‘Anti-work’: the movement that gained strength in the pandemic and spreads through online communities

Many workers are frustrated with the nature of the employment relationship. But some, already fed up, are asking themselves a bigger question: what is the purpose of the work?

Chris, an information technology professional based in the United States, says he suffered terrible working conditions in his last jobs.

He says that two different employers — one that didn’t pay sick leave and the other that only covered a week’s absence — forced him to return to work even though he was sick. In other jobs with heavy workloads, he says he ended up having to tend to his own wounds.

But a job in customer service was too much. His job, which paid less than $13 (£70) an hour, required him to verify that people’s dependents were entitled to health insurance. And he says he’d be fired if he gave clients certain useful information he wasn’t authorized to reveal, such as the deadline by which they had to submit paperwork.

“There were people literally begging for their lives on the phone and I couldn’t do anything,” he says. “It upset me so much that I realized that absolutely nothing about this system works. It’s pure lack of empathy and human kindness. I don’t know how it happened.”

After two years of the pandemic, workers around the world are tired. Mental health issues and burnout are common, particularly among essential and lower-wage workers. This prolonged period of uncertainty has caused many of them to rethink how their employers made things worse — and the number of workers leaving their jobs in search of better options has been hitting records in many countries.

But some people are going further, wondering if there is any purpose to their work, or to the economic system itself. These people are part of the “anti-work” movement, which seeks to break with the economic order that underpins the modern workplace.

The anti-labor builds on anarchist and socialist economic critiques and argues that most jobs today are not needed; on the contrary, they impose wage slavery and prevent workers from receiving the full value of their production.

But this does not mean that work should cease to exist. Supporters of the anti-labour movement believe that people should organize and work only what is necessary, rather than working long hours to generate excess goods or capital.

A few years ago, anti-work was a fringe, radical idea, but the pandemic incarnation of this movement quickly grew and became better known outside of political circles.

It is based on the English-language r/antiwork community of the content aggregator and social network Reddit. The community is still grounded in direct action, but as its popularity has grown, its focus has softened and broadened to form a broader dialogue about working conditions.

Today, the community contains a mix of personal narratives about resigning, creating change in hostile workplaces, advocating ongoing labor strikes, organizing labor, and ways people can seek to advocate on their own behalf.

The community grew quickly. At a time when worker dissatisfaction and labor rights are intensively analyzed, what is the meaning of the growing interest in this movement? And can it have a role to play in effecting change?

‘Visceral rejection of work’?

Chris helps moderate the r/antiwork community, which currently has 1.7 million subscribers (down from just 100,000 as of March 2020). “We have a steady increase in membership, between 20,000 and 60,000 followers a week. We have massive growth and a lot of engaged members. We get hundreds of posts and thousands of comments every day,” adds Doreen Ford, who also serves as moderator. of the community.

The name and philosophy of the community comes from a variety of sources. Ford says one of them is Bob Black, an anarchist philosopher whose 1985 essay The Abolition of Work was based on earlier thoughts about work — a story Black claims dates back to the philosophers Plato. and Xenophon in ancient Greece.

“Many workers are saturated with work. There may be some movement towards a conscious rejection of work, not just visceral,” Black writes, suggesting that people do only necessary work and dedicate the rest of their time to family and personal passions.

People who believe in anti-work are not necessarily against all forms of work. Its global sentiment is hostility against “works that are structured around capitalism and the state,” according to the community’s FAQ section: “r/antiwork’s goal is to start talking about problematization of work as we know it today”.

While these ideals remain central to the movement, the community’s focus has broadened to encompass more general labor rights. Users share stories of abuse by employers, ask for advice on negotiating better wages, contribute memes, or post news about ongoing labor strikes.

Participants also provide tips to users on how to support strike movements. In December 2021, community members supported efforts to flood Kellogg’s job portal when the company broke off negotiations with striking union workers and said it would hire new non-union employees. While the importance of direct influence by members of the r/antiwork community on the company’s actions is unclear, Kellogg’s and the union reached an agreement later that month.

