IMMpress Magazine: Work to Live or Live to Work

Page 24

Hopeless W

ake up. Work. Sleep. Repeat. 5 days a week, 50 some weeks a year. Such is the life of an average employee in Canada trying to get by in the face of ever-increasing inflation and an uncertain economy. For some, a 9-5 job provides stability and security in their lives, offering structure to an otherwise chaotic life. For others, the mundane and unfair tasks demanded during day-to-day work combined with the financial discrepancy between the oligarchy and the working class serve to disenfranchise one’s view of the working system as we know it. This is the case for many subscribers of the subreddit, r/antiwork, an online community comprising of a conglomerate of likeminded working-class individuals disgruntled about their jobs and working conditions. Boasting over 1.7 million members, this burgeoning community has burst into the public sphere spurred on by a wave of worker dissatisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Popular posts in this online forum receive upwards of 100,000 “upvotes” and thousands of comments centering around one main point – people want systemic change. At its core, the myriad of issues presented in r/antiwork can be boiled down to a few topics, namely the presence of overbearing upper management, undesirable working conditions, discrepancies in worker salaries, and uncontrollable inflation. The first three topics deal with the financial and power gap that exists between upper management and the working class, while the latter is a commentary on the hopeless-

24 IMMpress Vol. 10 No. 1 2022


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