses and their workers.

Workers should have greater protections and a voice in workplace policies: Decades of weakened bargaining power and heavy reliance on employers for life necessities, such as healthcare and retirement, has made it exceedingly difficult for most workers to bargain over how AI technologies are being used in the workplace—let alone opt out of the use of AI-powered management and surveillance at work or walk away from unlawful or poor working conditions.

The objective of worker-centered AI policy: Increase the ability of workers to meaningfully engage their employers in how AI technologies are deployed in the workplace.

To achieve this straightforward objective, policymakers will need to address long-standing imbalances in the labor market; reduce AI-specific barriers to worker voice while banning the most egregious uses of AI; and support workers' ability to find better jobs.

....
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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] shift from salaries to bonus-based pay

The Big Shift From Salaries to Bonus-Based Pay, Fuhrmans, WSJ 9/24

More Americans are in jobs where a chunk of their pay isn't guaranteed.

In incentive pay programs, base salaries are often fleshed out with monthly or quarterly bonuses conditional on hitting certain targets. Twenty-eight percent of more than 300 companies surveyed said they were building incentive pay into new roles, according to a 2024 survey by revenue-management consulting firm Alexander Group.

The practice has long been common for salespeople and top brass. Yet apart from the yearly raise—and for some, an annual bonus—the vast majority of the workforce makes the same amount every payday.

Now, more companies are trying to get the most out of rising payroll costs by making a part of workers' pay contingent on completing prescribed goals.

Employers say the new way to pay professionals from accountants and human-resource managers to marketing assistants can fuel greater productivity. Plenty of overachievers say they are relishing the often-rich upside potential. Yet some workers say they are making less than they bargained for.

"There's absolutely risk, but in my experience there's been more reward," says Hannah Brown, 32, a chief of staff at business-software company WalkMe.....

Jobs close to the sales process, such as marketing and after-sales support, are the most likely to be swept up into pay-for-performance plans. But some firms, such as WalkMe, are using short-term bonuses to shape pay for everyone from accountants to human-resources managers.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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