好英语网工作不该是“用爱发电”
Last month, in an interview about Warner Bros. Discovery’s $50 million streaming profit in the first quarter of 2023, the company’s chief executive, David Zaslav, told CNBC that he believed the Writers Guild of America strike would ultimately end because of “a love for the business and a love for working.”
上个月，华纳兄弟探索公司的首席执行官戴维·扎斯拉夫就该公司的流媒体2023年一季度盈利5000万美元接受采访，他当时对全国广播公司商业频道说，他相信，出于“对这个行业的热爱和对工作的热爱”，美国编剧工会的罢工终将结束。
As the sixth week of the strike begins, the writers’ persistence reveals a sharper truth: Love, unfortunately, doesn’t pay the bills.
这场罢工已进入第六周，编剧们的坚持不懈让一个事实变得更清晰：遗憾的是，热爱支付不了账单。
The implication that love is a suitable stand-in for job security, workplace protections or fair pay is a commonly held belief, especially in so-called dream jobs like writing, cooking and working in the arts, where the privilege to do the work is seen as a form of compensation itself.
一种普遍持有的信念是，热爱是工作保障、工作场所保护或公平报酬的合适替代品，尤其是在写作、烹饪以及艺术等所谓梦寐以求的行业，有幸干这类工作本身就被认为是某种形式的报偿。
But the rhetoric that a job is a passion or a “labor of love” obfuscates the reality that a job is an economic contract. The assumption that it isn’t sets up the conditions for exploitation.
但是，工作是一种激情或“为爱发电”的说法混淆了工作是经济契约的现实。工作不是契约的假定为剥削创造了条件。
Indeed, creative, mission-driven and prestigious jobs often take advantage of employees’ love for what they do. According to one 2020 study, employers see poor treatment of workers — such as expecting overtime work without pay or asking people to do demeaning tasks that aren’t part of their job descriptions — as more acceptable if the workers are thought to be passionate about what they do. This stems from bosses’ tacit assumptions that their employees would do the work even if they weren’t paid.
其实，创造性的、使命驱动的、高声望的行业经常利用从业者对自身工作的热爱占他们的便宜。据2020年的一项研究，如果雇主认为员工对自己的工作有激情，就会更坦然地接受恶劣对待员工的做法，比如指望他们加班但不拿报酬，或要求他们做不属于其工作范围、有失尊严的任务。这是因为雇主们有一个心照不宣的假定：即使不给报酬，他们的员工也会做这项工作。
That seems to be the message some W.G.A. members have gotten. “Writing is a noble vocation,” says Charles Rogers, a writer and showrunner who is on strike in Los Angeles. “But the industry is set up to make writers feel like they should be grateful just to be here.” Employers then rely on employees’ indebtedness and the proverbial line of people out the door who would happily take their places to justify paying them less than they deserve.
这似乎是一些美国编剧工会成员得到的信息。“写作是个崇高的职业，”正在洛杉矶参与罢工的剧作家、节目统筹查尔斯·罗杰斯说。“但这个行业现在的做法是，让编剧们觉得他们应该为身在这个行业而心存感激。”雇主然后利用从业者的感恩心态，以及门外有很多乐意取代他们的人这种老生常谈，为付给工人低于他们应得的工资作辩护。
The idea that employees work for something other than money is also pervasive in industries that are geared toward helping people, such as education. “Teaching is a calling,” tweeted Mayor Eric Adams of New York City a few weeks ago. “You don’t do it for the money, you do it because you believe in the kids that come into your classrooms.”
从业者不是为钱工作的观念在其他旨在帮助他人的行业也相当普遍，例如教育。“投身教育是一种召唤，”纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯几周前发推文说。“从事教学的人不是为钱工作，而是因为相信教室里面的孩子们会成功。”
That may sound like reverence, but the New York City teachers’ union contract expired last September, and Mr. Adams has resisted pay increases that keep up with inflation. Teachers need better compensation, not platitudes celebrating teacher appreciation week.
这听起来像是尊崇，但纽约市教师工会的合同已于去年9月到期，而亚当斯一直反对给教师加薪，让薪水与通货膨胀同步增长。教师们需要更好的报酬，而不是庆祝教师感谢周的陈词滥调。
In a 2018 paper, Fobazi Ettarh, who at the time was a librarian, coined a term for how the perceived righteousness of her industry obscured the issues that existed within it. Ms. Ettarh called the phenomenon vocational awe, which she defined as the belief that as a workplace, libraries were inherently good, and therefore supposedly beyond critique. When a workplace is seen as virtuous, she claimed, it’s easier for workers to be exploited. “In the face of grand missions of literacy and freedom, advocating for your full lunch break feels petty,” she wrote.
在2018年的一篇论文中，时任图书管理员的福巴兹·伊塔尔生造了一个词来描述她身处的行业里，众人眼中的高尚如何掩盖了其中存在的问题。艾塔尔将这一现象称为“职业敬畏”(vocational awe)，她将其定义为一种信念：作为一个工作场所，图书馆本身是个高尚的地方，因此被认为不能批评。按照她的说法，在一个大家认为高尚的工作场所，员工更容易受剥削。“在文化和自由的宏大使命面前，倡导充足的午餐时间给人斤斤计较的感觉，”她写道。
Ms. Ettarh had known she wanted to become a librarian since she was a teenager. When she was studying for her library science degree, her professors loved to wax poetic about how becoming a librarian is a calling and libraries serve as the last truly democratic institution.
