The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work

if work has really improved since the beginning of the century or if it is just clothed in fancy terms and done in cleaner, better-lighted places.

The ancients saw work as a necessity and a curse, ... The medieval Catholic church bestowed on work a simple dignity; the Renaissance humanist gave it glamour. But the Protestants endowed work with the quest for meaning, identity and signs of salvation. The notion of work as something beyond mere labor, as work-plus, indeed as a calling, highlighted its personal and existential qualities. Work became a kind of prayer. More than a means of living, it became a purpose for living.

When they lost their jobs, they lost everything, ... income, benefits, friends, reputation, and sometimes even family. Their years of work didn't deliver what they thought the organization had promised. They'd had an unwritten social compact with their employer that if they did their job well, they could keep it until retirement.

It's about fairness, ... not being unmotivated. Issues of fairness such as not being treated with respect, being talked to in a condescending way -- these are the things that really bother people at work. Instead of having motivational speakers or worrying about psychological issues of, 'How do we make everybody feel good?' I say the fundamental grounds for making people feel good is treating them well.

Very often, companies try to get these quick highs instead of fixing the more fundamental questions of fairness and being treated with respect,