In last month’s post, I contrasted the positive, intrinsic view of work that underlies high-road HR strategies with the negative, instrumental view of work frequently seen in songs about work. Continuing with the theme of how we think about work, varying perspectives on work often correspond with assumptions about work embedded in different academic disciplines. In general terms, economics treats work as a commodity and as a lousy activity endured because of a need for money, whereas psychology focuses on personal fulfillment, and sociology on social norms.
Most songs on work are consistent with how most economists think about work. And thus, work songs are a revealing way to illustrate the dominant assumptions about work inherent in economic analyses—work as a commodity, as a pain cost, and as an opportunity cost.
In a commodity conceptualization of work, labor is an abstract quantity of productive value governed by the impersonal forces of supply and demand. We can see this reflected in songs that lament factory closings due to cheaper labor elsewhere, such as Billy Joel’s Allentown or Harry Chapin’s The Day They Closed the Factory Down:
With their cloths and fabric press
They found themselves another town
Where they'll make shirts for less
In terms of the actual work experience, the mainstream
economics view of work is that it’s the opposite of something that brings you
positive utility. That is, the direct experience of work makes you worse off.
Traditionally this was seen as a pain cost. We can see this reflected in songs
about long hours, hot and dangerous working conditions, or,
as in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, bad
bosses and disrespect:
Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'
They just use your mind and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it
9 to 5, for service and devotion
You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion
Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me
They let your dream, just watch 'em shatter
You're just a step on the boss man's ladder
But you got dreams he'll never take away
In modern economic theorizing, work doesn’t have to be
inherently bad (a pain cost), but working can still make you worse off it
reduces the amount of time you can spend doing things that you find more
enjoyable (an opportunity cost):
That's why we only work when we need the money
It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday
That's why we only work when we need the money
(from Jacqueline by Franz Ferdinand)
So why work? To earn money to live. That is, Workin’ for a Livin’ in the words of Huey
Lewis & The News. But don’t oversimplify and take this to mean that
economics predicts that people won’t work hard. Rather, economics predicts that
people will work hard when the pay is worth it, as captured by Gretchen
Wilson’s Work Hard, Play Harder.
While songs can usefully illustrate these perspectives on
work that underlie economic approaches to work, perhaps they run the risk of
normalizing these approaches. If the nature of work is seen as beyond our
control, then instead we might just focus on Working for the Weekend. But there
ought to be better ways. Partly this entails increasing our demands for better
work. But we also need to dig deeper. In particular, making work into a commodity
in our collective imaginations dehumanizes it, reducing workers to productive
inputs tracked in headcount analyses and income statements. This sterile
conceptualization is not innocuous—in contrast, it’s a key conceptual step
towards exploitation. That is, it’s harder for leaders to exploit workers who
they see as human rather than as numbers in spreadsheet.
The boss can't even recall my name
I show up late and I'm docked, it never fails
I feel like just another, spoke in a great big wheel
Like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field
To workers I'm just another drone
To Ma Bell I'm just another phone
I'm just another statistic on a sheet
To teachers I'm just another child
To IRS I'm another file
I'm just another consensus on the street
(from Feel Like a Number by Bob Seger)
Also, economics perspectives on work implicitly or
explicitly emphasize individual free choice. If you don’t like your job, tell
your boss to Take this Job and Shove It,
and then find something better. But we need to recognize that labor markets
don’t always work as nicely as mainstream economics wants to assume. There can
be power differential in societal institutions and discrimination. Not everyone
has the same options. Not everyone is rewarded fairly. Economic theorizing on
work (e.g., personnel economics), and mainstream economics more generally,
often sanitizes this by ascribing different outcomes to different personal
choices or productive characteristics rather the systemic inequalities.
Unsurprisingly given their roots in real life experiences, there are songs that can remind us of the imbalances that workers must navigate. Class-based inequalities are evident in Worker's Song by Dropkick Murphys:
The first ones in line for that pie in the sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
Margo Price’s Pay Gap
and Cher’s Working Girl address
gender inequality. And Nina Simone’s Backlash
Blues starkly reminds us of race-based inequalities and discrimination
which must not be overlooked:
And second class schools
I know you think that all colored people
Are just second class fools
Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you
With the blues, yes I am
When I try to find a job
To earn a little cash
All you got to offer
Is your mean old white backlash
But the world is big
Big and bright and round
And it’s full of other folks like me
Who are black, yellow, beige, and brown
Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you
With the blues, yes I am
In conclusion, then, the economics assumption about work
being lousy is richly illustrated in a wide range of songs about work. But as
a society, we should challenge why work is so lousy while also questioning the
implications of other longstanding hallmarks of traditional economic
thought—seeing work as a commodity, defaulting to assumptions of competitive
markets, and embracing self-interest as the fabric of societal interactions.
Homo economicus has many reasons to be singing the blues, and we all pay the
price.
