There have been some more additions to the pandemic and post-pandemic lexicon, the list of words and terms with which we have become familiar due to COVID and its effects. I find that most of the words are pedestrian and boring, utilitarian and far from provocative. “Social-distancing, “mask mandate”, “viral load” (that one is a bit more interesting) and now …
“The Great Resignation”
This term refers to the phenomenon of many businesses finding that the employees, particularly the lower paid employees on which the businesses depend, are not coming back to work after the disruptions and shut-downs during COVID. Some people have explained this phenomenon by blaming the government programmes that were in place to support workers financially who had been laid off due to COVID closures. Some governments even cut programmes early stating that if people were paid more to stay home than to work then they would choose to stay home. The remedy of these governments was not to encourage increases in pay, but rather to cut benefits. It is a bleak view to assume that people do not want to work. It is a bleak view of people because it assumes laziness. It is a bleak view of the work because it assumes that no one wants to work unless they are forced. Here in Vancouver there is a restaurant that has had trouble finding people to wash dishes. They have recently advertised that they will pay $25 an hour for the position. Minimum wage in the province is currently $15.20.
Interestingly, in the places where government programmes have come to an end after COVID, there has been no noticeable uptick in filling the jobs that were vacant. In other words, the theory that people are staying away from the jobs because they are lazy and are motivated by scarcity is not proving a worthy explanation for what is happening. There are other theories.
One is that many people have re-evaluated their lives in the time of COVID and have decided that they are going to make some changes. I remember reading about one worker in England who commuted between 3 and 4.5 hours everyday for work. COVID led them to say that they would NEVER do that again. One area of evaluation around work has to do with dignity. Many people are not going back to jobs in which they did not feel valued as an employee. It is noteworthy that we actually make judgments on people based on the job that they do. The term “non-skilled” job implies such a hierarchy. Does a dishwasher have less value than a financial planner? Of course not. No person’s humanity should be determined by their work. In fact, seeing the dignity of all people and all work is part of what it means to have a hopeful view of the world. Have you ever been in a situation where you see someone treat a worker as if they are less than human, as if they are a task, not a person, as if they are an accessory in the customer’s life? Or have you ever worked for someone who failed to see your humanity and treated you as a resource or as a commodity? There are great customers and employers, but there are also bosses and customers who can treat workers as if accepting pay means giving up personhood.
One of the most engaging concepts of hopeful Christian theology is that of vocation. In my evangelical background the big concept was salvation. In becoming a Christian, so the thinking went, you were granted salvation, you were “saved”. Karl Barth explained Christian theology differently than this. Barth said that Christian faith is marked not by awareness of salvation as much as by awareness of vocation. For Barth, being “awakened to conversion” meant that you were awakened to purpose and meaning of reflecting God’s love in the world and seeing God’s love reflected in all others. Vocation means something much bigger than career or job. Maybe a part of the Great Resignation is that people have seen that part of our humanity is found in vocation and if their work has taken place in a setting where people are de-valued then vocation becomes more difficult to exercise. Of course, we all know that meaningful vocation has little to do with your actual job. You can be a doctor and have little sense of vocation. You can be a dishwasher and make a big difference in people’s lives. There are cases in which people earn money at some job in order to fulfil their vocation in some other activity, but it is also true that both as worker and as customer or client you can help people to see that they have dignity and worth, that they have vocation.
I read last week of a man in the United States who recently took a job driving a school bus. For a few years before taking this job he was retired from his previous employment. His previous employment was as one of the country’s highest ranking FBI officials. Half of the budget of the FBI was under his management as Executive Assistant Director. His new job, as a school bus driver in Virginia for the Chesterfield County Public Schools, pays $20.21 an hour. Mike Mason starts each morning at 5:30 am by inspecting the bus inside and out. He wants the bus to be safe for the students. In his words, “I’m smiling every day that I start the bus up.” When he worked for the FBI Mason oversaw 6,500 people in Washington alone and 56 other field offices across the country. Now he picks up 9 students each day and drops them off at the Faison Center which offers educational programmes for children living with autism. When he read about critical shortages of school bus drivers Mason decided to help. He had to undergo weeks of training before he started the job. He describes the work himself;
“It has increased my capacity for empathy exponentially. What I’ve enjoyed most is making breakthroughs.”
These have included seeing a shy student smile for the first time, or beaming with pride as a child waved at him as he approached the school for pickup at 2:30 pm. Such is the reality of vocation. Mason again;
“If you are looking for an easy job, don’t be a school bus driver. But if you’re looking for an important, a fulfilling job that really matters - and this job matters - this could be for you.”
A step in hopeful Christian theology is a step away from concepts of salvation that wind up dividing the world into saved and unsaved towards a concept of vocation that recognizes the dignity and worth of all people. Think about how you value people in your life, doctors, lawyers, dishwashers, bus drivers, nurses, teachers, artists. Think about how meaningful vocation is discovered in the downward way exemplified by Mike Mason, the bus driver, as much or more as it is in the upward way of Mike Mason, the FBI Executive Director.
Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. (Philippians 2)
I have known much religion that has equated worth with attainment, moral or spiritual. We have all known a culture that has placed jobs within a hierarchy that has to do with attaining higher and higher levels and status. It is truly hopeful faith that sees Christ-likeness has to do, not with attainment, but with relinquishment, and in relinquishing our religion or culture bound status we can better see the humanity of ourselves and others.