Work Work as the defining condition of humanity For Bertie Wooster – the kind-he

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Work

Work as the defining condition of humanity

For Bertie Wooster – the kind-hearted but clueless aristocratic dandy (played by a young Hugh Laurie of House fame) in the 1980s BBC TV adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse’s classic Jeeves and Wooster novels – work is what other people do. However, except for a tiny minority of idle rich, or the leisure class,* 1 like him, work has been the defining condition of humanity throughout most of its history.

Until the nineteenth century, most people in today’s rich Western countries typically worked seventy to eighty hours a week, with some people working over 100 hours. Since they often (not always) had the Sunday morning off for church attendance, this meant that they were working at least eleven hours, and possibly up to sixteen hours, per day, except on Sundays.

Today, few work that long even in poor countries. The average working week ranges between thirty-five and fifty-five hours. Even so, the majority of the adult population spends around half of their waking hours at work (more, if we add the time for commuting), outside weekends and paid holidays.

The dog that didn’t bark: the curious absence of work in economics

Despite its overwhelming presence in our lives, work is a relatively minor subject in economics. The only major mention of work is, somewhat curiously, in terms of its absence – unemployment.

Insofar as work is discussed, it is basically treated as a means to get income. We are seen to value income or leisure, but not work in and of itself. In the dominant Neoclassical view, we put up with the disutility from work only because we can derive utility from things we can buy with the resulting income. In this framework, we work only up to the point where the disutility from an additional unit of work is equalized with the utility that we can derive from the additional income from it.

But for most people, work is a lot more than simply a means to earn income. When we spend so much time on it, what happens in the workplace affects our physiological and psychological well-being. It may even shape our very selves.

Many have worked – and are still working – with their basic human rights violated

For many people, work is about basic human rights – or, rather, the lack of them. For much of human history, huge numbers of people were deprived of the most basic human right of ‘self-ownership’ and were bought and sold as commodities – that is, as slaves.

After the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, around 1.5 million Indians, Chinese (the ‘coolies’) and even Japanese went overseas as indentured labourers to replace the slaves. People like V. S. Naipaul, the Indian-Trinidadian novelist who was the 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Yat-sen Chang, the Chinese-Cuban ballerino at the English National Ballet, and Vijay Singh, the Indian-Fijian golfer, are reminders of this history.

Indentured labour was not slavery, in the sense that the worker was not owned by the employer. But an indentured labourer had no freedom to change jobs and had only minimal rights during the contract period (three to ten years). In many cases, their working conditions were scarcely better than those of the slaves whom they came to replace; many were put in the exact same barracks that the slaves used to live in.

But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking this is all in the past. There are still a lot of people whose work is founded upon the violation of their fundamental human rights. There may be few legal slaves, but still a lot of people are engaged in other forms of forced labour. Some of them would have been coerced into those jobs (that is, trafficked). Others may have voluntarily signed up for them initially, but they may be prevented from leaving their jobs, due to either violence (most common among domestic workers) or debts to the employer, artificially inflated by over-charging on their recruitment, travel, food or accommodation. Some international migrant workers toil under conditions similar to the indentured labourers of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

How work shapes us

Even when it does not involve violation of basic human rights, work can so fundamentally affect us that it really ‘forms’ us.

Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to child labour.* 2 When children work in adult jobs, their mental and physical developments are arrested. Thus, by working from a young age, individuals may not fulfil their potential to the full.

Work forms adults too. Adam Smith, while praising the positive productivity effects of the finer division of labour (see Chapter 2), was concerned that excessive division of labour might cripple the worker’s mental capacity. This point was later hilariously but poignantly depicted in Charlie Chaplin’s classic movie Modern Times, in which he plays a worker who, having been reduced to performing simple repetitive tasks at high speed, has a mental breakdown and runs amok.

Work can also form us positively. People who like their jobs often have a greater sense of self-fulfilment. It is well understood that factory work, compared to work in shops or even agricultural work, makes workers more politically aware and disciplined because of its very nature – a large number of people working in a closely connected and synchronized way in a confined and organized space.

Work affects our physical, intellectual and psychological well-being

Even when it does not affect us so deeply that it actually ‘forms’ us, work greatly affects our well-being in physical, intellectual and psychological terms.

Some jobs are more physically demanding, dangerous and harmful for health than others. Working longer makes people more tired and harms their health in the long run.

There are jobs – crafts, arts, design, teaching, research, etc. – that are often considered more intellectually interesting, thanks to their higher creative contents.

The psychological dimension relates to the employer– employee relationship, rather than to the physical or intellectual nature of the work per se. Even if the job is identical, those who are provided with fewer breaks during work, put under excessive pressure to perform or made to feel insecure are less happy than their counterparts working for more decent employers.

Please summarize and analyze (500 words minimum)

Explanation / Answer

The article is about work and its effects in past and present. For rich people work is something that others do and for the rest it is defining condition of humanity. Until nineteenth century people were working eleven to sixteen hours per day except on Sundays. Now it has reduced much and people work for thirty five to fifty five hours per week. Unemployment is a major concern in economics and work is treated a means to get income. But for most of the people work is more than that and the extra hours spent on work affect our psychological and physiological well being. After the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century many Indians, Chinese and Japanese went overseas as indentured workers to replace the slaves. Indentured workers are not slaves but cannot change their job and had only minimal right during the contract period but their life were like slaves. In the present also there are many forms of forced labor and human rights are being violated. Most of the international workers are living the life of indentured workers due to their debts to the employer or due to violence among domestic workers. Another effect of work is regarding child labor where both physical and mental developments of the children are arrested. In the adulthood the mental capacity of the worker is affected by the excessive division of labor. The positive effect of work is the greater sense of fulfillment when we like our job. It also makes people politically aware and disciplined because of its organized nature that connects and synchronizes work of large number of workers. But working for long time affects the health of the workers. Some of the jobs are intellectually interesting like teaching and arts due to the creative contents. Psychological dimension of work depends on the relationship between employer and employee and excessive pressure and insecure feeling makes the employee less happy than the other employees doing similar work.

As per my analysis the human rights are still getting violated in most of the countries and it is more in developing countries. The employees in developing countries are still working more than ten hours per day and they do not question the employer due to fear of losing the job. Child labor is getting abolished in most of the countries and people now understand the effects of child labor and the law has become very strict. Many Indians are still working in overseas like slaves as a part of the contract and they sign the contract initially to increase their income. By the time they understand the difficulties they reach a state from where it is not possible to escape. The law should be strict to eliminate this kind of contracts that allow employers to employ workers violating their freedom. There are many positive effects of work which include improvement in personality, coordination, innovation, organizing skill, and communication skill when it is managed in the proper way.

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