Hourly Work Doesn’t Make Sense
But we can take back our time
If you’ve ever read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, your stomach probably turns at the idea of selling hours of your life to any company. He does a thorough job in the book of breaking down how unnatural the idea is, and how even a few centuries ago workers and the people who paid them would have thought it was strange to talk about essentially buying someone’s time. Rather, workers were paid to create something directly (like shoes and pottery), or paid to fulfill an appointed role (like guard and teacher). So why do we now count our work by the hour, and commit to having portions of our daily lives owned by our employers?
The idea struck me when I was promoted into my first salaried position, after decades of hourly and freelance work in various industries. All of a sudden, my employer didn’t care when I got my work done or how long it took me. They trusted me to accomplish my tasks within a reasonable time frame, and would pay me as if I’d worked 40 hours each week regardless of the actual total. But I’d been consistent and reliable for years leading up to that point — so why during all of that time did I need to meticulously report the exact hours I worked each day? I couldn’t help noticing a distinct lack of trust in the arrangement of hourly work, that I hadn’t quite noticed before.
You’re already aware that salaried positions are often higher-paying, with higher levels of responsibility. We assume those jobs require a great deal of skill or experience, and therefore deserve more trust and compensation. But a salary (compared to an hourly wage) has more to do with a worker’s position in the company hierarchy, than how essential their work is to company productivity.
We witnessed first-hand which workers are actually “essential” during the early parts of the Covid pandemic: grocery cashiers, delivery drivers, and medical workers at every level of the healthcare system. Yet we don’t pay all of them a consistent, lump sum of money each month based on the importance of their work — we force them to log the exact number of hours they are physically present and busy, and then pay them whatever “the market” deems fair for that contribution.
I can already hear the counterpoints brewing in people’s minds:
“What, so we should pay people when they’re not working?”
“Salary jobs are harder, you can only get hired into them with enough experience.”
“We can’t just pay everyone some big lump sum, different jobs merit different pay!”
And to be clear, I’m not arguing here for a Universal Basic Income (though I do support that idea, and am happy to explain that support in a separate article). What I am saying here, is that qualifying work by the hours spent on it doesn’t actually make sense. Not only does it take different people varying amounts of time to complete the same task, but if you measure pay by time rather than productivity, people can just sit at their desks and do practically nothing for hours, and still be paid regardless. Research actually shows that many office workers do just that.
If this bullshit, “market-driven”, production-obsessed system was actually efficient, it would do a better job incentivizing workers to maximize their time. Some companies do offer bonuses for exceptional performance — but more often they just heap additional work onto competent workers instead, with only the “appreciation” of management as thanks. If you’re only going to be paid based on the number of hours you sit in your cubicle, or show as “active” on work channels, why on Earth would you bust your ass to get more done than the minimum necessary to keep from getting fired? This is the realization that sparked the Quiet Quitting phenomenon in recent years.
Let me paint an alternative picture for you here, and you can decide whether it sounds completely unreasonable on a basic level, or just terribly unlikely under our current corporatocratic regime:
You work as an archivist, and your job is to organize digital records and documents for a company, helping people locate them when needed. You can do this remotely from any internet-connected computer, and you can work at your own pace, as long as you are working consistently and effectively. Your company pays you a flat amount (a salary) for getting an approximate amount of archiving done each month. If you get more done than expected, they pay you a bonus based on the amount of extra work.
You’re not expected to work 8 hours every day. You’re not expected to be constantly visible to your employer, either in person or online. And your work is reviewed periodically to make sure its quality is consistent. If you prove over time that you’re skilled and dedicated in your role, your pay is increased based on your personal ability, and the importance of your work to the operation of the company. Your pay is not based on the “average market value” of your role in other companies or the economy more generally.
Naturally, this example can’t apply directly to all jobs — warehouse workers need to work in a warehouse, and air traffic controllers need to work closely with their supervisors. But the idea that any job can be paid based on its functional value, and that said pay can be given consistently despite the actual hours it takes to complete your tasks, I think holds true. So why is hourly pay the norm, when it seems to be less efficient, less motivating, and causes people to fudge their reported hours, anyway?
Well, Graeber does a more academic job of explaining the history of the change — but it comes down to ownership and control. How do you make sure a bunch of strangers who you don’t trust or respect complete the tasks you’ve given them? You buy a third of the hours of their lives at a cut-rate, and surveil them constantly while they make your money for you. Bonus points if you can fabricate a competitive job market that allows employers to haggle the actual cost of keeping yourself alive. Don’t be fooled when your employer tells you that you’re receiving a fair offer based on “market research” — that’s just pointing at other companies and saying “well they don’t pay shit for your job either, so take it or leave it.”
My friends, the answer is not to take the best deal you can get from thieves who rigged their own game board — the answer is to flip the fucking table over and collectively refuse to play until you get a say in the rules. And since the actually essential jobs are the ones that rarely receive a salary, a living wage, or any kind of necessary benefits for staying alive, it’ll become clear pretty damn quickly that the game doesn’t work without any players.
France is proving that, again, right now. Except instead of guillotines and cake-eating aristocrats being dragged through the streets — it’s union-rejected garbage piles and corporate loot liberated from the Paris headquarters of BlackRock. Which is just about as delicious. Resistance like this is painful — life can become a scary mess while people refuse to go along with the status quo. But the alternative is suffering with a polished dress shoe on your neck, forever.
There are groups working to build an alternative — a safety net to catch people who have the courage to jump from the burning building. And the more people who jump, the wider the net grows. I promise that your skills, your knowledge, your care, and your anger will be useful in forcing a change for the better. Do it for you, and for every other person who wants to take back the hours of their lives. Find out what life can be, when it isn’t being sold to extortionists holding everything you need hostage behind a violent, global paywall.
If you’d like to get involved in helping to make a “moneyless society” a reality in your local community, you can sign up to be a volunteer here, join our discord, and/or connect with us on social media by following @MoneylessSociety.
We also encourage you to check out the new book by our co-founder, Matthew Holten, Moneyless Society: The Next Economic Evolution, and our podcast to learn more about who we are, what we do, and how you too can help create a new, better, and more sustainable future.
To see more thoughtful content from Ev Malcolm, you can visit his Instagram page here.