伊塔尔从十几岁起就知道自己想成为一名图书管理员。她读图书馆学学位时，教授们喜欢富有诗意地把当图书管理员称为一种使命，把图书馆的作用描述为最后一个真正的民主机构。
But from the other side of the reference desk, she saw how the industry’s ideals concealed its low pay. In her first position out of grad school, Ms. Ettarh was told by her supervisor, “No one becomes a librarian to make a living wage.” (She was making $48,000 at the time.) She eventually left the industry.
但坐在参考书咨询台前，她看到的是这个行业的理想主义如何掩盖了低薪。艾塔尔拿到图书馆学学位后获得的第一份工作的主管告诉她，“没有人当图书管理员是为了挣基本生活工资。”（她当时年薪4.8万美元。）她最终离开了这个行业。
During the pandemic, vocational awe was on full display from educators who were told that they were doing God’s work but also to make do with what they had to health care professionals who were deemed essential yet often not given compensation or protection commensurate with the severity of their work. The perceived righteousness of honorable industries covered up poor conditions like frosting on a burned cake.
新冠病毒大流行期间，职业敬畏得到了全面展现。人们对教育工作者说，他们在从事神圣的工作，但也告诉他们只能靠有限的资源凑合。医护人员被认为必不可少，但他们往往得不到与工作中面临的严重危险程度相符的报酬或保护措施。在让人钦佩的行业里，大家眼里的高尚掩盖了恶劣的工作条件，就像是给烧焦的蛋糕涂上糖霜。
While vocational awe is common in do-gooder professions, it can exist in any field that relies on the strength of its brand to distract from the reality of workers’ experiences. Take zookeeping, a profession where the average pay is $16.51 per hour, according to Indeed. Zookeeping is romanticized — you get to spend time with animals! — but also characterized by long hours, hard labor and cleaning up feces.
虽然职业敬畏在积德行善的行业中很常见，但也存在于所有依靠品牌力量转移人们对从业人员真实经历注意力的领域。以动物园管理员为例，据Indeed的数据，该职业的平均工资是每小时16.51美元。虽然动物园管理被浪漫化了（整天与能动物在一起！），但这种工作普遍上班时间长、辛苦，还要清理粪便。
In a study, the organizational behavior researchers Jeffery A. Thompson and J. Stuart Bunderson found that following the calling to be a zookeeper led to trade-offs. “Fostering a sense of occupational identification, transcendent meaning and occupational importance on the one hand,” they wrote, offset “unbending duty, personal sacrifice and heightened vigilance on the other.” The researchers concluded that low pay, unfavorable benefits and poor working conditions are often the sacrifices workers make for the privilege of doing what they love.
研究组织行为的学者杰弗里·汤普森和斯图尔特·邦德森在一项研究中发现，响应使命召唤当上动物园管理员有得有失。“一方面助长了职业认同、卓越意义和职业重要性，”他们写道，这抵消了“另一方面的死板责任、个人牺牲和高度警惕”。他们得出的结论是，低工资、不佳的福利以及恶劣的工作条件往往是从业者为从事他们喜欢的工作而做的牺牲。
This sense of duty and personal sacrifice can conflate workers’ output and their self-worth, as I chronicle in my new book, but it can also have a chilling effect on their willingness to surface wrongdoing. When you’re in a great job — one that you feel lucky to have — the fear of losing it can make it harder to speak up.
正如我在新书中描述的那样，这种责任感和个人牺牲不仅可能导致从业者将产出与他们的自我价值混为一谈，也有可能对他们揭露错误行为的意愿产生寒蝉效应。当你从事伟大行业、有一份让你觉得有幸得到的工作时，害怕失去会让你更难站出来说话。
But thankfully, workers are recognizing their collective strength. Employees at workplaces across the country have organized and are fighting for better conditions.
但幸亏劳动者正在认识到他们的集体力量。全国各地各行各业的从业者已经组织起来，正在争取更好的工作条件。
In Hollywood, it’s the screenwriters demanding more job security and a better cut of residuals. In Ann Arbor, Mich., graduate students at the University of Michigan are also on strike, demanding a raise in minimum annual salaries from about $24,000 to $38,500. In Oregon, nurses are calling for staffing increases to better serve patients.
在好莱坞，编剧们在要求更多的工作保障，得到更高的复播追加酬金。在密歇根州安阿伯市，密歇根大学的研究生们也在罢工，他们要求将最低年薪从大约2.4万美元提高到3.85万美元。在俄勒冈州，护士们在要求增加人员配置，以更好地为患者服务。
And they have a lot of support. Seventy-one percent of Americans approve of labor unions, according to a Gallup poll from last year, which is their highest recorded approval rate in the United States since 1965.
他们得到了很多支持。据盖洛普去年的一份民意调查，71%的美国人支持工会，这在盖洛普自1965年以来的记录里是最高的。
As Ms. Ettarh told me, “Workers are seeing that unless they work together to fight back, institutions will grind them to dust.” For starters, employers can recognize that we work for more than love.
正如伊塔尔对我说的那样，“劳动者看到，除非他们联合起来做斗争，否则将被机构榨干耗尽。”作为第一步，雇主们需要认识到，我们工作不仅是出于热爱。