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Love the Work, Hate the Job
Growing numbers of Americans are doing work that they care about and enjoy. But they're frustrated by stagnant wages, shrinking health coverage, shaky pension plans, and company policies that make it more difficult for them to do their jobs well. Corporat
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First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 13, 2011
I didn’t quite know what I this book would be about – but I certainly didn’t expect it to be about the US trade union movement with particular reference to Seattle. If the last book I read put me off Coke – this one has helped to put me off Microsoft even more than I already had been.
As Marx makes clear here http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... the history of Capitalism could just as easily be defined as the history of the de-skilling of the working class and the swelling of the working class to include just about every other class other than the bourgeoisie. If the history of late 20th Century USA has proven anything, it has proven Marx right on that score. And just how right is documented in depressing detail here. With those who have ‘skills that are hard to be replaced’ being rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice and everyone else being on the wrong end of the Matthew principle (with even that which they have to be taken from them).
The filthy rich have gorged themselves beyond all reckoning – increasing their total wealth to the point where it seems the US economy simply can no longer function. This is normally where I might talk about pigs with snouts in troths, but in fact I really struggle to find a suitable metaphor. All life will be sucked from the planet and even then that will not be enough to sate the rich’s chronic hunger.
One of the reasons that it seems necessary to encourage people to become educated is that an education is perhaps the best means to a better life. This has been the standard story we have told kids for the better part of a century and it is a good story. Clinton even said something to the effect that if you want to earn more you first need to learn more. A message that is all very clear and hardly something anyone would want to argue against – except recent history hasn’t shown it to really be the case. Instead we live in the world of the Red Queen from Through The Looking-Glass, where people are running faster and ever faster, but still going backwards.
This is not to say that you should not bother getting an education, and skills and more training – unskilled labour and semi-skilled labour is increasingly a very bad place to find yourself in the labour market. However, having a degree, having lots of experience and doing a job that once would have seen you comfortably well-off just doesn’t cut it any more. As Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream makes clear, it isn’t just blue collar workers that are feeling ripped-off.
And this isn’t because we have devalued the quality of our education system to the point where degrees are so easy to come by they are virtually worthless – degrees are still hard to come by. The point is that our new economy requires highly skilled employees, it just no longer rewards them.
Many of us would like to be able to somehow go back to the ‘good old days’ where there were jobs for life, there was some hope of promotion, but this time the big change would be that we would also get to actually enjoy doing what we do all day. This is the big change recent history has brought, of course. More of us are doing work we actually really enjoy.
In a past life I worked in a factory in quality control. I would wander around the factory and watch women working on conveyor belts and in putting chocolates into wrapping machines. It was soul destroying – even watching was soul destroying. But back then people believed (rightly or wrongly) that the company they worked for would reciprocate their loyalty – that if you gave the boss a fair day’s work, or maybe just a little bit more than straight fair, they would look after you. That is clearly no longer the case and it is increasingly not the case.
There are books written by people like Dan Pink saying that in the future companies that succeed will have to find better (fairer, smarter, more creative) ways to motivate staff – but there is a sense that this is all just wishful thinking. The sad fact is that if there is one thing most people like more than anything else it is being somewhat better off than those around them. People would rather everyone (including themselves) be worse off, as long as comparatively they are that little bit better off than those around them. We are a terribly sad species.
Except, of course, there are no limits to how much better off people want to be in comparison to everyone else – a little bit doesn’t cut it. Kant says that aesthetic judgements ought to be made in a mental state that is independent of all other considerations. Bourdieu says that aesthetic judgements are really made as a way to distinguish one class from all others. I tend to agree with Bourdieu. I can’t really look at the kind of castles built in pre-revolutionary France as purely aesthetic objects – they are also objects built and encrusted in gold as an ornament to the wealth and power of those who had far too much. And this was at a time when those outside where begging for bread. There seem no limits to human greed. There seems no point where the suffering of others flips the switch and finally greed ends and charity begins. As the film Inside Job makes clear – today our Sun Gods (with their seven personal private jets) also had no notion of the meaning of ‘enough’ either.
This book is interesting as it is about organising trade union action in an attempt to move our jobs back to being something we would like them to be again. Somewhere that it is possible to feel valued, respected and trusted – and somewhere where we can also value, respect and trust those who employ us. You wouldn’t think this would be rocket-science to achieve – but I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping for it to come about anytime soon.
Marx’s vision was that those dispossessed by the system would eventually realise they had nothing to lose in overthrowing it – we’ve seen thousands and thousands lose everything . . . and nothing but the first rumblings that criticising the banks that created the mess was probably going too far. Lenin called for the arming of the proletariat as he felt sure that if they had weapons they would eventually shoot their oppressors. Well, the US has an armed proletariat – and the Tea Party. I would say, God help us – but I’m afraid He and His supporters have done more than enough already.
