Our Love/Hate Relationship with Work

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I was fortunate to have had a career I loved.

The pay was not great and the hours were unpredictable. But often during my 25 years as a reporter/editor, I sometimes thought I should pay the newspaper instead of them paying me. (I never mentioned this to the bosses, of course.) I found the work that interesting and challenging.

Still, there were times I didn’t look forward to going to work. There were Sunday evenings on which I talked my spouse into going to the movies to try to extend the weekend.

This kind of ambiguity may be one reason I found conflicting online studies about job satisfaction when preparing this blog.

While one article says the majority of people are dissatisfied, others, such as a newly-released report from Gallup, shows that the majority of people are mostly satisfied with their jobs. I’m going with the unscientific hunch that there are at least three groups: those who love their jobs most of the time; those who hate their jobs most of the time; and those who love AND hate their jobs most of the time, depending on a number of factors. The latter is probably the largest group.

Lack of Control
One of the factors is the kind of work we do, which often relates to our race, gender and economic status. Blacks, Hispanics, women and hourly workers are less likely to be satisfied, research shows. And besides salary and working conditions, lack of control over their work may have a lot to do with that.

I recall the irritation I felt after a large corporation bought the family-owned newspaper I worked for and began handing down edicts about how to report and write articles. I imagined that back at the home office, one person, or a few, came up with these ideas with little or no consultation with the thousands of people who had to execute them. Lack of control over one’s work is, I believe, one of the principle causes of dissatisfaction. 

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But nothing may be more decisive than our attitude, over which we do have control. A couple of questions we could ask ourselves about our work are, “How does my work benefit others?” And, “What opportunities does my work provide to help my fellow workers?”

Some religious traditions – such as my own Catholicism – traditionally view all work as dignified and redemptive, an essential part of being a human being. Several papal encyclicals, the official teaching of the popes, have emphasized this since the Industrial Revolution in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries.

John Paul II wrote an encyclical in 1981 called “Through Work” that commemorated the anniversary of the famous Rerum Novarum, on “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor” by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Pope Leo wrote it during a time when many worried about the abuses of early capitalism.

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, says people must sustain themselves “by the sweat of their brow.” Pope John Paul says the writer is talking about toil, not work. Work is an integral part of human nature, while toil, according to Genesis, is a consequence of sin. In my view, the Genesis writers observed how people felt about work and reflected that in the creation story.

Missing from the Minds of Many
This emphasis in the encyclicals on the dignity of all work appears to be currently missing from the minds of many employers and employees themselves.

Through work, the pope writes, we achieve fulfilment as human beings and become more human. And all work, one way or another, benefits all of us. Two of the most important principles of Pope John Paul’s encyclical is that labor takes precedence over capital and people are more important than things.

Some people see these writings by popes and religious leaders as “political.” They’re not. They are religious leaders trying to apply Gospel values to concrete human situations – what Jesus did consistently.

To be successful, people searching for God may need an attitude adjustment about their own work and their view of the work of others. As in so many other situations, religious wisdom can be a valuable resource.