Organizing a union from scratch is full of little folds you’d never expect until they’re right in front of you. Lots of unintended consequences of a workforce being made up of diverse mindsets, experiences, and beliefs. The truth is that corporate “multiculturalism” mostly just boils down to everyone hiding enough of themselves that the frictions lay under the surface. However, a big part of organizing is talking to people and finding their core grievances, which are often covered by more face-value grievances. Is this person upset about getting stiffed on a raise? Yeah, sure. But maybe their core issue is that they’re now worried about inflation making it hard to afford childcare accounting for inflation. An announcement about withholding raises is a momentary stressor. The active, continuous, daily stressor is the childcare.

So I wanted to talk about bullshit jobs. There’s an implication when people talk about bullshit jobs that someone with a bullshit job does not do work or experience stress. One of the most common experiences of people moving from factory work or retail into the office was realizing just how exhausting it is to work for 2 hours and then perform “being productive” for 6. And on the more active side of things where you’re actively working a bullshit job for 70 hours a week, it frankly could not matter less to you that the client on the other end of the phone is also working a bullshit job. You both know who writes your paychecks and it’s your job to deal with the vitriol and time pressure.

There’s also an implication that “bullshit job” means “office job” and vice versa. One of my first office jobs was at a logistics company who specialized in raw materials for medical equipment. This is an inherently globalized market which is necessary for modern medical advances to continue existing. I left because of shitty management. Those managers’ jobs might have been bullshit. But mine wasn’t and neither were my coworkers’.

All this is to say that the reality on the ground is a lot more complicated. Now imagine taking the person working 1 hour a day and putting them in a room with the person working 10 hours a day and have them speak honestly about their grievances. The overworked project manager is gonna have a hard time empathizing with how isolating and stressful it is to perform “I’m busy I promise” for most of the day. And then realize that this dynamic may be seasonal, so these people may switch roles depending on the time of year. And some departments are downstream from others and work on a delay. That means everyone is constantly hearing about how other departments are “finally getting a well deserved breather” while they’re still in the middle of shoveling shit. All of this is complicated by the fact that the 1 hour a day people are doing their best to look like the 10 hours a day people because if they don’t they’ll get fired.

All of this is to say that the discourse around “bullshit jobs” is moralistic and filled with resentment. This isn’t without reason or motivation. I think a lot of us romanticize the ability to “not work all day”. And I’m not gonna act like it’s never better. There are definitely people who show up for a couple meetings and just check out for the rest of the day with no consequences. But those people tend to be in management. The people at the bottom being forced to seem productive at all times generally request more work because they find working preferable. The complicated dynamics of this make it difficult to navigate as an organizer. I wish I had concrete solutions beyond, “keep these caveats in mind, get to know people, and use your best judgement,” but that’s about all I’ve got.