One thing is clear – Marx was certainly right about workers of the world needing to unite. As more and more jobs are transferred silently overseas he might also end up being right about his other prediction too – the one about the total impoverishment of the working classes, for instance. Capitalism is today global – we really can’t defend living-standards in any single country at the expense of all other countries any longer.
Galbraith once said that the sad fact about capitalism was that it needed to be saved from its own excesses – a strong trade union movement is one of the ways to save capitalism from itself. That this book shows how to organising in new ways that place limits on rapacious greed, it does good and important work. That it discusses new ways of encouraging industrial democracy – something that might even help you love both your work and your job – it is long overdue.
As Marx makes clear here http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... the history of Capitalism could just as easily be defined as the history of the de-skilling of the working class and the swelling of the working class to include just about every other class other than the bourgeoisie. If the history of late 20th Century USA has proven anything, it has proven Marx right on that score. And just how right is documented in depressing detail here. With those who have ‘skills that are hard to be replaced’ being rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice and everyone else being on the wrong end of the Matthew principle (with even that which they have to be taken from them).
The filthy rich have gorged themselves beyond all reckoning – increasing their total wealth to the point where it seems the US economy simply can no longer function. This is normally where I might talk about pigs with snouts in troths, but in fact I really struggle to find a suitable metaphor. All life will be sucked from the planet and even then that will not be enough to sate the rich’s chronic hunger.
One of the reasons that it seems necessary to encourage people to become educated is that an education is perhaps the best means to a better life. This has been the standard story we have told kids for the better part of a century and it is a good story. Clinton even said something to the effect that if you want to earn more you first need to learn more. A message that is all very clear and hardly something anyone would want to argue against – except recent history hasn’t shown it to really be the case. Instead we live in the world of the Red Queen from Through The Looking-Glass, where people are running faster and ever faster, but still going backwards.
This is not to say that you should not bother getting an education, and skills and more training – unskilled labour and semi-skilled labour is increasingly a very bad place to find yourself in the labour market. However, having a degree, having lots of experience and doing a job that once would have seen you comfortably well-off just doesn’t cut it any more. As Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream makes clear, it isn’t just blue collar workers that are feeling ripped-off.
And this isn’t because we have devalued the quality of our education system to the point where degrees are so easy to come by they are virtually worthless – degrees are still hard to come by. The point is that our new economy requires highly skilled employees, it just no longer rewards them.
Many of us would like to be able to somehow go back to the ‘good old days’ where there were jobs for life, there was some hope of promotion, but this time the big change would be that we would also get to actually enjoy doing what we do all day. This is the big change recent history has brought, of course. More of us are doing work we actually really enjoy.
In a past life I worked in a factory in quality control. I would wander around the factory and watch women working on conveyor belts and in putting chocolates into wrapping machines. It was soul destroying – even watching was soul destroying. But back then people believed (rightly or wrongly) that the company they worked for would reciprocate their loyalty – that if you gave the boss a fair day’s work, or maybe just a little bit more than straight fair, they would look after you. That is clearly no longer the case and it is increasingly not the case.
There are books written by people like Dan Pink saying that in the future companies that succeed will have to find better (fairer, smarter, more creative) ways to motivate staff – but there is a sense that this is all just wishful thinking. The sad fact is that if there is one thing most people like more than anything else it is being somewhat better off than those around them. People would rather everyone (including themselves) be worse off, as long as comparatively they are that little bit better off than those around them. We are a terribly sad species.
Except, of course, there are no limits to how much better off people want to be in comparison to everyone else – a little bit doesn’t cut it. Kant says that aesthetic judgements ought to be made in a mental state that is independent of all other considerations. Bourdieu says that aesthetic judgements are really made as a way to distinguish one class from all others. I tend to agree with Bourdieu. I can’t really look at the kind of castles built in pre-revolutionary France as purely aesthetic objects – they are also objects built and encrusted in gold as an ornament to the wealth and power of those who had far too much. And this was at a time when those outside where begging for bread. There seem no limits to human greed. There seems no point where the suffering of others flips the switch and finally greed ends and charity begins. As the film Inside Job makes clear – today our Sun Gods (with their seven personal private jets) also had no notion of the meaning of ‘enough’ either.
This book is interesting as it is about organising trade union action in an attempt to move our jobs back to being something we would like them to be again. Somewhere that it is possible to feel valued, respected and trusted – and somewhere where we can also value, respect and trust those who employ us. You wouldn’t think this would be rocket-science to achieve – but I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping for it to come about anytime soon.
Marx’s vision was that those dispossessed by the system would eventually realise they had nothing to lose in overthrowing it – we’ve seen thousands and thousands lose everything . . . and nothing but the first rumblings that criticising the banks that created the mess was probably going too far. Lenin called for the arming of the proletariat as he felt sure that if they had weapons they would eventually shoot their oppressors. Well, the US has an armed proletariat – and the Tea Party. I would say, God help us – but I’m afraid He and His supporters have done more than enough already.
