I must state right off the bat that I am blessed with work that I love, that gives me the opportunity to collaborate with great colleagues and to help clients that I genuinely enjoy working with.
My work gives me a sense of contributing something useful to the community. It is intellectually stimulating, fills my days with opportunities to learn and grow, and allows me to maintain social relationships and a sense of community. It is neither too much nor too little, and allows me to maintain significant pursuits outside of work. I believe work has made me a better person over the years and continues to do so.
I am in a sweet spot you might say, one that owes in some measure to choices I made along the way, in some measure to the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time at various junctures of my life, and to the chance of coming across people along the way who chose to believe in me and help me in ways big and small. The passage of time has also injected a significant element of choice over the years into my relationship to work. It wasn’t always so and it certainly isn’t the case for the vast majority of us.
We work to provide for ourselves and our dependents. We work for other personal reasons, such as for self-actualization, recognition, and more. But we also work to provide for each other at the level of the broader community, something that we sometime lose sight of. In the words of Harvard ethicist Michael Sandel, “the most important role we play in the economy is not as consumers but as producers. It is as producers that we develop and deploy our abilities to provide goods and services that fulfill the needs of our fellow citizens”. (Sandel, 2020)
It is good to remind ourselves, with Sandel, that we are all the beneficiaries of the work of others. Whatever one’s occupation, that should earn them our respect and gratitude. The work that benefits us should also allow them to support themselves and their dependents with dignity.
For many, work brings little joy. It can be hard if not harsh, and toxic both figuratively and literally. It can be demeaning and alienating, and exhausting to the point of illness and death. As Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University, wrote in 2018:
“The workplace profoundly affects human health and mortality, and too many workplaces are harmful to people’s health—people are literally dying for a paycheck.” This situation, he continues on, affects “people in numerous occupations, industries, and geographies, and cutting across people of various ages and levels of education.” (Pfeffer, 2018, p. 8)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which established work as a fundamental human right and which Canada voted to adopt in 1948, states that “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” Many people, in the age of the platform-driven gig, have nothing even resembling traditional employment and have been thrown back to an age of piece work that previous generations of workers had fought to eradicate.
That this work is convenient to legions of users is not in question. But is that high enough a bar? As philosopher John Finnis wrote, “Individuals can only be selves—i.e. have the ‘dignity’ of being ‘responsible agents’—if they are not made to live their lives for the convenience of others”. (Finnis, 2011, p. 272) He also wrote that “The common good is the good of individuals, living together and depending on one another in ways that favour the well-being of each.” (Finnis, 2011, p. 305) There is clearly still some way to go.
Would it have been less trouble to simply write: “Happy Labour Day!” and move on? Of course. But if you kept reading all the way here, it was clearly worth the time to go a bit deeper after all.
References:
Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, Clarendon Press; 2nd ed., 2011, p. 305.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. Dying For a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health And Company Performance—And What to Do About It. Harper Business, New York, 2018, 258 pages.
Sandel, Michael J. What Liberals Get Wrong About Work. The Atlantic, September 2020.
