In the wake of the so-called “Great Resignation,” quiet quitting, and unprecedented strikes, the media has fomented a moral panic — “no one wants to work anymore” — when, more accurately, no one wants to work under these conditions anymore. Our work regime has been tailored to maintain the power of finance capital, dividing society between the actually productive but relentlessly exploited, the devastatingly unemployed, and, in the largest group: people paid to do nothing, in positions designed to engender identification with the ruling class. The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic trends have sharpened existing labor inequalities into focus, causing many of us to question what we are willing to do in return for a paycheck. This issue is calling all kinds of writers and workers — especially those who live and labor on the margins — to show what has come from this questioning, or to start questioning! I want you to reflect on your relationship to work, critique corporate “culture,” talk about unions, bemoan the churn of “passion fields” and “mission-driven” careers, discuss “employability” in terms of gender presentation, class, race, neurodivergence, etc. Write an essay about your bullshit job*, or your shit job**, or work you actually love! Send in a poem about a literal dream job, a sci-fi vision of work in the future, or complicate what constitutes labor and production itself. Show me what work (or your conception of it) is like today, over three years into the pandemic. And get compensated for it!
*To paraphrase anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, a bullshit job is a form of paid employment so unnecessary or pernicious that even the worker can’t justify its existence, and yet they feel obligated to pretend that isn’t the case.
**Conversely, a shit job is a form of paid employment that is either necessary or of some benefit to society but the worker is treated like shit or must work under shitty conditions.
