December 2021 news and cultural influences have been commenting on mass strikes, The Great Resignation, and overwhelming inflation for several months now. At the same time, many have criticized hustle culture and working from 9 am until 9 pm 6 days a week in China, which has led to a career strategy called “lying flat.” Financial pundits warned people to invest in gold, silver, and crypto, throwing bleak forecasts for fiat money. And on a narrower scale, we see a 41-year-old mother posting in the social movement subreddit r/antiwork, stating how proud she is of her kid for not accepting a very much wanted job for 9 USD/hr. R/antiwork is a forum created 8 years ago. As of now, 1,362,051 Redditors have joined it. The beliefs of the members are different, but they overlap at the section of dissatisfaction with current employment dynamics. Bored Panda reached out to moderators for the interview, you can read it and the job refusal story below:

More info: reddit.com

It can be hard to confront one’s employer about the offered hourly pay

Image credits: Gangplank HQ (not the actual photo)

U/soil_witch shared her initial reaction to her “non-confrontational” 19-year-old daughter telling her potential employer on the second interview that the offered payment is not enough to feed herself.

Mother expresses pride on antiwork subreddit after 19 y.o. daughter refuses low-paying job

While at first the mother was surprised by her daughter going against the old societal norms, later she gave it some thought and decided that what her daughter did made her proud.

She later added more context and the reasons why she supports the decision now

Image credits: u/soil_witch

Then the mother took time to respond to plenty of comments and added more paragraphs to the submission, providing more details about the daughter’s employment and expressing gratitude from both of them for the emotional support and discussion on the subreddit.

Image credits: u/soil_witch

Image credits: u/soil_witch

The forum moderator tobotic said this about the antiwork movement: “The core goal is to end work. That doesn’t mean to end all productivity; society would likely crumble fairly quickly if that happened. It means ending the system where people need to sell their productivity in order to live. All people should have a right to live, and live well.”

Image credits: u/soil_witch

The moderator thinks society is heading the way that will make strides towards ending work necessary. He thinks automation will make some jobs obsolete, dividing lasting jobs that were held by one person into 2-3 people part-time jobs. “But all three of those people still need to eat and house themselves, so simply paying them a fraction of existing full-time salaries will not work. People will need to be able to live comfortably even if they do very little work or none at all.”

Image credits: u/soil_witch

It is worth mentioning that one of the essays in the forum’s library, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber (2013), specifically addresses John Maynard Keynes’ prediction made in 1930 that by the end of the 20th century, some of the richer countries would have a 15-hour workweek. However, according to Graeber, instead of shortening the work week, this technological advancement has led to pretty much pointless jobs. He says that people working them suspect their work tasks are worthless and it has scarred our collective soul.

Image credits: u/soil_witch

Other group members gave their input

Many at r/antiwork sympathize with anarchism, the forum lists  r/anarchy101 as one of their friendly subreddits, and several moderators have political flags next to their usernames indicating support for different kinds of anarchism. Some show a cannabis leaf there.

Unionizing, laying flat and anarchism are all related concepts, according to tobotic. “Anarchism takes away power from hierarchies like businesses and governments, returning it to the people. Unionizing usually provides better wages and better hours, as well as taking power from business owners, which are three of the steps I mentioned previously. Laying flat is a reaction against the current system which overworks people; a peaceful but effective rebellion against capitalism and consumerism.”

When asked about the pros and cons of being in the union, the moderator said that many businesses are anti-union and joining or even mentioning a union can “place a target on your back.” However, unionized workers will generally be better paid and treated. “Unionized workplaces tend to have happier staff who will stay longer, adding more experience to the business and reducing training and recruitment costs, so there are benefits to the business as well.”

Tobotic ended the interview with some food for thought: “a company with many shareholders is effectively a union of owners, who have teamed up to make the most of economies of scale. It is only fair that workers should also form a union to negotiate with them on a level playing field.”

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