Antiwork & The Great Resignation: Why workers are quitting their jobs

Things change fast, don’t they? After a poorly received Fox News interview with Doreen (the mod featured in this video) and backlash on the subreddit, r/antiwork was briefly made private. Doreen has been removed as a moderator, and the team of mods has thinned out. It should be noted that my interview with Doreen was conducted in early December, and this film was published before any of this went down. When I messaged the mods to request an interview, Doreen was the only one who responded. I also messaged dozens of r/antiwork subscribers, and spoke to several of them on and off the record. You can hear some of their interviews in this Twitter thread: twitter.com/TRF_Stories/status/1484561746023038976 So what happened? Many subscribers to antiwork felt misrepresented by the Fox News interview and expressed consternation with the way the moderators handled the interview and the community’s response. A related subreddit—r/workreform—was created, and picked up over 400K subscribers in a single day. r/Antiwork is now back online, and the moderators and subscribers are dealing with the fallout, deciding what to do next. The whole debacle raises interesting questions about the identity of the movement and about its future. The controversy has deepened a growing schism between the radical and moderate subscribers to r/antiwork, and their respective views and goals. The subreddit was initially created and populated by more radical Leftists, many self-described anarchists, who wanted to see work abolished altogether, citing anti-capitalist rhetoric. The recent surge in popularity has seen a shift in the political makeup of the group; a large number of newcomers express more moderate views, seeking changes to the way we work, but not wanting to abolish work or capitalism completely. What antiworkers seem to share is discontent with work as we know it—what they don’t share is what exactly they want to see instead. While the specifics about the antiwork subreddit may not have had such a long shelf life, it only makes up a minority of this film, and I’m confident that the discussion of why antiwork became so popular, the roots and effects of The Great Resignation, and what they might mean for the future of work remain just as relevant now as they were last week. Thanks again for watching. I would love to hear what you think—whether you’re for or against, r/antiwork or r/reformwork or none of the above, please share your thoughts below. —Asher

I don't think it's "anti-work", people are quitting their jobs because they're tired of being treated like shit by clueless employers that demand loyalty but don't give it back.

Hustle culture leads to failed marriages, failed friendships, poor mental health, obesity, depression, etc. Hours over 40 take their toll eventually.

Imagine saving the company $2 million and you get a .69 cent raise

Overworked employees make good customers. They buy things out of a need for convenience, pay for services for minor joys, and never have time to become more self-reliant.

Most people in management positions and places of power are some of the most narcissistic and sociopathic individuals I've ever met.

This anti work movement really resonates with me. We were never put on this earth to work, retire, then die. If money were not something you had to worry about what would we do as humans. My answer is what truly makes us happy

It’s not anti-work. If a person works 40 hours a week, and still can’t afford to live, eventually they give up. Not everyone can be a doctor or lawyer, if they could, you probably wouldn’t be one.

When you're treated like a piece of garbage, you've no choice but to quit.

Aged like milk

Since about age 8 when people asked me what I wanted to become I told them I wanted to have only free time. Not living on the couch, dying a slow death, but having time to meet friends, learn interesting stuff and whatnot. I've always gotten pushback on that from adults (you need a profession to be fulfilled, blah, blah) and now people don't find my ideas so weird anymore. Awesome!

When I saw that survey from the UK that said that office workers only do 3 hours of "real" work every day, I did some introspecting and realized that, yeah, almost no one in my office works more than 3 hours despite being in the building for 8 hours. I genuinely believe most office jobs could shorten to 6 - 7 hours, four days per week, and literally no productivity would be lost. People would be happier and average productivity might even go up.

Quit my job 1/3/22. I worked for 20 years at GEICO. Every year was was record profit, but the goals always increased. For 364 days a year we were told we sucked and we weren't working hard enough. And then on the day profits were announced it was always a record profit. I simply got tired and had enough of the whipping. It was the best decision of my life. Before I quit I spent 6 months generating alternative revenue streams. I made more in the 6 months before I quit, than in the last 10 years at Geico. I'll never work for anyone other than myself again.

As someone who has had a 4 day work week for going on 4 years now, it is definitely the way to go.

The pandemic gave a much needed fuel to the anti-work fire. Essential workers were exploited (as almost all workers are) to make the wealthiest people exponentially more wealthy without seeing anything beyond a marginal improvement to their material lives. As a result, the working class is finally starting to find its class consciousness.

This aged well.

I worked for a company for 12 years and my co-workers were like 2nd family. I attended every social functions and events. 2020 70% were laid-off from my work, fortunately I kept my job. But I wasn't safe only because I had to take on the burden of 4 other people jobs without a pay raise. 2 years later, I got fired because I couldn't keep up. Not only I was unceremoniously fired, but NOT ONE co-worker asked about me nor called me to see how I'm doing. I spent most of my time at work just to be forgotten in minutes. I see why Quietquitting is trending! I support it!

For the last thirty to forty years we have seen the intentional crippling of unions, and the rabid increase in productivity and the unending expectation of constant, sky high productivity, without a substantial raise, sometimes without a raise at all. We are all, or at least most of us are doing the work of 3+ people, and instead of replacing people that leave, we stagger the work, we stack it upon the remaining few and expect them to do it without complaints, questions or concerns, or they are fired too. The quality of life and standard of living have dramatically and sharply decreased in that same time period, where workers are treated as disposable pawns, irrelevant warm bodies meant to work for a short time and then leave when the abuse or expanded job responsibilities become too much. We are in an abusive relationship with corporate America, and the abused have FINALLY come to this correct conclusion, and this won't end ANY TIME soon, it will become urgent and chaotic, we are about to see a correction of expectations of corporate America, and for the first time in nearly half a century we will see concessions the likes of which have been dreamt of by human beings for thousands of years. We CANNOT give up on this, we must continue to have a zero tolerance policy toward abusive employers, and no two weeks notice, they have lost that privilege, and that is their fault, and not our problem.

My friend recently quit his full-time low paying job for a over-night part time job that is paying him a lot more. $15.75/hr(full-time) vs $21.75/hr (part-time 30hrs) It made a lot sense.

"Since 1979..." Off the gold standard in 74, creating a debt based a society.