Selling the work ethic

SHARON BEDER
This is the edited text of a talk
given by Sharon Beder at the
O n my way down to Melbourne
this afternoon, there was a news
program on the plane; the leading
launch of her latest book, Selling
the Work Ethic: from puritan
this book, every single interviewer
wanted to know: how it could it be
different? And how can we get
item was the failure of participating pulpit to corporate PR (Scribe, there?
countries at the talks in the Hague to 2000), at the Comedy Club, We’ll get to that later, and I’m not
decide anything about how to reduce Melbourne, on November 27, sure that I have the answer. But I
global warming. This is just one more 2000. The arguments she think that in order to be able to
example of where corporations have advances here and the research change, we need to understand what
managed to thwart environmental supporting them are elaborated in needs changing. We need to recog-
action. It’s the sort of thing that led this book. Dr Sharon Beder is nise that these aspects of our culture
me to write Global Spin. Associate Professor and Head of are not inevitable or innate — part of
Why do corporations have so being human — but something that’s
the Science, Technology and
much power? Why do we allow developed historically, that’s shaped
Society Program at the University
them to have so much power? Why socially, and in particular that’s
are we in the situation where these of Wollongong in NSW. Her shaped by the people who have most
corporations have stopped the world previous major book, Global to gain from them. And that means
from deciding to do something that Spin: The Corporate Assault on employers and corporations and the
will protect it from future warming? Environmentalism (Scribe, 2nd ed, politicians who service them.
It seems to me that we need to go 1999), outlines the extent to To understand the work ethic, we
beyond just campaigning for which corporations are distorting really need to go back in history quite
environmental protection, or even or attempting to manipulate a long way to a time when societies
exposing corporate PR, to actually public opinion and controlling the had a different sort of ethic that
looking at the very part of our information we get. Other work wasn’t completely based around
culture which gives corporations by Sharon can be accessed work. Prior to the Reformation,
this power. I believe that the work people would work for a sufficient
through her web site on
ethic is absolutely central to their time to be able to meet their basic
www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/
power. needs and then they would take the
It’s not just because corporations sbeder/ rest of the week off. So in years when
are employers and they provide the food was cheap, people would work
jobs and the goods that we want; it’s something that only two or three days a week, because that’s all they
is much more fundamental in the way that the work needed to do in order to buy their food and to live.
ethic has shaped our values. The work ethic legiti- That sort of attitude needed to be overcome in order
mates certain qualities in societies, and presents the for capitalism to flourish. During the Reformation,
whole social structure as being fair and normal and early Protestant leaders such as Luther and Calvin
the best of all possible worlds. We’re so caught up made work a calling, a way of serving God, and the
in this culture that something like the work ethic is follow-on from that was that making a profit became
never questioned. And when you do start to ques- a virtue.
tion it people say “Well, isn’t this the way it’s always There have always been people who have made
been? What else could there possibly be?” When I money — traders and merchants — but the idea of
went to New Zealand to do the media promotion for people making more and more money being seen as

PAGE 8 AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55

virtuous is something quite unique throughout
history and to our society. This was something that
followed on from seeing work as a calling: once work
was a calling and a way of serving God then people
who made lots of money from their work were seen
as receiving a blessing from God. The rise of
modern capitalism owes a great debt to this outlook.
It not only provided a hard-working work force, but
also ensured that the new
capitalists didn’t spend
the money they made
but put it back into their
businesses. This enabled
them to build up power-
ful businesses and to
become the new elite in
society.
Those religious origins
have subsided somewhat
— we don’t see ourselves
as a particularly religious
society — but the work
ethic remains. Nowa-
days, rather than work
being a way of serving
God, it has became a
sign of ‘good character’
and a way to ‘success’.
This idea was and is
deliberately fostered by business people, employers,
politicians, teachers, and preachers: the idea that if
you want to ‘succeed’ in life, then you have to work
hard. And the social values that accompany that are
that the people who do succeed — the wealthy people
— must have succeeded because they worked hard,
because they have this character trait; and the people
who are poor, the people who aren’t making it, who
are unemployed, must be that way because they lack
good ‘character’: this ability to work hard and take
advantage of opportunities.
