The anti-work movement
Why millions in the U.S. voluntarily refuse to work, demanding workplace change and balance in the pursuit of a good life.
What is anti-work?
Dubbed “The Great Resignation”, this movement, based primarily in the U.S, is a trend where employees have been voluntarily leaving their jobs throughout this year, citing toxic working conditions and low wages as the primary reason. Somewhat bewildering to someone living in a country with alarming rates of involuntary unemployment, this movement piqued my interest. I wanted to understand what deeper issues this may be symptomatic of regarding careerism and the workforce.
In complete contrast to the shocking rate of job losses experienced in the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the 2021 “Big Quit” saw businesses losing employees in droves, with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labour showing 4.2 million Americans voluntarily leaving their jobs in October alone.
Lamenting the status quo, people have begun contemplating a life in which work doesn’t define identity, consume all of our time and take priority over quality of life. While the movement is popularly known as “anti-work”, the movement is more about problematising work as it’s known today.
A subreddit, r/antiwork, dedicated as the primary community representing the movement online, has attracted over 1.3 million members sharing stories and anecdotes about their work that prompted them to join the movement. Recently, members of this online community took Kellogg’s head-on, challenging their low-wage policy by crashing their job application system.
On October 5th 2021, 1400 workers behind faves like Froot Loops and Rice Crispies walked out of major Kellogg’s plants, contesting the new employment contracts that would leave them with cut wages and no benefits. The workers lament unfair working conditions like being scheduled seven days a week and being required to use annual leave days when sick as opposed to sick leave. Despite a record profit in access of $400 million dollars (on cereal alone), Kellogs announced a move to slash workers’ pay and benefits such as retirement and health insurance.
With the strike ongoing for two months, Kellogg's offered the unionized workers a 3% increase to their pay, which was rejected by the workers. Kellogg’s made a move to fire and replace the workers on strike after the rejection of the pay deal. This prompted calls for more rigorous action, leading to thousands posting fake applications on Kellogg’s website to stop the company from firing and replacing the workers currently on strike. The result was a crashed system, forcing the company back on the drawing board.
An interesting turn in the strike happened when the r/antiwork Reddit community banded behind the strikers and used various methods to crash the job application system. From engineering bots to apply en-masse, to mobilizing thousands to apply to on the website, the moment saw the amalgamation of online and offline strategies of solidarity. The strike continues, with results from the onslaught of fake job applications on Kellogg’s website still to be seen.
Employers downsizing in order to curtail the economic contraction that would be the result of worldwide lockdown restrictions were common in 2020. Pay cuts, salary and hiring freezes and lay-offs were high in most industries across the globe. Government concerns over economic recovery were palpable and permeated much of the conversation around curbing the pandemic, with efforts aimed at returning back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible. This is why an unprecedented labour exodus eighteen months later, with employers in the U.S struggling to fill 10 million jobs, is shockingly surprising. However, the issues motivating this voluntary quitting are relatable and common in many parts of the world.
And that’s why I couldn't stop reading about this movement, seeking to understand why quitting is all the rage. Is this symptomatic of deeper frustration and burnout from the last two challenging years, or a signal for greater change in employer-employee dynamics?
A closer look inside the movement
Upon closer inspection (and hours pouring over articles, stories and Reddit threads), it’s clear that people aren’t necessarily against working altogether. Work is necessary: we need food on the table, a roof over our heads. The ‘quitters’ aren’t lazy or looking to be unemployed for the rest of their lives, but rather are seeking environments where work is an enabler to living a good quality, balanced life.
In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, labour economist Lawerence Katz affirms that people quitting doesn’t mean they are leaving the workforce entirely. He calls this exodus a “take this job and shove it” moment, motivated by more than just disgruntlement with toxic work environments and questioning of low-wage status quos or lack of benefits. He cites a better-than-expected financial recovery from the pandemic as an underlying factor in people taking their time with going back to the job market, choosing instead to look for better opportunities. Employees holding out on labour supply, as well as unionizing, has had an impact in changing employer-employee engagements, overall.
So while the numbers are alarming, the underlying tone of the movement is to catalyze a shift in power in labour relations. Things like work-life balance have become more important than ever, in addition to salaries matching inflation hikes and receiving adequate benefits. This movement denotes a shift in priorities in employees’ lives, from a careerist, ‘hustle culture’ centric approach, to work supporting a quality lifestyle that makes time for other things people value like family, community and hobbies. Ultimately, while in the years before the pandemic there was a hustle-driven ambition to prioritize work, a post-pandemic reality is turning out different.
A perspective from the other side of the world
From the opposite end of the world (South Africa), coming across such a movement was totally bewildering. My reality is of a government vilified daily for being unable to create jobs, university graduates standing on street corners with boards looking for opportunities, countless families barely making it above the poverty line each day. So yes, it was momentarily shocking to read about people living in a country with millions of job opportunities voluntarily leaving their jobs.
At the time of writing this, SA’s unemployment is at an all-time high of 34.9% in the third quarter of 2021, with youth being the most impacted demographic. So naturally, my first thought was a bitter “must be nice” when I read more about this exodus. This was followed by an internal rant about how privileged followers of this movement must be to even have such choices. But reading instances of this movement such as the Kellogg’s strike made me realize that our gripes with the workforce are universal. The struggle for survival people from emerging economies grapple with would never be able to afford us luxuries of withholding our labour in order to kindle change in the workforce. But we also struggle with the same issues and often unionize and strike against companies because of them.
A lot of people put up with toxic, unstable work environments, extremely low-wages and no benefits just to be able to feed their families on my end of the world. So I naturally hold the perspective that such a movement, while necessary, would be unsustainable under a crisis-ridden economy like ours. A quick LinkedIn poll to my (mostly South African) connections shows that some people share a similar perspective.
The stark differences in the impact of the pandemic on the workforce between the U.S. and SA are astounding. On the one hand, you have a movement of people using refusal to work as a way to question the capitalist production status quo centred around the wage system. On the other, people are relying on the same system for survival and are desperate for employment.
Ultimately, everything is relative.
While I do think a movement like this isn’t on the cards for us down South, it’s an important moment in labour history for the U.S. that may filter down, changing workplaces all over the world. With the influence that American corporate culture has on best practices in most parts of the world (take for example how Silicon Valley inspires a lot of tech start-up models), I expect that soon enough a lot of companies will begin prioritizing a work-life balance, prompted by changes proposed by this movement.
The pandemic spawned widespread introspection about the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness for one part of the world while invoking a needs-based survival mode for others. But ultimately, we all share one common problem: disgruntlement with low wages, extreme fatigue and burnout, and dissatisfaction with the workplace norm of making work the centre of any human’s identity.
How we each resolve this worldwide problem is down to context, place, timing and of course the privilege to be able to afford certain choices, like refusing to work.