Work — “bullshit jobs” and ploughshares

Now that I’m no longer gainfully employed, I’m looking at “work” from a different angle, and reflecting on what a complex idea it is.

There are a few things that I’d like to start to get my head round — what exactly we might mean by “work”; why we work; why we think work is good for other people; why only some types of work are paid; why some work is paid much more than other work; why we have a political party rooted in work; why “bringing in jobs” is seen as the main answer to deprivation and regeneration; how work can exploit and dehumanise; how work can be inspired and passionate, and an expression of solidarity and connectedness.

There won’t be any great structure to this, because it’s likely to be triggered now and then by fairly random articles I read via Twitter, or by news articles or conversations on the radio, and then by loose exploration from one thing to another.

Here’s an example.

David Graeber, currently my favourite Professor of Anthropology, is asking people to get in touch with him if they think they are employed in what he’s started to describe as a “bullshit job”. He’s writing a book and wants real examples of people’s experiences. He can be contacted by email at doihaveabsjoborwhat@gmail.com.

In his idea of a “bullshit job” the person doing it knows that it is pointless, in that the tasks they have to carry out don’t really need to be performed at all. He suggests it may be a more common phenomenon in particular areas of work — like telemarketing, corporate law, academic administration and public relations, for example. People are going through the motions of work and employment but may feel that they’re not actually doing anybody any good, including themselves.

We would notice the impact if nurses, binmen, car mechanics, teachers, bus drivers or tube-workers didn’t turn up for work — but there are other jobs which we wouldn’t necessarily miss. And the people doing them might also feel better if they weren’t doing them.

Even in roles where the purpose and the benefits to society should be clear — for example, teachers, social workers, nurses, care workers — people may well feel that too much time is spent on “bullshit” aspects of the work, like monitoring, recording, inspecting, appraisals, reporting. Technology has fed bureaucracy.

According to Keynes in 1930, technological progress would free us up for much more leisure time but, in practice, it hasn’t yet. Some say this is because of consumerism and the drive to own or use more products, but Graeber contends that the reason we haven’t been freed up is that a work-force with time and energy on its hands would be a dangerous thing — dangerous to capital, dangerous to the status quo….

I’m not suggesting that they had loads of time on their hands, but the workforce at Lucas Aerospace in 1976 certainly seem to have stirred things up when they produced their alternative Lucas Plan — as described by Adrian Smith in the Guardian of 22nd January 2014.

In the face of proposals to remove thousands of jobs, many of which were involved in the production of weapons, the workers argued that they should have the right and opportunity to use their skills and resources — which were largely public-funded — to develop alternative products and services that would be socially useful. Working together for over a year, and consulting widely across the workforce and local communities, they came up with over 150 alternative products.

Though it was never implemented, the Lucas Plan appears to have had an impact on industrial policy for a number of years, and it was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Beyond Lucas, the ideas were picked up in 1981 by the newly-established Greater London Council which set up an Enterprise Board and an Industrial Strategy that included Technology Networks. These Technology Networks — linking local communities and polytechnics — worked in a similar way to design, and in some cases produce, a range of socially useful ideas and products related to alternative energy systems and community IT networks. In the political context of the 1980s though, they were swimming against a tide that proved irresistible.

Now, forty years on from the Lucas Plan, in social media and crowd-sourcing we have new ways of bringing people together to plan and design alternative ways of doing things. And there are echoes of 1970s Lucas Aerospace in the current arguments about the renewal of Trident.

Perhaps Nia Griffith and Clive Lewis and John McDonnell will be able to encourage others to learn from the Lucas workers’ experiments in industrial democracy.