So very early on we see the legitimation of a whole
status system emerging from the work ethic and from
seeing society as being based on individual effort
rather than social structure and class. This was par-
ticularly so in the United States. As the United States
was becoming a nation there was the idea that, unlike
class-bound Britain, anyone could go to the United
States, start off poor and eventually ‘make it’; they
could become wealthy and successful. So the myth
of the ‘self-made man’ arose.
A similar situation exists in Australia, where we
see ourselves as a totally egalitarian culture that is
not class-ridden. The problem is that this whole idea
that there is a level playing field, that it’s just a matter
of getting the right schooling and working hard —
AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55
that anyone can ‘make it’ — is a myth. The truth is
that most poor people don’t make it. Increasingly, the
new generations aren’t improving their lifestyle and
position in society in comparison to the previous ones.
These days the gap between the very wealthy and
the poor is widening; when you look at the lower
classes of society, they’re not making headway. It’s
becoming harder and harder to own a house, which
is an Australian dream.
Real wages are going
down, because of the
amount of work that’s
being done. The whole
basis on which society is
supposed to be struc-
tured — that it’s fair — is
a complete myth. People
can work hard all their
lives and still be poor at
the end, and their
children aren’t any better
off than they themselves
were.
Nevertheless the ideol-
ogy, the values and the
culture of the work ethic
continue in the face of
these realities which
anyone can see. And it
doesn’t continue by accident or through its own
momentum. It has to be actively promoted.
For example, there’s been a lot of publicity in recent
times about the incomes of CEOs compared to those
of workers. The disparities are so enormous that no-
one in their right mind could possibly justify them
in terms of how productive each is in their particu-
lar job. So therefore it’s necessary, because of these
anomalies that seem to undermine the work ethic,
to keep promoting this ethic and to keep coming out
with the appropriate propaganda.
One of the main places where this happens is in
schools. It’s been shown that children at a very young
age think it’s unfair that some people get more than
others in society, but by the time they get to early teens
they take on the message that: it’s fair enough that
some people deserve more than others because they
work harder. So this is a message that’s promoted in
schools in a whole variety of ways. Firstly, through
instilling work values: teaching children to work hard,
to arrive on time, to do what their teachers tell them.
Studies have also shown that school grades are much
more influenced by how hard-working and diligent
children are than by qualities such as talent and cre-
ativity which schools are supposed to nurture.
Secondly, schools parallel the workplace, they are
PAGE 9
a place where there are bosses (teachers) and
workers, where time is highly structured, activities
disciplined, and the children are expected to work
hard. There’s been quite a bit of publicity lately about
the amount of homework children are getting, and
this homework, this getting them to work even when
they are away from school and at home is part of
pushing the work ethic.
Thirdly, there are increasing ways of getting
children at school to experience real workplaces in
different ways: by business people coming and talking
to them at schools, by taking children on visits to com-
panies, factories, sites, by getting them to do work
experience and so on.
Fourthly, there is the push for vocational educa-
tion in schools. Schools are a major place where the
work ethic is promoted.
Another means of promoting the work ethic is
through our biased attitude to people on welfare. And
this is something in which the media, especially the
Australian media, has played a large role. The media
love to denigrate the unemployed. Newspapers and
television programs, especially current affairs pro-
grams, love to have stories about ‘dole bludgers’ who
don’t want to work and who are just enjoying them-
selves at the taxpayers’ expense. This is all part of the
strategy of blaming unemployed people for their own
situation, by saying ‘Well it’s because they don’t want
to work’, rather than acknowledging that there isn’t
enough work for everyone.
It suits employers to have a certain amount of
unemployment because then there’s competition for
jobs and they can keep wages down to a certain
extent. On the other hand there is the fear that the
people who are unemployed might find alternative
lifestyles, manage to live on a very meagre income,
not be desperate for work, and not provide an army
of reserve labour competing for the jobs. Ever since
welfare was introduced after the Second World War
there has been a policy of making welfare an unat-
tractive option: by not paying people very much, by
always searching for the ‘bludgers’, by having work
tests, by stigmatising the unemployed through the
media, so that they don’t have any self esteem and
feel worthless — because the work ethic says that
your worth is totally based on the work you do and
your income.
