Work Is Unhealthy

Once you start looking for bad health, you can find it everywhere.

Unhappy workers ‘at illness risk’ shouts this BBC headline.

People with low job satisfaction are most likely to encounter emotional burnout, reduced self-esteem, anxiety and depression, say researchers. Even a modest drop in job satisfaction could lead to burnout of “considerable clinical importance”, the report warned. The study of 250,000 employees was carried out by Lancaster University and Manchester Business School. Depression and anxiety were now the most common reasons for people starting to claim long-term sickness benefits, overtaking illnesses such as back pain, it found.

Professor Cary Cooper, of Lancaster University Management School, urged employers to seriously tackle the issue with “innovative policies”.

Hang on. I thought that “work” was an invention, a fairly recent one at that, designed to line the pockets of our capitalist elite. Consumer culture is the sop, is it not, to pacify the workers, as religion used to be. So the best and most innovative policy would surely be NOT TO WORK.

I know there are flaws in this argument. For example, this blogging business – do I not in some way treat it as work? Do I not rely on my ISP and also the mighty Googlith Corporation to make my blog run smoothly, and berate them when it doesn’t? If the health professionals I rely upon to make accurate diagnoses and administer appropriate treatments decided that work was the problem and didn’t show up, would I be glad that they had released themselves from the burdening chains of employment whilst I became dangerously and life-threateningly sick?

People are presented with “work” like it is the sole option. People are forced into work, coerced, kidnapped, press-ganged. The most disturbing health news I read today was this account of a Lithuanian woman trafficked and forced to work as a prostitute.

The Lithuanian woman, who was beaten and threatened by the gang, was kept in conditions of virtual slavery, according to the police. Detective Constable Tracy Rankin, of South Wales Police, said: “When we met her, she wasn’t in the cleanest of conditions.

“Her hair wasn’t looking great, neither was her skin. She seemed incredibly confused. The place where she was staying was sparsely decorated and through speaking to her, I understand that she didn’t often eat. Her basic standards of hygiene did seem to decline considerably. The situation she was in was a controlling environment and she was given the bare minimum, if that, to live on.”

I think I might become confused if I was kidnapped, beaten and forced to have sex with seven men a day.

I understand that this poor soul was in a different situation from the many unsatisfied people who hold down unremarkable but respectable jobs to feed, clothe and shelter their families, but this seems to me to be the other end of the same employment pole. Bullying, cruelty, being forced to undergo regular humiliation, and never being paid properly are daily experiences for many workers, even if they do get to go home at the end of the interminable, exhausting, demoralising day.

Work is unhealthy.