The community also provides links to readings and podcasts on the anti-labor movement outside of Reddit. Most of the posts come from US workers of all genders and professions, but there are also international participants.

‘Disruption of work as we know it’

The anti-work movement is not new, but it has recently gained attention again.

“With Covid, there has been a disruption to work as we know it,” says Tom Juravich, a professor of labor studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the United States. “At times like these, people have time to reflect. Work has degraded for a lot of people. Our authority structures have become more draconian and controlling than ever. People really felt it in a new way.”

For manual workers, Covid-19 brutally exposed the deep inequalities that exist: low wages, lack of paid sick leave in some countries and the need to frequent customer service environments with inadequate security measures, which leave people vulnerable to contracting Covid. in the workplace.

Meanwhile, workers at all salary levels have struggled to reconcile the pressures of work and family responsibilities caused by school closures, leading to increased burnout and mental health issues — and, for some, even existential issues.

But Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of research on employment education and a senior lecturer at Cornell University in the United States, notes that while Covid-19 has been an important catalyst, the current anti-work movement has deeper roots that go back before the last two. years old.

“Workers had been maintaining an astonishing threshold of tolerance for abuses by employers against them,” says Bronfenbrenner. “But when this abuse advanced to the point of risking their lives, that threshold was crossed; in the context of Covid-19, employers were asking them to work harder than ever while making huge profits.”

Of course, not all disillusioned workers will embrace anti-work. Many are clearly looking for new jobs, looking to secure better conditions. Others are resigning and have decided to work on their own. But some are trying to advocate for change.

“Not all people are quitting,” says Bronfenbrenner. “Some are saying they are going to fix things by organizing, holding strikes or resisting.”

‘Looks like a great moment for us’

It is still too early to say whether this online community will have a measurable impact on labor rights, whether through more heated and passionate discussions or other disruptions. Fundamental changes in work overnight are unlikely, but we are experiencing an unprecedented reorganization in terms of how workers do their jobs and the kind of conditions they expect to receive from employers.

Many workers are clearly at their wit’s end — and there are already signs that employers, fearing widespread friction with their employees, are starting to respond with increasing improvements. If anti-work and its ideological cousins ​​continue to gain sympathies, it could make employers — and perhaps even politicians — take a moment to think.

At the same time, it is important to note how the anti-labour movement has developed in the past. A parallel is the “long 1970s”—the period between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s—a period of inflation and economic recession in the United States, which led to many Labor leaders (who, in many cases, had went on strike without warning) to quit their jobs and demand more than just pay increases from employers. Their demands also included better working conditions and changes in union leadership.

But this movement did not gather the necessary force. Lack of energy and rising unemployment have weakened efforts to radically alter working conditions, especially as employers have asked unions for greater concessions to make up for lost profits amid a massive recession.

The power of work faded as “the fear of losing job security” hampered the movement at the time, says Leon Fink, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the US.

Fink adds that economic changes and the decline of the economy have ended up destroying the influence of workers to sustain long-term change. Similarly, future economic conditions and evolving power relations in the workplace will ultimately affect the direction of the current anti-work movement.

But past labor movements indicate that moments of opportunity can generate some change, even if it is gradual or for a short period. “I think there is a real possibility of some movement” with the current anti-labour movement, according to Juravich. He recalls the implications of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, which “continues to reverberate through every other popular movement.”

Ford is optimistic: “They’re starting a lot of discussions. It sounds like a great time for us.” Chris, on the other hand, regards the anti-work movement as a small part of what he hopes will become a larger effort to totally destroy the structure of work – although he doesn’t expect to see that happen.

“I hope I can make it easier [esse processo] for future generations”, he says.

Note: Shortly after this story was published on January 26, 2022, the r/antiwork community became a private group, due to comments posted on Reddit. The text of the report was prepared before this change.