WFH is such a middle class privilege ‘problem’
Covid was a unique universal experience that impacted everyone differently.
For the middle classes with nice houses, working from home was heaven. Less time spent on commuting and more work life balance.
For some the lock down was that moment of Fate’s foot off their throat and they had the chance to ask deeper questions about their trajectory in life and made radical changes or quietly quit.
For Essential Service Workers they suddenly found their work was ‘essential’ desperate being paid shit.
For those children damaged in state care, they went ram raiding.
For many people they became insular and once homebound stayed that way.
If you had domestic abuse in your life, lockdown was terrifying.
If you were alone, many fell down internet rabbit holes.
Depression, anxiety, crippling loneliness – they have all had major impacts on all of our mental and physical well being.
I find the debate over working from home to be such a middle class privilege problem when so many others are still suffering.
It’s remarkable that tantrums over whether you have to go into the office or not is more pressing than all the other psychological, cultural and economic impacts of lockdown.
Labour won the war against Covid but lost the peace when they tried to build back.
Labour’s mistake was attempting to build back to where we had been rather than acknowledging the universal sacrifice and building back something better.
We all sacrificed equally in an unequal society and the bleeding gums of our inequality were exposed.
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But aren’t nice middle class people with nice middle-class jobs entitled to work from their nice middle-class homes? I mean it’s so much nicer. . . .
Depends what you do for a living. Maybe that’s a definition of class. It used to be. Not possible for checkout operators, those building or fixing roads, houses and bridges, driving trucks and buses, shearing sheep, cleaning offices, collecting and processing rubbish, flipping burgers, waiting on tables, pulling pints, making plastic bottles in extrusion plants, driving forklifts in countless warehouses – the vast unwashed working class. And the middle class? What do they do for coin now? Oh yes, give them a laptop, hook them up to fast broadband and ask them to work off the kitchen table, a dedicated office if you’re really lucky. I guess they’d be doing much the same if stuck at the office. Doesnt sound like a middle class dream to me.
As Bomber often says there is a 1%, 9%, 90% ratio. 1% elite parasites, 9% crawlers and enablers and the rest.
Middle class are working class too when it comes down to it because of their relationship to capital. Do you make your living primarily from exploiting the labour of others or by being exploited? Working Farmers and small businesses are working class also because most of them are in hock to finance capital–banks–via loans and mortgages.
“middle class” is a socio economic group, and there are more complicated divisions of labour than in the 20th century when it was clearer what you were. There is contract work, interns, service work, precarious work, etc. And there is the aspirational mindset where working class people can identify with the capitalists and vote right.
No doubt Luxon and Willis work from home because he is very rarely in parliament anyway so he must be at home or somewhere like Katikati
Objectively WFH is not really a working class problem–checkout operators, retail workers, carers, bus and logistics workers, cleaners, water and electrical contractors, meat workers etc. never really experienced WFH.
But for those whose work primarily involves intellectual labour on digital devices rather than physical labour WFH is not a bad idea in some ways, as the numbers still doing it show. It is hilarious hearing Baldrick telling them off for being slackers and to do their patriotic duty and go and buy coffee and muffins.
CoC cracking the whip is ironic in several respects…their sacking of thousands, and not just public sector–NGOs and contractors cop the flow on effect–has assisted the lack of customers as have tight economic conditions.
Hospitality was crying all day every day throughout the lock downs, and are now at it again. Look, there is no guarantee in a capitalist society that anyone, individual, owner operator, SME will get an income or customers–a hard truth. Corporates are more likely to last, but…things can rapidly turn to crap for them too.
Do you work from home Martyn?
The issue is a NAct generated red herring.
Don’t buy into the debate, it’s just spit on a hot plate.