When work becomes a death sentence — The silent toll of modern jobs

‘The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.’

– Henry David Thoreau

What explains the sad spectacle before us today? What can we say to an agonised and puzzled mother writing a heart-rending dirge on her young daughter’s life? A life snuffed out because she was worked to death.

How much of it was the job itself, and what part did her sense of self play in her demise? Why did she let herself get bullied into that bitter end she met? These questions have no definitive answers. Propriety requires us to seek understanding from a distance, as the grieving family seeks solace, and struggles to comprehend the tragedy.

Was it the job, the company, her boss, or the system? Or was it her family, her resilience, or her lack of support from friends? We may never know. The world will pause briefly, then move on, placing the blame on the job as the most proximate cause of death.

The problem with a job is that if you don’t have it, you desperately want one. Most often it has to do with the fact that you need an income, but equally often these days, it is also about a sense of self-actuality. It used to be that you studied through school to get into college and worked towards a degree. Sometimes you’d need a second degree because only that would get you closer to that job that you dreamt of. The rest was up to the competitive exams you wrote, the interviews you gave, and the connections you had or the luck of the draw. But to get a job you would have to because that’s what you were chasing.

Now, if your parents had the money or you knew how to get along, you would obtain a professional add-on course with a brand-new parameter. You’d opt to study (if you were to get through, of course), based on what jobs the institution that you’re paying through the nose for is likely to guarantee at the end. That rat race to get a job begins even before you embark on your final educational step.

The fundamental question, of course, is the extent to which competition in its rawest form played in the death of the youngster. Overwhelming stress and anxiety are a product of competition both at the corporate level as well as at the individual worker level. Attempting to draw a line on where competition between companies can happen is futile, because it negates the very concept of a capitalist economic model. Companies must and will compete and only the victors will survive. That’s the law. It’s basic.

“The descent to hell is easy,” Virgil wrote in The Aeneid. Problems begin for the individual when they get swept into this corporate process. If you opt to be a mere pawn in this process, then it’s likely that you will be forced to play the game, just as companies must play them: a race to victory or death. Individuals who are not able to create the required space between the corporate expectations of behaviour and their innate capability to deal with the stress that this involves are often victims.

So, what are the options an individual has besides the grandest one of choosing to opt out of the rat race itself, in a kind of Bohemian escapism? How do you set boundaries, for yourself, to make your life slightly less frenetic, and more holistic? Can you insist on the right to disconnect as currently provided for in some Australian companies? Will that have universal acceptability? Would you be able to claim the privilege of ‘Eternity’ benefits, which will ensure that you can be around for a while? Or do your circumstances require you to become somewhat like those masses of classic Japanese automatons who exist merely to work? Could you opt to be a gig worker and calibrate your working hours to your varying economic needs, snuffing out such concepts as a full-time job, a regular salary and increments in money, rank and hierarchy?

These are the kinds of questions that will hover over this child’s death in a world currently confused about how long jobs for humans will last, given the rate at which automation and AI are making most of us relatively useless. Depending on where you are, and how you’ve been brought up and indeed how old you are and where you are in the economic cycle, the answers will be completely different. Some will have choices. Many will have none.

Dilip Cherian is the founding partner of Perfect Relations and is a litigation landscaper and branding strategist. Author handle on X @DILIPtheCHERIAN