But leisure did
not come. Instead, technology was perverted to usher in a plethora of endless
work. A useful labor saving invention like email has extended the working
hours of working people. For instance, an average worker in London receives
9000 emails every year and spends 36 days a year writing
email. [vii]
At Amazon, emails arrive past midnight, followed by
text messages asking why they were not answered. [viii] The
mobile phone which was promised as a boon for communication became an instrument to keep the worker waiting for his boss's call even after
office hours.Work never stops and never ends. You check in at your office but you can't
check out.
Endless working (24x7) is encouraged and overwork is a badge of honor in the workplace. But the punishing regime of work without sleep and staying awake with high energy caffeine drinks leads to tragedy.
The death of Moritz Erhardt, an intern working for Bank of America Merrill Lynch who died after putting in 72 straight hours without sleep caused a furor about the ethics of long hours at the work place. He was 21 when he died. [ix] Then there was another notorious case of an employee worked to death which attracted media attention. This was Sarvshrest Gupta, a young banker aged 22 years, who worked for Goldman Sachs Group. The cause of his death- hard, continuous work, no breaks, no sleep and no respite. [x] The specter of overwork again reaped its deadly harvest.
At the core of market capitalism lies the mystique of work which is slavishly adhered to and rarely challenged. The mystique of work lies in its beguiling deception:being busy is good and productivity is virtuous.
Most work is a form of subsidy to the governing elites. Taxes paid out of working people's income, whether in the form of VAT or income taxes end up as subsidies for corporations. The high cost of rent pummels the working people but enriches the landlords or property owners. The high cost of education drastically reduces the purchasing power of the working people.
A report by BusinessInsider tells us the shocking story of a 23 year old Google employee living in a truck parked in the company parking lot to avoid paying exorbitant rents which would eat up 90% of his income.. As the report states "When 23-year-old Brandon S. headed fromMassachusetts to the Bay Area in mid-May to start work, he opted out of settling into an overpriced San Francisco apartment.Instead, he moved into a 128-square-foot truck."[xi]
Privatization doesn't make it easier for the working folks as it shrinks the role ofthe government in providing water, transport and electricity at affordable rates and hands over public utilities to private business. Now exorbitant charges are levied for substandard services deducted from worker's pay. The working people are on a treadmill of never ending work chasing rising living costs with stagnating wages.
As Fleming sums up "We not only pay for the neoliberal oligarchy directly but also indirectly as the template of work spreads out across the social body. For example, as the neoliberal state cuts housing welfare, working families and loved ones pick up the bill instead. The social commons stands in to cushion the blow caused by the subsidization economy, which today often takes the form of a massive reservoir of personal debt. Indeed, debt is the ultimate instrument of horizontal subsidization, for it frees dominant groups from the direct social costs of their predatory activities."[xii]
The plight of the working people saddled with mounting debts, stagnating incomes and long hours of work where the only object is teach the joys of obedience, compliance and servitude. They face the terrible existentialist nightmare of the myth of Sisyphus which condemns them to eternally roll a rock to the top of a mountain which rolls back again and againimpressing upon them the futility and hopelessness of labor.
The curse of Sisyphus can be countered by collective action of the working people.The collective struggle should be for living wages, a three day work week (made possible by technology) and to pierce the fog of market capitalism. We must see through the empty catchwords of market ideology: Jobs, growth and productivity.
It is only through the creative destruction of anger and resistance that we shall break the chains of servitude binding us to the planet of work where there is endless work with dwindling pay and where people are used and discarded like used condoms in a garbage dump of failed lives.
There is a glimmer of hope that people have seen through the charade of work and that things might change.
In 2011 in London bright yellow posters popped up in the streets with the words: "Jobs are sh*t, growth is sh*t, and all I want is revenge."[xiii]
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