But even with decades of this sort of treatment
there was still concern in the US and the UK about
the formation of underclasses: where poor people con-
gregate in the same neighbourhoods and live a
lifestyle that is not based around paid work. The fear
was that they would pass this lifestyle down the gen-
erations. So there’s been a push in recent years
towards working for welfare benefits. In the US it’s
PAGE 10 AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55
Workfare, in the UK it’s Work for Benefits and in Aus-
tralia it’s Work for the Dole. Working for benefits is
of course justified in terms of being for the good of
the unemployed people, to help their self esteem, give
them skills, keep them occupied, etc. But in actual
fact its purpose is to deter people from being on
welfare. In other words, it’s often about punishment.
These schemes are really about firstly ensuring that
young unemployed people in particular don’t lose
work skills: that they are still able to get up in the
morning and go to work and do what the boss says;
and secondly making sure that the dole is less attrac-
tive than working for a living. This ensures that
people are still competing for jobs because there is
no desirable alternative to work.
This has a depressing effect on the labour market
because if people are competing for low-paid unde-
sirable jobs, wages are kept down. In actual fact, a
lot of unemployment has arisen because of the
massive downsizing that employers and corporations
have been doing over the 1980s and 90s and we now
have a situation where full-time secure jobs are
becoming increasingly scarce and the sorts of jobs that
are on offer are temporary, insecure, casual, and don’t
have the usual benefits. As far as employers are con-
cerned there’s even more pressure to ensure that
people are going to take these second rate jobs.
And just before I finish I think I ought to empha-
sise the role of consumerism in getting people to
work. I think you all remember that in the 60s and
70s people were saying that all this new technology
and increasing productivity is going to give us all so
much more leisure time. What has actually happened
is that people who have full-time jobs are working
longer and longer hours rather than less hours. Part
of the reason for this is insecurity but another part
is the debt that people accumulate in their eagerness
to buy the consumer goods that they’re told every
day — every hour — that they need in order to be
happy. But they’re not happy.
This is the point: with people living lives that are
so work-dominated they don’t have time to do the
things that do make people happy; to spend time on
relationships, with friends and family. Many people
don’t even have time to sleep properly. We’ve now
got increasing levels of stress and suicide and
escalating levels of depression, and we’re trying to
produce more and more in order to keep people in
jobs, when all the extra production is in fact only
degrading the environment.
But we can’t get off that treadmill because if we
don’t have the jobs then people are going to be
unemployed and nobody wants to be unemployed,
because the unemployed are denigrated and the
income so low. So, while the work ethic has been
useful in raising living standards and getting us to
this point, at the start of the 21st century the bene-
fits of the work ethic have run their course. It’s more
detrimental than beneficial to continue with it. We
need to look for some other organising principle for
our society, particularly in affluent societies like
Australia.
If we’re going to protect the
planet, if we’re going to be able
to control corporations and if
we’re going to ensure that
people can get back to being
happier and have more equi-
❛With people living
librium in their lives, we need
to start developing other human
lives that are so work-
qualities. Because we do have
qualities other than the qualities
dominated they don’t
that are needed to work and
make products. And those qual-
have time to do the
ities have been neglected till
now.
things that do make
ANSWERS TO
people happy❜
QUESTIONS
Question about
whether there are
signs of change
Ever since I started talking to people about this over
the last few months, and on the one or two radio talk-
back shows that I’ve been involved in, it’s clear that
there’s quite a lot of dissatisfaction at the moment.
People are starting to say, at the grass roots com-
munity level: ‘Why am I doing all this work, and is
this a good situation?’ At the moment it’s mostly on
an individual level: so it’s not that people are organ-
ising at all. But a few of those people who can — and
they’re the more affluent people — are changing their
lifestyle or giving up their jobs.
