Last week, we could read in The Press a report that revealed that a young woman had landed 16 jobs in an afternoon of research in the businesses of Sainte-Catherine Street. The article revealed that mastering French was still an essential aspect for gaining access to the labor market, but I believe that it was also intended to be an inventory of the labor shortage.
Posted at 4:00 p.m.
The journalist therefore landed 16 jobs. But what jobs? Were they interesting? Did they offer good working conditions? This is the question that must be asked!
In the article, the manager of a business observes that “the roles have been reversed” between employers and employees. Does this mean that the balance of power has changed sides? Of course not !
The mobilization of workers is more necessary than ever in the face of those who, despite their recruitment difficulties, continue to consider themselves masters and owners of their workforce. Descartes will forgive me this diversion of his maxim which seems to me rather appropriate to describe the behavior of certain bosses who consider their employees as a mass to be tamed by coaxing them with salary candy, since they no longer have the whip of unemployment for the constrain.
Let’s see this shortage as an opportunity: to change the world of work.
Let’s start by humanizing it. Work-family balance is a prerequisite. A worker should never be below the poverty line. It would be necessary that the bullshit jobs described by David Graeber in his book of the same name disappear.
A person’s job should fulfill their desire for meaning and their desire to contribute to society as much as their food needs.
The famous ” Pay them more! whispered by Joe Biden as evidence is largely insufficient. Of course, salary conditions are a major element. People are tired of toiling for peanuts in order to enrich someone else, but they are also looking for something else and it is not new. In 1975, Charles Bukowski, an author as controversial as his vision of the world was fine, wrote: ” How on earth can a man enjoy being woken up at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm, jumping out of bed, swallowing toast without pleasure, shitting, pissing, brushing his teeth and hair, struggling in traffic to find a place, where he’s basically making money for someone else, plus asking him to be grateful for the opportunity? »
The new generation arriving on the labor market unequivocally answers this question. She is not happy about it! And, no, she won’t gratefully accept an empty job.
Employers don’t do us a favor when they hire us. We are the ones who offer them the opportunity to enrich themselves and develop thanks to our skills and our know-how. Let’s always keep that in mind!
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