The Divide Between Service Work and Information Work is a Mirage

For all the fulfilling habits I've developed in the last five years or so, I have a habit I don't like to talk about. The first thing I do in the morning is pick up my phone, open up Twitter, and scroll through my favorite lists. Okay, that's not even entirely true. I open up Twitter, then Instagram, and then LinkedIn, and—you guessed it—check my notifications.

The vast majority of my media consumption these days is long-form: books, articles, and podcast episodes. But I'm still a sucker for likes and mentions on platforms I spend little time on.

I've come to terms with the fact that there are few times when I escape work these days. And honestly, I like it that way, as long as it's on my own terms. But first thing in the morning? Checking for social interactions that most often lack substance or value? It's not the best way to spend my time.

At this point, I don't think the habit is actively harmful—so it's not very high on my priority list of things to address. But, given the questions I've been exploring this year, it is notable.

On my Saturday long run, I did have reason to note this habit. I was listening to the latest episode of Radiolab, called "Gigaverse." It's an exploration of the gig economy from a human perspective. In one of the stories, a DoorDash driver describes his pavlovian relationship with the app. He checked his phone for potential high-paying rides constantly and learned to exploit loopholes to make the most money. Even after a shocking and nearly-catastrophic incident, he still felt the pull of the app.

This driver and I (and probably you, too) share this same compulsion.

On the other side of the glowing screen, there is a potential opportunity.

For me, it's a comment to respond to or a message to answer. For the driver, it's a delivery with a great trip attached just a block away. Each time one doesn't pick up the phone to check, is a potential opportunity missed.

There was a time when I believed that gig economy workers and I didn't have much in common.

I was building a company. They were hustling for tips. I was my own boss. They worked for apps, even if tax filings said otherwise.

But today, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much I—and other entrepreneurs and independent workers—have in common with gig workers. We're hustling for tips in our own ways. We're certainly working for the apps as much (more) as working for ourselves. Far from gig workers belonging to the service industry and entrepreneurs belonging to the knowledge industry, we all belong to a precarious class of workers. There aren't higher class independent workers and lower class independent workers—there are only workers who have been squeezed out of an economy that has less and less room for people seeking a sustainable living.

I understand now that believing I had little in common with gig workers is a trick of the system.

If I don't belong to that group, then what incentive do I have to advocate for them? What benefit is finding solidarity with them? (I mean, there are plenty of reasons—but you get the idea.)

The thing is, the kind of policies that would make gig workers' lives better would make our lives better.

The kind of regulation that would make gig work more sustainable would make our work more sustainable. And the kind of power we could yield as an organized community standing in solidarity could make the world a better place.

Labor Day is just a week away in the United States. I keep telling my husband that it's the last week of summer, but he prefers to let the seasons dictate their own starting and ending rather than succumbing to a cultural construction. Shrug.

In the 21st century, we celebrate Labor Day largely as summer's last hurrah: one last chance for a trip to the beach, a backyard barbecue, or a day at the amusement park.

But it's called Labor Day for a reason.

And that reason is to celebrate the enormous contribution that workers make to the nation. Labor organizers celebrated the first Labor Day in 1882 in New York City. And Grover Cleveland signed the law declaring Labor Day a national holiday in 1894. The holiday was designed to offer a day of recreation to working-class families—well before paid overtime or the forty-hour working week had been established nationally.

Today, despite the encouraging news of fresh bursts of labor energy, union participation is at an all-time low. One reason for this is that the jobs that have been considered suitable for organizing have dwindled. Today's working class predominantly works in the service, retail, or caregiving industries (which, in turn, are full of disabled, LGTBQIA+, Black, immigrant, and indigenous workers—predominantly women). And as management thinker Peter Drucker predicted, the economy is bifurcated between these service-oriented jobs (lower class) and information jobs (higher class).

The divide between service work and information work is a mirage.

There are a minority of jobs that provide some semblance of stability in today's economy. And there are the majority of jobs—whether at a startup or at McDonald's, driving one's own car or running one's own podcast, hustling on LinkedIn or hustling on a delivery app, navigating a newsroom or navigating the algorithm—that don't. Even those who hold a job in that blessed minority are just one medical emergency or corporate restructuring away from landing in the struggling majority.

...what appears as “autonomy” is most often interiorization of the employers’ needs.

—Silvia Federici

This Labor Day, I encourage everyone—regardless of your net worth, job security, or business status—to reflect on what true solidarity between workers could look like. Organized labor made huge strides in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And while those strides weren't always equally distributed among workers (hello, agricultural and domestic laborers being excluded from the NLRA), there was recognition of the power of workers across genders, races, and types of work.

There are few things giving me more hope than the rumblings of a new labor movement—and all of the possibilities that might come with it.