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!
Lol “working class jobs”
You mean service industry jobs.
An even lower caste.
Not really so cut and dried. I know people with 9 to 5s that work just as hard as I do in the service industry, and get paid around the same. I definitely wouldn’t say they work email jobs, but they’re not in the service industry either.
Are you really going to gatekeep Labor Day, op?
No that’s what the middle class is doing, did you learn nothing?
Don’t put workers against workers.
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.
when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth
This was an important part that shouldn’t be discounted since it was still at the core of the argument.
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.
Labor Day is May 1st. There is no Labor Day in USA. It’s “law and order day”.
It was recently labor day in other parts of the world. USA does not get to decide things for the global population wether it is holidays, trade deals, or the name of a body of water.
I wish it were like Christmas Day, where almost every business is ACTUALLY closed.
I don’t celebrate, so this isn’t nostalgia for Christmas magic or whatever.
I just like that it’s a day that no matter what, for the most part, you’re on your own. Forgot to buy groceries? Scrounge the cupboard. Forgot to fill the gas tank? You’re staying home. Faucet leaking? Turn off the water, wash your hands in a different sink, call the plumber(or go to the hardware store) tomorrow. Ain’t NOTHING getting done today.
It’s the only day where the majority of people in areas where the holiday is celebrated, all agree that ain’t nobody doing anything that day.
Granted there’s lots of caveats. Some businesses are open by choice, some by necessity. I used to work at a nursing home, that’s gotta stay open, me and a few coworkers would volunteer to take the holiday shifts.
These days I’m still blue collar, but I do have most big holidays off.
But if you thought some random gas station or grocery store was gonna be open so you can pop in on Christmas? No dice.
Why isn’t labour Day that way?
I wish it were like Christmas Day, where almost every business is ACTUALLY closed
Idk about where you live, but a bunch of businesses in Houston will close a little earlier on Christmas Eve and open up at around noon on Christmas Day. Nobody wants to Not Work anymore. Everything has to be open all the time.
Northeast US. But that’s a shame about Texas.
Where I grew up if your pipe bursts on Christmas you better hope you can find a Jewish or otherwise non-Christian (cultural or religious) plumber that’s only charging mild holiday markups, because the Christian plumbers ain’t gonna be so charitable (but you can probably get one to come out).
It’s emergency workers only. So yeah you’ve got medical professionals in the ER, folks keeping the water running, and some tradespeople will leave their phone on just in case they get the opportunity to make a very high hourly wage, as well as owner operated businesses that don’t feel like taking the day off (hence the old stereotypes of Jewish people getting Chinese food and watching a movie on Christmas). If it’s not an emergency you’re better off not even checking if anyone’s working.
And I agree that that’s what labor day should be like. In fact, we should have a handful of holidays like that.
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
That would change absolutely nothing for the 1%.
It’s like using paper straws to fight the climate apocalypse.
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
Ignoring factory and warehouse workers as per usual
The international worker’s day is a holiday in france, so everyone can go protest (or do whatever at home, but there are usually big protests on may 1st)
So how is it different to any other day in France? 😅
Sadly there are no protests everyday (bu( I’d like, that’s so fun to go)
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.
Yes, let’s pit workers against each other, very helpful
PSA, Labour day is the first of may.
Mayday like the rest of the world
Weird. It was yesterday in Canada. Funny that.