When I went to NZ to do my talk, the publicity
person who met me at the airport told me that she
had just resigned from her job that week so that she
could do just a bit of part-time work and have more
leisure. Then I went down to Wellington and saw two
friends from school and university days and one of
them has already changed her lifestyle. She just does
a bit of writing, and some part-time work. And the
other one whom I always thought had the biggest
work ethic I’ve ever seen -the last time I went to NZ
she didn’t have time to see me because she had so
much work — said ‘I’m going to give up my job in
February and just see what happens.’
So it seems to me that there is a bit of a change
happening — for those who can do it. Most people
AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55
can’t do that sort of thing because they’ve got mort-
gages and this is where the debt comes in to keep
people working.
And on the subject of debts, I think it’s no acci-
dent that the government is making sure that students
have debt, especially in New Zealand where the debt
increases with inflation. That debt is a very big part
of ensuring that people keep
working.
So I think we are starting to
see signs of change at an indi-
vidual level but we need to have
more organisation, and more
things happening at a political
level.
Question about the
situation in America
In the US the minimum wage is
so low that people can work a
full-time week and still be below
the poverty line. That’s a dis-
graceful situation. They can’t
even support a family by
working a full-time week. And
the only reason employers can
get workers in that situation is because people are
being thrown off welfare.
Question about Sharon’s own work
I’ve been asked this question in NZ: isn’t it hard work
writing these books! But to me, this is my hobby. I
don’t see this as work. When I retire I will still write
the books, even though no-one’s paying me to do it.
This is my self expression, my way of changing
society, and I don’t treat it like work. I don’t get up
in the morning and say: ‘Well I’ve got to write three
thousand words this morning and when I’ve done
that I can take a break’. If I feel like doing something
on the book I do it, if I feel like having a nap after
lunch I have a nap after lunch. It’s not something that
I have to apply a work ethic to. I do it when I feel
like it and when I do it, I enjoy it.
Question about radio ‘shock jocks’
such as Laws and Jones being wealthy
men, but having a largely working
class audience
It is depressing and it’s particularly depressing when
they’re exposed for just saying what their sponsors
are paying them to say and yet people still keep
listening to them. It’s hard to understand why that
happens. But we can’t dwell on that too much. I don’t
know what the answer is!
PAGE 11
Question on the distinction between
work on the one hand and the work
ethic on the other
The work ethic means that instead of working
towards an end, work becomes the end in itself.
People have always worked in order to provide them-
selves with food and shelter etc, and then once they’ve
got those things, they’ve stopped working. But in a
work-dominated society with a work ethic what
happens is that work becomes an end in itself and
people are judged by the work not the ends. The other
thing about the work ethic is the morality associated
with it — it makes work a virtue, working hard a sign
of good character and ensures everybody’s judged
according to their work and their income.
Question about work to protect the
environment
I’m not proposing that nobody works any more.
There’s a certain of amount of work required to
achieve desirable goals in society. As I see it, what’s
lacking in protecting and cleaning up the environ-
ment is a bit of innovation and plenty of qualities like
wisdom and creativity. What we need are solutions
and the ability to put those solutions in place without
being opposed by corporations. So whilst there will
be some work involved in that, what we have at the
moment is people working very hard to produce the
things that degrade the environment rather than just
doing the work that’s necessary to protect it. That’s
what I mean about work being the means to an end
rather than an end in itself. At the moment we’ve got
a situation where we produce all these ‘things’
because they provide work and profits, but they don’t
necessarily make anybody any happier. What we
need to do is to sit down and decide what we want
as a community and as a society and then to work
towards those things. Do you see the difference?
Question about the need to spend
money on the environment
Sometimes environmental protection is a matter of
not spending the money rather than spending it. It
is not a shortage of money that causes environmental
problems. A lot of money that’s spent causes more
degradation than if it wasn’t spent. But I do think
there is something wrong with the distribution of
capital in society and the way it’s spent. I think that’s
the problem — not the fact that money’s needed or
not needed.
PAGE 12 AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55
Question about the problem being the
capitalist system and how are we
going to change it and get through
especially to young people?
First of all, socialism has a very strong work ethic,
so it’s not just capitalism that is work-centred. And
part of the problem is that the unions in Australia,
the US and other developed countries have in recent
decades since the Second World War basically
always fought for more pay rather than less work.
