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The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Corporations have vast, measurable influen

The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Corporations have vast, measurable influence in peoples lives, both good and bad. Why are the workers, to you, not permitted the agency to bring politics to work?

hn8788 5y ago
> The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Where are people working where the vast majority of their waking hours, for decades, are spent at work? At least be honest, these articles about bringing politics to work are talking about people in comfy tech jobs working 8 hours a day, not wage slaves in coal mines and factories working 12 hour days.
- kelnos 5y ago
  "Vast majority" might be an overstatement, but if you work an 8-hour day, commute for an hour each way, and take an hour for lunch (which, let's face it, is often with co-workers and involves work talk), that's 11 hours doing things that you probably wouldn't be doing if you didn't have to work. If we assume 8 hours of sleep, that's only 5 waking, non-work-related hours. It's... pretty lame, honestly. All these modern conveniences and we're working more than ever these days (in the US, at least). Also not really sure where all these "comfy tech jobs" are; every tech job I've worked in the past 15+ years often has people working ~10 hour days. I'm not aware of many people in tech who work 9-5 and that's it.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    To be fair, these jobs do exist in a sizable amount. I’ve almost never worked more than 40hrs/week and have short commute times. (Lunch is included in my working hours) I’ve seen many places where people work potentially less hours than I do during certain seasons. I’m a pretty productive employee (when I want to be and feel incentivized) and am paid well enough to be in the 1%. I still agree with what you said. Just want to say that these jobs exist. It’s up to the employee to fight for it though more than anything. Many employees in tech are a bit of pushovers though. (Or are afraid of losing their visa)
- chillwaves 5y ago
  What is the relevance of your comment? A comfortable job still robs me of my life.
agentofoblivion 5y ago
Because you’re being paid to come to work and work. That’s why they call it “work”, not “debate club”. The idea that young, affluent tech workers like those at Google expect to come to work and argue over the plight of black lives in between writing code for serving ads all while making $300k a year and complaining about other peoples’ privilege is just gross (and a little funny).
notwrongbutt 5y ago
That is a good question indeed. The obvious answer is that bringing politics into the workplace threatens corporations profits and power. Clearly you don't want your employees to talk about unions, wages, working conditions, etc. So what if you could get those employees to talk about: sexual identity and pronouns, race, allowed/disallowed vocabulary instead? Wouldn't that be a neat trick? If you have your employees fight each other, they will be too busy to think in terms of group interests at work and will instead think of their groups outside work (black, gay, etc.) Some might object that it's such an obvious and blatant strategy. Yet it's fooling almost everyone. I work in the mining industry, and we're now starting to see giant mining conglomerates -- the ones that cause environmental catastrophes affecting poor people, who in Australia blast old indigenous caves, etc. -- demand their employees and contractors to use "inclusive" language. Thus you don't say: "our dam collapse destroyed an entire village of _indios_ there!", because that's incredibly racist and prejudiced. The corrected sentence is: "our dam collapse destroyed an entire village of brave and proud indigenous elders", which is of course way more respectful and inclusive.

hn8788 5y ago

> The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Where are people working where the vast majority of their waking hours, for decades, are spent at work? At least be honest, these articles about bringing politics to work are talking about people in comfy tech jobs working 8 hours a day, not wage slaves in coal mines and factories working 12 hour days.

kelnos 5y ago
"Vast majority" might be an overstatement, but if you work an 8-hour day, commute for an hour each way, and take an hour for lunch (which, let's face it, is often with co-workers and involves work talk), that's 11 hours doing things that you probably wouldn't be doing if you didn't have to work. If we assume 8 hours of sleep, that's only 5 waking, non-work-related hours. It's... pretty lame, honestly. All these modern conveniences and we're working more than ever these days (in the US, at least). Also not really sure where all these "comfy tech jobs" are; every tech job I've worked in the past 15+ years often has people working ~10 hour days. I'm not aware of many people in tech who work 9-5 and that's it.
- bradlys 5y ago
  To be fair, these jobs do exist in a sizable amount. I’ve almost never worked more than 40hrs/week and have short commute times. (Lunch is included in my working hours) I’ve seen many places where people work potentially less hours than I do during certain seasons. I’m a pretty productive employee (when I want to be and feel incentivized) and am paid well enough to be in the 1%. I still agree with what you said. Just want to say that these jobs exist. It’s up to the employee to fight for it though more than anything. Many employees in tech are a bit of pushovers though. (Or are afraid of losing their visa)
chillwaves 5y ago
What is the relevance of your comment? A comfortable job still robs me of my life.

agentofoblivion 5y ago

Because you’re being paid to come to work and work. That’s why they call it “work”, not “debate club”. The idea that young, affluent tech workers like those at Google expect to come to work and argue over the plight of black lives in between writing code for serving ads all while making $300k a year and complaining about other peoples’ privilege is just gross (and a little funny).

notwrongbutt 5y ago

That is a good question indeed. The obvious answer is that bringing politics into the workplace threatens corporations profits and power. Clearly you don't want your employees to talk about unions, wages, working conditions, etc. So what if you could get those employees to talk about: sexual identity and pronouns, race, allowed/disallowed vocabulary instead? Wouldn't that be a neat trick? If you have your employees fight each other, they will be too busy to think in terms of group interests at work and will instead think of their groups outside work (black, gay, etc.) Some might object that it's such an obvious and blatant strategy. Yet it's fooling almost everyone. I work in the mining industry, and we're now starting to see giant mining conglomerates -- the ones that cause environmental catastrophes affecting poor people, who in Australia blast old indigenous caves, etc. -- demand their employees and contractors to use "inclusive" language. Thus you don't say: "our dam collapse destroyed an entire village of _indios_ there!", because that's incredibly racist and prejudiced. The corrected sentence is: "our dam collapse destroyed an entire village of brave and proud indigenous elders", which is of course way more respectful and inclusive.