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On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amid the so-called Great Resignation, nearly 39 million Americans have left their jobs. On this week’s On The Media, hear why this trend is a logical response to the cult of work. Plus, when technology makes our jobs harder, maybe being a 'luddite' isn't such a bad thing.

1. Sarah Jaffe [@sarahljaffe], journalist and author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, on how love and meaning became intertwined with our jobs. Listen.

2. Anne Helen-Peterson [@annehelen], writer and journalist, and Charlie Warzel [@cwarzel], contributing writer at The Atlantic, on how technology is—or, dramatically is not — easing our lives at work. Listen.

3. Gavin Mueller [@gavinmuellerphd], assistant professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, on what modern lessons can be learned from the Luddite workers of 19th century England. Listen.

Music from this week's show:

Sign and Sigil by John ZornBROKE by Modest MouseMiddlesex Times by Michael AndrewsBlues by La Dolce vita Dei NobiliLiquid SpearWaltz by Michael AndrewsStolen Moments by Ahmed Jamal Trio

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This week and every week on the media is a labor of love.
0:03.8	But this week it's also a love letter to labor.
0:07.4	More than 25 million people quit their jobs in the first seven months of this year.
0:13.2	And it is now being called the Great Resignation.
0:16.8	The office historically it's been very good in convincing you that your life is actually the time that you spend in that office.
0:24.2	So what happens when that ceases to be the case?
0:26.6	They've laid you off six months after they've told you that you've joined the family and it's like your family doesn't have mass layoffs once a year.
0:32.4	Where you evaluate Aunt Susan and decide like, oh, Aunt Susan's fired.
0:35.8	I think what we have to do is listen to the complaints that people have to the struggles they're facing and think about reshaping work along those lines rather than just assuming technology is just going to solve the question for us.
0:49.2	The Great Resignation, the office gets a makeover and sabotage at the plant on this week's on the media from WNYC.
0:57.6	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.
1:04.0	I'm Brooke Gladstone from hospitals to restaurants to retail establishments.
1:09.4	A new sensation has gripped the working nation.
1:12.8	It's being called the Great Resignation, a record number of Americans are telling their bosses, I quit nearly 39 million workers quit their jobs in the first 10 months of this year.
1:23.8	Wages increased again last month as companies tried to attract new employees.
1:29.4	Severe or desperate, now more than half the nation's school districts describe their bus driver problems.
1:34.6	And restaurant owners are taking a double hit, a shortage of workers and skyrocketing costs. The healthcare sector has lost more than half a million jobs since the start of the pandemic.
1:45.6	Facts where you don't have enough workers, even farms are dealing with labor shortages.
1:49.6	It's not that we don't have answers for why it's happening. It's that we've got too many.
1:54.6	Healthcare workers quit or retired, citing that they were just burned out by the whole thing.
1:58.6	People don't want to work because so much stimulus is going out every single day. Small businesses can't get employees.
2:03.6	Some older drivers resigned after worrying about being exposed to young, unvaccinated children.
	...

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