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.
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.
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?
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”.
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.
My boss handles everyone a chocolate bar
“Thank you guys for yo hard labor. Happy labor day”
Everyone gotta get back to labor after that.
I didn’t even get anything
So in the US it’s not on may first and you don’t get a paid day off? On labour day?
My boss’ boss gives everyone a Lindt chocolate on their start date anniversary, which is nice and all but if I WFH for a few days or simply don’t see him for a while, then when he finally gives it to me he says something like “I haven’t seen you around for a while?” and now it looks bad. Keep the chocolate just stop thinking about me.
Meanwhile everyone in the office upstairs gets platters of free food and drinks while working a half day but getting paid for the full day
“Fake email job” I guess this is just a weird spin on “office job”?
More of a spin on bullshit job I’d say.
No, I don’t think so. Just the subset of those which have no value for society and only exist to respond to and perpetuate useless burecracy. Unnecessary middle managers, hr, etc…
‘Fake email job’ is great! I’d not heard that before.
Where i work, all the bosses get the day off and those of us who actually work still have to work.
Lol “working class jobs”
You mean service industry jobs.
An even lower caste.
The warehouse I work at gets Labor Day off every year.
Then the week after they basically have the grill going for 5 days straight for Employee Appreciation Week.
It’s pretty nice.
Sometimes.
This has to be the dumbest shit I’ve seen in a minute.
No war but the class war, fuck off with this division
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!
White and blue coller also don’t make sense in the modern working world. With many tasks in a factory being automated out and many jobs in a business looking more like an office tasks with higher skill sets needed. Manufacturing requires alot more planning and less people on the floor handalling products.
Guess my kid’s elementary school teacher has a fake internet job too.
Do your kids have a Chromebook?
No
Even if they had, it wouldn’t still be the teacher’s fault; a computer can also be useful for some type of neurodivergent people
You guys are taking this way too seriously
All teachers do is abuse kids and enable kids to abuse other kids.
Your bad experiences are not universal
Just using email while also doing something important doesn’t make a job a fake job. Fake jobs are the kind of jobs that society would be fine without. Marketing, sales development, hr. Jobs which exist solely to peddle around useless emails like competitive reviews, social listening reports, messaging matrixes, research debriefs, etc., or responding to such bs in an ever escalating cycle of useless burecracy.
I got news for you buddy: our “fake email job” Tier One and Senior Technical Support agents were still sending emails and taking calls on Labor Day.
Someone had to because I work for an ISP and some of our customers rely on our service to call 911.
You can come back here and tell me their job is “fake” when you can explain how that’s unimportant and when you’ve sat on a phone trying to help a 60 year old Boomer troubleshoot their internet when all they wanna do is chew you out.
And and I know it’s “just a meme” but it’s a shitty meme that’s reinforcing all this “white collar; blue collar” bullshit to divide the Working Class while billionaires work to get rid of Labor Day altogether. Shame on you for perpetuating that.
Hey man he’s letting off steam about how his job is more physically demanding yet he gets less pay and benefits while middle class people benefit (even if it’s a little) from this system.
How about you not make it about how you feel and think about the guy working in the rain.
Both people have valid complaints. Empathy works both ways.
100%. The pedo elite are the only ones we should be looking at. Not up down or left and right. This guy probably just tired of seeing his bosses fuck around.
I never downplayed how shitty retail/fast food is. I used to work in a fucking Chick-fil-A. I know how shitty it is. But tech support is a different kind of shitty.
Not only is having a shitty day and a shitty job not an excuse to belittle and lash out against people who have nothing to do with it, it actively makes the problem worse by keeping us locked in stupid arguments that get us nowhere instead of standing in solidarity against the people actually responsoble for our jobs being shitty.
So I reiterate: shame on them for perpetuating this cycle instead of putting the blame and their anger where it actually belongs and therefore being part of the problem.
You’re the one that lashed out at something that’s not related to you. Shame on you for attacking someone lower. Stop move on.
Anyone who works for a living is part of the working class and bullshit like this only strengthens capitals grip by pitting workers against workers.
Fucking dammit thank you.
I’m glad to see this as the top comment
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the epstein class are the ones who have the biggest fakest “email-jobs”.
True yes, but then there are workers much lower down with “email jobs” who spend a lot of time dealing with emails, while also dealing with lots of pressure, and stress, and low pay
e-mail centric even
Even car production workers?
yay labor day
👆
Yeah honestly EVERYONE should be able to enjoy Labor Day.
The cunts who works at places like kalshi and such can 100% disappear with zero detriment to society. Those are the fucking fake-ass e-mail jobs, and to act like there’s no difference between some piece of shit pulling barely legal scams and someone in a public service position is fucking stupid.
I’ve turned down few job offers in my time because those would have me work on online gambling systems and shit.
I know people who still chose to work in there, whose motivation was something like “If I didn’t scam these people - someone else would have”. And what I think after all that - if person’s job is detrimental to society - this person doesn’t matter, even if they’re working hard, 9-to-5, all that shit.
Remember when covid happened and everyone had to stop working? Well not everyone, just everyone with bullshit jobs.
Everything was basically fine. The only real problems as far as i could tell were that we all thought we were going to die and were scared to go near our grandparents incase we killed them, and some lines stopped going up.
I wish we could do it again, share the “real jobs” out amongst everyone so we only had to work a couple days a week, only this time we can also not be terrified of apocalypse-movie scale of death.
Well not everyone, just everyone with bullshit jobs.
What? A lot of people with real jobs got screwed over as well. E.g., most prominently restaurant workers. I personally know several people who lost their jobs or small businesses due to covid, including a pâtissière, local art gallery curator, club DJ, and bartender. They were all valuable members of the local community who were absolutely shit on by the pandemic.
Everything was basically fine. The only real problems as far as i could tell were that we all thought we were going to die and were scared to go near our grandparents incase we killed them, and some lines stopped going up.
Over seven million people died and are still dying, not to mention permanent conditions and long hospitalizations. And now we have an inflated, cancerous anti-vax movement, cost-of-living crisis, and generation of students who got fucked.
I’m happy it worked out for you, but the COVID-19 pandemic left a monstrous scar on the world. I can only hope our governments and people will be more prepared next time. We should not forget what was lost.
Yeah i think I didnt make it clear enough. The actual pandemic part was bad. People dying was bad. I havent lived through a different voluntary shutdown of society to use as an example instead.
A lot of manufacturing shut down for large parts of the pandemic. Hence the supply chain issues at the end of it
The current cost of living crisis started because of the economic turmoil in COVID you refer to as “some lines stopped going up”. There have been other causes, but that was a huge chunk of it.
But sure “everything was basically fine” because you personally didn’t die, I guess
I admit I have a pretty juvenile understanding of economics. I meant the sewers still worked, the health care system mostly still worked even while overrun, trains still ran fine, food and supplies stabilised after the original panic-buying fuckup.
The fact that I personally didnt die was a bonus I’ll grant you that.
Ah well now I feel bad for being sarcastic which I probably deserve.
“Fake email job” meaning “unionised labour” - the whole point of labour day?
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You can get michelada in a can??
Do you have to put tajin on the rim yourself?