One thing is clear – Marx was certainly right about workers of the world needing to unite. As more and more jobs are transferred silently overseas he might also end up being right about his other prediction too – the one about the total impoverishment of the working classes, for instance. Capitalism is today global – we really can’t defend living-standards in any single country at the expense of all other countries any longer.
Galbraith once said that the sad fact about capitalism was that it needed to be saved from its own excesses – a strong trade union movement is one of the ways to save capitalism from itself. That this book shows how to organising in new ways that place limits on rapacious greed, it does good and important work. That it discusses new ways of encouraging industrial democracy – something that might even help you love both your work and your job – it is long overdue.
November 23, 2021
This book is about unions and the organized labor movement—which I wasn’t expecting at all. It uses Boeing, Kaiser, ad Microsoft (circa the early 2000s) to tell a story of the shift in how American companies view and treat their employees, and the costs—both evident and hidden—of this shift.
While well-researched and informative, it is also extremely repetitive in places and more than a little strident in tone.
Quotes
“I couldn’t help but reach this conclusion: they love their work…but they are beginning to hate their jobs and the conditions under which they do their work. Their thwarted desires to do their best work contributed to problems in their workplaces. As I argue in this book, these events set the tone for a new kind of workplace conflict that would become increasingly common during the twenty-first century. Disputes will set workers who are concerned with quality against employers who are mainly motivated by their quarterly profit statements.” -Introduction
“An untold aspect of U.S labor history is the extent to which the union movement has always been founded, organized, and led by the most skilled workers. These workers are more self-confident, enjoy the respect of their peers, and are frequently frustrated that their employers won’t let them do their best work…During the transition to the Industrial Age, skilled workers clearly understood, and bitterly resented the fact, that the nation’s largest and fastest growing companies no longer wanted independent artisans. Instead, these employers wanted workers who could be managed more, paid less, and treated worse.” -ch4
“…the same people who are proud of the substance of their work may also have series gripes about the conditions under which they do their work…many Americans are finding that, by devoting so much time, energy, and emotion to their jobs, they are overinvesting in their work in ways that inevitably lead to disillusionment…" -ch8
While well-researched and informative, it is also extremely repetitive in places and more than a little strident in tone.
Quotes
“I couldn’t help but reach this conclusion: they love their work…but they are beginning to hate their jobs and the conditions under which they do their work. Their thwarted desires to do their best work contributed to problems in their workplaces. As I argue in this book, these events set the tone for a new kind of workplace conflict that would become increasingly common during the twenty-first century. Disputes will set workers who are concerned with quality against employers who are mainly motivated by their quarterly profit statements.” -Introduction
“An untold aspect of U.S labor history is the extent to which the union movement has always been founded, organized, and led by the most skilled workers. These workers are more self-confident, enjoy the respect of their peers, and are frequently frustrated that their employers won’t let them do their best work…During the transition to the Industrial Age, skilled workers clearly understood, and bitterly resented the fact, that the nation’s largest and fastest growing companies no longer wanted independent artisans. Instead, these employers wanted workers who could be managed more, paid less, and treated worse.” -ch4
“…the same people who are proud of the substance of their work may also have series gripes about the conditions under which they do their work…many Americans are finding that, by devoting so much time, energy, and emotion to their jobs, they are overinvesting in their work in ways that inevitably lead to disillusionment…" -ch8
February 7, 2017
3.5 stars. If it hadn't been about companies in Washington state, I probably wouldn't have been as interested.
May 5, 2022
This book is more of a complaint of the modern, and recent job prospects focused mainly on the pacific northwest (Washington) . There didn't seem to be any actions after this.
July 5, 2023
A solid labor history of the Seattle area in the late 90s and early 2000s.
March 9, 2009
The author is obviously passionate about and very well-informed on his topic. However, I had to work really hard to get into the book; the larger case studies of Microsoft and Boeing labor relations finally pulled me in. Two small factual errors bugged me disproportionately (it's JOHN Goodman, not George Goodman, and the main character of Office Space is under the influence of hypnotism, not drugs), but they were inconsequetial in the big picture. Worth a look, but I can't bring myself to enthusiastically recommend it.
January 31, 2009
Interesting book. The Seattle focus was unexpected (Kaiser, Boeing, Microsoft.)
"Companies seem to want the finest talent, on the cheap, and employees who will contribute their energies and ideas, while being second guessed and closely controlled." p. 89.
"Companies seem to want the finest talent, on the cheap, and employees who will contribute their energies and ideas, while being second guessed and closely controlled." p. 89.
January 17, 2014
Profiling different industries in the Pacific Northwest, Kusnet breaks down two universal societal contracts between employees and employers. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the corporate world since this book came out.
October 21, 2013
4 companies from Washington analyzed from the benefits/conditions point of view.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews