“Big Boss Man,” an old song by blues legend Jimmy Reed, still packs a potent political punch for today’s working class:
You got me workin’, boss man, working round the clock
I wanna little drink of water, but you won’t let Jimmy stop
Big boss man, can’t you hear me When I call?
But then, Reed urges workers to see how small the boss man really is:
Well, you ain’t so big, you just tall that’s all.
Well, I’m gonna get me a boss man, one gonna treat me right
Work hard in the day time, rest easy at night.
That could be the anthem of millions of Americans today, who are rebelling against soulless corporate jobs and layers of bosses demanding longer hours doing tedious tasks. These workplace uprisngs are not about another dollar a day – rather the idea of work itself is being confronted.
People are realizing that their time, energy, and their very lives are being consumed a day at a time to profit faraway Big Boss Men. It’s also dawning on more and more workers that their jobs are BS – generating paperwork that no one sees, babysitting computer systems, making electronic downloads that are silly, etc.
Thus, large numbers of workers are saying: Who needs it? Is this my “life?” What’s the point? My “job” could – poof! – disappear tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter. How am I to take any pride or find a smidgeon of personal fulfillment in surrendering the biggest chunks of my life to that?
This is Jim Hightower saying… Big Billionaire Bosses like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos bark that it’s time for employees to double down on the “work ethic” – yet there’s no ethical core to the work they demand. Bosses don’t get it, but what’s happening today is not merely a labor rebellion, but a revolution for humanity to be valued for itself… and for workers to become their own bosses.
The Changing Meaning Of “Work”—And the Idea of “Boss Man”