Before we came here, we had already heard that the Americans work a lot. And in fact, it is not only true, but rather I find it worse than I expected: They spend way more time at work than any other country in Europe, they never take vacations (most of them just "survive" with long weekend, extending the normal weekend with an additional half or full day), and they even work on a Saturday or Sunday. Even the national holidays are located on Fridays or Mondays, so that people can't do half a week off. I am talking in general terms, there are job positions that allow a bit more freedom to the employees, but the work conditions (or the lack of them) make it really difficult for this society to have a happy and complete life aside work. Additionally, another fact that we all are experiencing is the huge unemployment rates in some countries, starting with this one. All this put together made me think that I don't have very clear picture of the history of work, why and when people started to work and how we came to the current situation. So I decided to research a little bit on the origin of work, and I'd like to share some of this with you, so that you can get a wider picture too.
Talking about the history of work, it seems like it has always been there. However, if we think how life used to be some centuries ago, we can well imagine people not working in exchange for money, but rather a trade between products. In that sense, there had to be a fisherman that provided fish for his society, but unlike now, he would share the fish he caught with the rest of his neighbors. Those would in return provide him with the fish nets, any repairs needed on his boat etc. Every one had a function and they did not need economic transaction among them, because it was equally important to have a fisherman as to have a doctor.
Looking a bit later than that, not everyone in the society worked. In the classical society, the wealthy class would inherit properties from their ancestors, not needing to work to survive. The only population that needed to work were the poor, since they started with nothing. Even the Romans and Greeks had no interest in working, as it would give them less time to develop their ideas, beliefs, morality etc.
It was later on that working acquired a positive value for the person doing it. Its probable origin seems to come with the Judeo-Christian beliefs. But the idea of work as a gratifying act for every single person didn't really establish until the 16th century. This was a need that came with the industrial development, for which the workers needed to feel gratified although they had to work long hours and poor working conditions. And from that point on, the attitude and values of working have been accepted, becoming the norm in the Western culture. It was said that only if you work hard, you will be responsible of your own destiny in life.
With the big industrial development, a huge amount of the population worked in factories, doing repetitive and very specialized tasks that took long time to execute. It was at that moment when the definition of work started to lose the sense of control over one's destiny, as the activities didn't stimulate the workers intellectually. At a certain point, they realized that the workers needed a challenging situation to keep motivated and not become lazy at work. That is when they invented the rewards for workers, to make them feel important at work (according to this, when your boss offers you a promotion, it actually doesn't mean that you're good, but rather you're getting lazy and need more challenge...). It was also this time when employers started to provide better conditions for their workers, like a salary, health and retirement policies, etc. With the introduction of these social factors to the workers, something really interesting happened: nothing changed. The motivation of the workers to do their jobs did not seem to increase.
Soon after this was established, a lot of these working population were replaced by machines that made the same work faster and more accurate. The job offer decreased dramatically. But the society had already entered the concept of work as the only method to provide for one's future... Following the old model and using it to cover current necessities, many job positions have become obsolete, unnecessary, and sometimes redundant.
My takeout in that matter is that there was a need once to establish work as a gratifying act, in order to get everybody's agreement to help develop products (like in the war). After that, the need for people decreased. But the moral value attached to work and to define someone's value through its profession remained in society. It is very probable that if you ask somebody why he or she works, they'd say "because I need the money". But that might not actually be the real motivation, rather than "because everybody is supposed work to get money". And those are different aspects; the first one is meant as a necessity, it is the only way to survive; the second one is an established tradition.
And that is why people work their lives to death, because it became a "learned need", and is accepted by everybody. And the truly demand of work to be done is much smaller than the amount of workers. It is a deadly combination for the employee but the best scenario possible for an employer, and may explain why Americans don't take vacations. It is not because there is work to be done that can't wait for a week, it is because work scarcity helps get people's energy to the maximum. Because they know that if they show weakness or decide to take some free time, there is somebody else prepared to do its job who is willing to work twice as much.
But instead of finishing the post with this dramatic conclusion, I would like to give hope for a future where work can still have a meaning, and we are seeing it already in the society. Although it is true that mechanical jobs are not as important now as they were during industrialization, the era of the information gives the opportunity to find new ways to develop and transfer new knowledge. Knowledge is an unlimited resource, all different aspects are open for further investigation. The problem with knowledge is that it is also scarce, it is difficult to invent something new, and a lot of specialization in then needed. So, only by working collectively, this kind of work can be a success. But in order to be a knowledge worker, creativity is needed. And working 60 hours a week nobody can stay creative.
I hope this reflexion helps some of you, you might as well have other theories of the current situation and I'm sure I simplified a lot on the way, and left out some really "clever" ways of creating jobs like businessmen or banking. But my goal was to understand where the need of work comes from, and to share my thoughts with you on the way :)
Lots of love,
Lita&Andres
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