Rise and Unwind

Filthy rich executives downsizing their workforces, evading regulations and demanding more labor is nothing new — it’s the ethos of corporate capitalism. But now, it’s being imported into the government in the name of so-called efficiency.

But indiscriminate layoffs do not actually increase efficiency.

After Musk took an axe to the workforce at X, the platform quickly became a glitchy cesspool of misinformation and bigotry. When translated to government, this approach has caused chaos, leading to attempts to rehire essential workers in nuclear safety and Ebola control who DOGE ​“accidentally” fired.

Reports also reveal the agency isn’t delivering on its promised cost savings.

In reality, DOGE is just another ploy to bleed workers dry so elites can extract profit — this time, by removing state guardrails on economic power.

Democrats are starting to call out this clear display of greed and hubris, highlighting how Trump’s cuts will impact ordinary people who happen to want their food safe, their Social Security checks on time, their national parks staffed and their flights landing safely.

Labor unions have filed a bevy of lawsuits over the mass layoffs, and protests are spreading. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said at a February 19 rally for federal workers in Manhattan at a February 19 rally for federal workers in Manhattan, ​“This is the culmination of what oligarchy is all about … the fusion and the capture [by] the billionaire class of our democracy.” This kind of pushback is welcome, but the central vision of Musk and his fellow aristocrats — life as an unending grind in service of greater productivity and profits — should also be challenged head-on.

Rather than accept the premise that the workforce should hustle harder, Democrats and unions can offer a clear counter: Workers deserve far more time off the job to enjoy their lives.

The call for more leisure has animated the labor movement for generations, from the demand for an eight-hour day in the late 19^th century to more recent campaigns to win paid time off, sick days and family leave. To reclaim the American promise of freedom and liberty for all, those opposed to the takeover of our lives by ultra-wealthy elites should outline an alternative vision — one of shorter work days, longer vacations and mandated paid leave.

As Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt explains in Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream, the demand for less work was once central to the broadly shared concept of social progress. Only in the latter 20^th century was this demand eclipsed by the ​“glorification of work,” in large part because of the expanding ranks of rich industrialists who sought to ramp up production to grow their fortunes.

Still, through the early 1970s, many prominent thinkers predicted the country was heading toward a more leisurely future — potentially even ​“the end of work.” The opposite ensued, with the American workweek growing longer as real wages fell. The collapse of union density coincided with corporate consolidation and income inequality. As a result, from 1979 to 2024, worker productivity increased 2.7 times as much as pay.

Americans keep crushing schedules compared with their European counterparts, amounting to hundreds more hours of work every year, which research shows is bad for both physical and mental health. While Musk may call working nonstop a ​“superpower,” it leads to fatigue, disrupted sleep, heart disease and catastrophic safety mistakes on the job.

Simply put, the ​“rise and grind” credo is a ruse to suck more value out of our labor.

How can we cure our national epidemic of overwork? The answer isn’t complicated: In 2019, the People’s Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, outlined a ​“leisure agenda” that included more holidays, mandated vacation, paid leave, and an expansion of unemployment and Social Security benefits.

New workers in the United States have an average of just 11 paid days off each year. European countries, by contrast, mandate between 20 and 30 vacation days annually, and up to two weeks of paid holidays.

In some white-collar U.S. workplaces, four-day workweeks have become more common. Trials show they’re popular among both employees and employers. The promise offered by this arrangement isn’t just one fewer day spent at work; it’s one more day to go for a stroll, see a movie, meet friends at the bar, take kids to the park, finish that art project, plant a garden or try the new pizza spot — in other words, to live.

But for most U.S. workers, that still sounds like a far-off fantasy. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder have it worst, with low-wage workers least likely to receive paid holidays, sick days or vacation. While some states mandate these benefits, federal action remains stalled. In 2024, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation that would enact a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay. It’s an idea whose time has come — but one that is unlikely to pass Congress soon.

That’s why it’s heartening to see unions taking up this call. In 2023, the United Auto Workers(UAW) made the 32-hour week a high-profile demand during its successful ​“stand up” strike against the Big Three automakers. While the final contracts didn’t cut down the workweek, the union hasn’t abandoned the idea. As UAW President Shawn Fain told Sarah Jaffe for the April 2024 issue of In These Times: ​“I really felt it was imperative to get the dialogue going again, to try to fight for a shorter workweek and get the
public thinking along those lines.”

The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, adopted a similar resolution in 2022, promising to ​“aggressively take up the fight for a shorter workweek.” Continuing to advance bold demands to improve workers’ daily lives is part and parcel of fighting the attempted takeover of tech oligarchs who seek to root out the entire labor movement.

Time off is good for our bodies and our brains. But who needs to be told the upsides of taking vacation? Spending an afternoon listening to the soft tide roll in on a sun-soaked beach is all the proof anyone needs.

We are living through a time of rapid technological advancement, coupled with an extreme concentration of wealth. Yet, automation and artificial intelligence aren’t being deployed to increase our leisure time. Instead of taking over menial tasks or high-risk work, the tech is used to produce internet slop, chatbots and cybernetically generated iterations of what we previously called art.

And while the billionaires in power hoard their riches, they tell the rest of us to work harder for less.

It’s time to rouse a different reality — one in which the machines stock the warehouses and we claw back control over our lives from our bosses, giving us time to explore the full scope of human creativity. Getting there will mean bringing the demand for less work back into public debate, with Democrats and the labor movement offering a direct rebuttal to DOGE sycophants.

Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem With Work, has said that ​“demands for more time off are generative not just of needed reforms that would help people live their lives, but of critical perspectives and political imagination.”

We can imagine new and inventive ways to spend our time, revel in the wonders of modern life, build the world we want to inhabit and experience collective joy.

But first, we need to clock out.