Loud demands are the legacy of Labor Day
It’s easy to log on to the web and find inspirational Mark Twain quotes, and even easier to find ones he may or may not have said including this purported Twain aphorism: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Sounds nice. But even the jobs we spent our college or trade school days dreaming of having can wear us down, once they cease to be fantasies and become our reality, to the point that we want out.
The COVID-19 pandemic led people to re-evaluate what work means for them and what they do in their lives: After two years of remote work, why would I go back to sitting on the Katy Freeway for 90 minutes a day just for face time in the office? Is 60 hours per week in the office, away from my kids and my spouse, how I want to live my life? Can I get paid more?
These days workers have the leverage to ask for more, and many are.
A federal jobs report released in July indicates there are about two open jobs for every job seeker. Public support for unions nationally is at a record high, at 71 percent, and rates of workers voluntarily quitting jobs for better opportunities are also well above average.
Yet many workers have dropped out of the labor force entirely or are “quiet quitting” — an old phenomenon with a new hashtag in which people don’t literally throw their key card at their boss in a huff but rather consciously decide to no longer go above and beyond.
This Labor Day is a chance to remember that picking either worklife balance or productivity on the job is a false choice. Now is the time for loud voices calling for paid parental leave, guaranteed sick days, better health care and preserving the flexibility of COVID-era remote work when it makes sense. Some research indicates higher productivity among remote workers and other findings show the benefits of in-person work.
In the jobs report released Friday morning, we learned national job growth slowed but came in at a solid 315,000 new jobs. That includes 31,000 leisure and hospitality jobs, continuing a recent stretch of strong hiring — but the industry still has 1.2 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic began.
The opportunity for workers to negotiate not just better pay but better working conditions is still there, though the opening may soon narrow as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow the economy. Employers and workers should use this time wisely to reconsider what works, what doesn’t, and what truly matters when it comes to improving American businesses and our individual lives.
In his book “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity ,” Samuel Huntington wrote that Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later, than people in comparably rich societies.”
That lack of work-life balance won’t change through “quiet quitting.”
Labor Day has deep ties to fierce struggles over our relationship with work — and, relatedly, it is a time of community and family, of cookouts and pool parties.
As you prepare to grill, take a moment to reflect on the history of this day. On Sept. 5, 1882, at a time when
many worked from sunrise into the night six or seven days per week, 10,000 workers took time off without pay in New York City and marched from City Hall to Union Square, considered the first Labor Day parade in our history.
We should honor those workers as Americans recalibrate the amount of work we are willing to do and the length of time we are willing to spend doing it.
It’s a good thing that the pandemic has forced companies to adjust to workers’ new habits and desires, either allowing flexible schedules, virtual meetings or else luring some employees into returning with better amenities. Some building owners are converting floors from cubicles to apartments and opening more outdoor areas with cafes and restaurants. At the Esperson building, some offices are being turned into “hotel/dorm-like rooms” for young entrepreneurs whose work and life will be closer together.
“We’ll all be able to point back at these couple of years and have stories to share about our ways of working and being that we’re going to process,” says Peter Merwin, design director at the Houston offices of architecture firm Gensler.
Mark Twain may have been right that work itself can bring great meaning and purpose to our lives, but those workers marching some 140 years ago knew something, too. We need decent workplaces and we need time away from work to stay tethered to greater community and purpose.
Picking either work-life balance or productivity on the job is a false choice.