Dialogue: Put work back in its proper place

By GARTH GEORGE

It is comforting to know that at last intelligent and articulate people have woken up to the fact that something is dreadfully wrong with our attitude to work and it is causing society grave problems.

Our Life feature last weekend headed "Owned by the job" made me want to stand up and cheer, for I have recognised for years that the corruption of the work ethic by the mind-benders of corporate culture has made a greater contribution to the breakdown of the structures of society - marriage, family, neighbourhood, community, nation - than anything else.

And it has long been ironic to me that men who stood for Parliament under the banner of Labour - Douglas, Prebble et al - without any mandate instituted policies that were ultimately to devalue labour to an extent not seen since the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

We became not staff, not workers, not personnel but human resources, which is a bit sick really since the term "human resources" is nothing more than the right's version of Karl Marx's "economic units."

And it's been all downhill since, until today when in many if not most workplaces, workers are seen simply as bums on seats with a mind and a pair of hands to make the bosses richer, and the sad, dull bean-counters and number-crunchers, who have as much humanity as a pocket calculator, list staff not as an asset but as a liability.

Well, this corporate brainwashing has gone right over my head. I have always believed, and still do, that work is nothing more than the means of obtaining the wherewithal to do other things, all of which other things are a hell of a lot more enjoyable than work.

And I am reminded of the days when the pub was my second home and we'd stand at the bar and complain bitterly that work was the curse of the drinking classes until we realised that if we didn't have work, there'd be no money for booze, so we'd have a final round and go back to the office.

Now I'm not saying for a moment that we should go back to the days when most of us could do as little as possible for our pay because there were more jobs than people and as long as the cockies were slaving away doing their bit we'd all have a quid in our pockets.

Nor am I saying that those of us who work shouldn't give the boss full value for money, which is an ethic my father drummed into me as a teenager.

(Yes, I do realise that it was the more-for-less attitude of our militant unions that helped to put us in such dire straits that economic reform became necessary.)

I concede, too, that there are even times when the demands of the job will take priority over all else - home, family leisure - because unforeseen demands crop up or things go hideously wrong and the boss needs sacrifices from his staff to do what has to be done.

It's not too many years ago that I found myself working 14 and more hours a day, under tense, stressful and frustrating circumstances, just to get the Herald on the streets every day.

And I and dozens of my colleagues did it willingly week in and week out, because for the professional journalist "getting the paper out" is every bit as important as "the show must go on" is for the true trouper.

But that's as far as it goes. When I get to the office in the morning I switch on to work and it has my undivided attention throughout the shift. And when I leave in the evening it gets switched off and stays that way until the next morning. In between, my time and my thoughts are my own.

I work simply for money and I'm grateful that at my age I still have a job. I'm a newspaperman from my dandruff to my toenails and have been a denizen of newsrooms for nigh on 43 years.

I am thus also fortunate that I work in an environment that is as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of slippers and in which teamwork comes naturally - as it has since the first daily newspaper was published.

So spare me the specious and ultimately counter-productive corporate culture and all the juvenile nonsense that goes with it, particularly the expectation that work must be my passion and my life's purpose. It never has been, is not and never will be.

As Susan St John, of the University of Auckland, said in our Weekend Herald feature: "If we really thought that workaholism was really unacceptable and sick like alcoholism, we might get a healthier perspective on work."

Right on. I've been through alcoholism, right to death's door. I'm not about to work myself to death instead.

If, as the online magazine Ecompany puts it, the modern workplace is "not just a place to work, it's a place to live," I'd rather be homeless.

* garth_george@herald.co.nz