Hey everyone, 26yo western-european here.
Been reading and lurking around this sub ever since I learned about the ongoing growth of social conscience on the other side of the Atlantic.
Honestly, at first it all felt very surprising I mean, a big wave of 'muricans wondering about their rights as workers, unionizing and trying to organise their workforce… naming the enemy and spreading the word ? It sounded crazy at first for us in the EU haha, but it is truly happening and it's just great to see… though we live in a world with mad circumstances, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Keep it up guys, you're amazing.
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So as the title suggests, I'd like to talk about the words “work” and “employment”. I've had the chance to read posts on this sub many times, and have seen a lot of confusion with these two words, especially with the word “work” (I mean that's even in the sub's name lol). So hopefully I can give you guys a quick bit of clarification… (*hoping that i don't sound condescending…!* x_x)
– Work, in its widest definition and origin (physics) : work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. In its simplest form, it is often represented as the product of force and displacement.
Work, is literally just that. In less technical terms, it could be translated as “giving your energy to something”. Many of you already know that there are many, many kinds of work. Some of these sorts of work are definitely positive actually, we tend to crave them, always looking for a form of “work” that we enjoy, a “work” that brings something that satisfy us, make us grow, make us happy.
– On the other hand, employment is a completely different beast. It can be meant as a state, as in “employment is when someone is being paid to work for a company or organization”, but also in a more general way, “The usage of someone or sth”.
“Employing” after all is really close to the word “using”, I would even go as far as to say : they're synonyms.
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So here's my point. For years I've pressed people to keep using the word “employment” for what they mean as “work”. It simply is more accurate, and also contains the notion of “being used”.
It's also very clear that corporations fight on words, and try their best to make us use stupid, empty words to prevent us from expressing our own situations (Hi Orwell).
“Work” instead of “Employment” gives them ways to defend themselves by calling us lazy ducks. If we were “anti-employment”, that wouldn't be possible for them.
We're all capable and willing to work. We just don't want to be used.
Well gotta go so that will be all for me, thanks for reading my rant I'd love to hear if that was helpful to some of you.
Thanks for reading!