From condescending bosses to the perceived illegitimacy of catering and cleaning jobs, a notion of the workplace conceived nearly 100 years ago still influences how Americans interact with their superiors.
By Melissa Gregg, The Atlantic
When the real-estate startup WeWork recently terminated a contracting agreement to bring its cleaning staff in-house, the company claimed that “every employee is part of the WeWork family.” By using the word “family,” it invoked a longstanding management tradition whose problematic provenance it may not have been aware of. Family metaphors are assumed to have positive connotations, but, as revisionists have long pointed out, family dynamics do not map evenly onto labor justice. Indeed, many people got to work to escape their families.
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