And so the gains in productivity, rather than reduc-
ing work, have all gone toward extra pay and thus
to extra consumption, so there is escalating
production.
Now your question is how do we change the cap-
italist work and consumer ethic? Well I don’t know
how we change it except to say that the people who
are trying to change society often don’t look at the
very heart of our culture, so they only change super-
ficial things. Whether they’re environmental activists,
or unionists or health activists, they often only look
at one level of activity and not at the causes below
that. What I’m arguing here is that we need to look
at the fundamental aspects of our culture and start
questioning those, and unless we do that, of course
we can’t change anything. Unless environmentalists,
for example, question the work ethic then they’re
always going to be barricaded outside the conference
at the Hague with their symbolic gestures, trying to
get media attention, and they’re always going to be
fighting particular battles. When it comes to jobs,
they’re unwilling to say: ‘Yes OK, some jobs will be
sacrificed to save the environment’. Most mainstream
environment groups won’t say that, because they’re
afraid that if they admit that there is a trade-off, that
some jobs may be lost, then they’ll lose support.
But there’s a double standard here because the
corporations and the government don’t worry about
sacrificing jobs when they’re rationalising the public
service, when they’re privatising or when they’re
downsizing etc. Jobs don’t matter then. They only
matter when you’re trying to protect the environment.
Then it’s such a terrible thing when you lose a few
jobs. It’s alright to cut thousands of jobs from Telstra
or BHP. Nobody except the Telstra people thinks twice
about that. But when it comes to the environment,
you can’t say that we’ll lose a few jobs in order to
protect the environment. So unless we start ques-
tioning these fundamental things we can’t make a
strong argument to protect the environment. The
same goes for every sphere where you want change.
Question about the aristocracy in ethic. It’s not that these young people don’t have a
England and how the work ethic work ethic. It’s just that it would be stupid to display
includes them a work ethic in those circumstances. They do have
a work ethic in terms of wanting to have a job where
There are elements in some countries that are left over they can express themselves and feel that they have
from the previous era before capitalism — the feudal an identity. And they would have a work ethic if they
era I guess. It was interesting, when I was doing had the opportunity.
research on this issue, to find books that actually So the problem for management is: how do they
advise very wealthy people motivate work in these people?
whose children are not going to And one way is through using
have to work for a living on how
to bring them up and how to
❛there’s a double technology to very tightly
monitor workers. Like call centres
ensure that they have a work
ethic — despite not needing to
standard here because where they have electronic means
of knowing how long employees
work for a living! There’s quite a
literature there because often the
the corporations and spend answering the phone,
going to the toilet etc. Another
children of wealthy people are the government don’t way is being described in the new
lost in society because of their lack management literature, which is
of identity without the work worry about basically about motivating
ethic. people. As you say, it uses this

Question about the

sacrificing jobs when warm fuzzy language: no more
hierarchies and ‘we’re a team, we
nature of work and the they’re rationalising don’t have bosses, we have
language used to leaders’ and all this stuff. But the
describe it the public service, … whole idea is to use team pres-
sure to ensure that those people
We’re now getting a split in the or when they’re who don’t seem to have a work
workforce between the ‘core’ ethic — those on the periphery —
workers and ‘peripheral’ downsizing ❜ still work hard.
workers. The core workers are the The social contract between
ones that have the full-time secure the employer and employee has
jobs. And then there are the more peripheral people gone, so that instead of having a lifetime job you have
who don’t have any security. The job contract, where ‘marketable skills’. What you’re supposed to do is go
you worked hard and you were loyal to your and get a job and this gives you certain skills so that
employer and you got promoted and you had a you’re better off in the marketplace when you go for
secure job, has gone for these peripheral workers. And your next job and your next job and so on, so you
so there is a problem for employers: how do they go from job to job. The manipulation of language is
make sure that these people have a work ethic? intended to disguise the fact that the goal is to get
There’s been a lot written about generation X, calling people to continue to work hard in situations where
them ‘slackers’ because they get ‘Mickey Mouse jobs’ there’s just no financial or career reward for working
which aren’t proper jobs and they don’t have a work hard.

AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 55 PAGE 13