Work Should Not Decide Whether You Live or Die

When survival is tied to employment, "workplace culture" is not a business issue. It is a human one.

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Work has always been more than a job. It determines who eats, who gets care, who rests, and who builds wealth. We like to believe work has evolved - that modern organizations traded exploitation for flexibility, wellness, and purpose. But the language changed more than the conditions.

People still overwork to stay insured. Still accept disrespect to keep food on the table. Still mask their identities to be seen as "professional." Still wonder if one missed paycheck or layoff will destabilize everything.

That is not progress. That is a polished version of an old system.

Work Was Never Neutral

Historically, work was organized around survival and power, not human dignity. From enslaved labor and sharecropping to industrial factories and today's gig economy, income has determined access to life.

The stakes remain high. In 2023, 6.1 million people were classified as the "working poor" - people who spent at least 27 weeks working or looking for work yet still lived below the poverty line. Even among full-time workers, 2.4% were working poor. Bureau of Labor Statistics data makes one thing clear: employment alone does not guarantee economic security.

Hunger tells the same story. In 2024, 13.7% of U.S. households - 18.3 million households representing 47.9 million people - experienced food insecurity. USDA Economic Research Service defines food insecurity as limited or uncertain access to enough nutritious food because of insufficient resources.

Millions live in households where food is uncertain, even in an economy that celebrates job creation and corporate growth.

A job should help sustain a life. It should not become the condition required to deserve one.

The Performance of Belonging

For Black professionals and underrepresented employees, work often demands more than competence. It demands alignment.

Alignment with communication styles that were not created with us in mind. Alignment with an image of "professionalism" that requires minimizing language, personality, hair, cultural references, emotions, or truth.

That is code-switching.

An Indeed survey found that 34% of Black employees reported code-switching at work, compared with 12% of non-Hispanic White employees. Forty-four percent of Black respondents said code-switching was necessary, and 39% of those who code-switched believed stopping could negatively affect their career. 

This is not simply about changing vocabulary in a meeting. It is about the ongoing calculation of safety:

• Can I speak plainly here?

• Will confidence be read as aggression?

• Will honesty be read as a lack of "culture fit"?

• Can I be fully myself and still be considered promotable?

• Is this community - or merely proximity to people I see every day?

  
  

Some workplaces offer genuine connection. Others offer a false community: team-building language without trust, belonging campaigns without accountability, and "we're family" messaging while people are overextended, underpaid, excluded, or quietly pushed out.

A workplace cannot call itself a community if belonging depends on performance.

We Pretend Things Are Different

We have normalized a reality where people are expected to be grateful for work that harms them.

We call exhaustion ambition. We call overavailability commitment. We call economic fear "motivation." We call the ability to tolerate dysfunction resilience.

But the body does not care what the company calls it.

Gallup reports that 50% of U.S. employees experienced significant stress during the previous day, compared with a 40% global average. In the United States, only 51% of employees were categorized as thriving in 2025, while 45% were struggling and 4% were suffering. 

Stress is not always an individual failure to meditate or "manage time better." Often, it is a rational response to unreasonable conditions: unstable schedules, inadequate pay, discrimination, overloaded roles, unclear expectations, lack of autonomy, and the fear that saying no will cost someone their livelihood.

And while workers are asked to do more with less, corporations continue to flourish. U.S. corporate profits from current production totaled approximately $4.08 trillion in 2025, following $3.80 trillion in 2024, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The question is not whether organizations can generate value.

The question is: Who is allowed to benefit from the value people create?

Working Into Old Age Is Not Always a Choice

There is nothing wrong with working later in life when it is rooted in purpose, passion, or choice. But we must be honest when continued work is about necessity.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2025, 19.1% of Americans age 65 and older were in the labor force. That is substantially higher than the 12.9% recorded in 2000. 

Not every older worker is there because they want to be. Many are responding to rising costs, inadequate retirement savings, health-care expenses, caregiving obligations, debt, and a lifetime of wages that were never sufficient to build stability.

When people must work until their bodies cannot, that is not evidence of a thriving labor system. It is evidence that the system has failed to make rest, retirement, and dignity possible.

The Answer Is Not Less Equity. It Is More Accountability

In an anti-DEI climate, some organizations are trying to rebrand retreat as neutrality.

They remove the language of equity. They cut programs designed to address unequal access. They frame conversations about race, gender, disability, and power as "divisive."

They tell workers to focus on merit while refusing to examine who gets access to opportunity, sponsorship, safety, flexibility, and forgiveness.

But pretending not to see inequity does not create fairness.

It protects the conditions that made inequity possible.

The pushback against DEI is often presented as a fight against favoritism. Yet the deeper question is rarely asked: Why is fairness considered controversial only when it requires institutions to change?

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission describes systemic discrimination as patterns, practices, or policies that have a broad impact across an industry, company, profession, or geographic area. Workplace harm is not always one manager making one offensive comment. It can be embedded in promotion practices, compensation structures, performance standards, "culture fit" requirements, staffing decisions, and who gets believed when harm is reported. 

What It Means to Resist

Combating workplace oppression is not about asking marginalized employees to be endlessly resilient, professional, or patient.

It is about shifting power.

• Document the pattern, not just the incident. Keep contemporaneous records of what happened, when, who was present, the words used, comparable treatment, and the business impact. Patterns are harder for organizations to dismiss as a "misunderstanding."

• Build community beyond corporate approval. True community does not require you to shrink, perform gratitude, or sacrifice your truth for access. Build relationships with peers, mentors, affinity networks, and advocates who can provide perspective and sponsorship.

• Use collective voice. An isolated complaint can be minimized. Shared experiences can reveal a policy, practice, or pattern. Where it is safe, employees can compare experiences, raise concerns together, and request transparent review of pay, promotion, performance, and retention outcomes.

• Refuse the language of individual deficiency. If Black employees, women, disabled workers, immigrant workers, older workers, and other marginalized groups repeatedly encounter the same barriers, the issue is not a lack of confidence, "executive presence," or culture fit. The issue is the system.

• Protect yourself while you challenge harm. Resistance does not require reckless exposure. Preserve documentation outside work systems where lawful, learn company reporting channels, consult a trusted advocate or employment attorney when appropriate, and make decisions with your financial and emotional safety in mind.

• Demand measurable accountability. Do not accept a statement of values in place of outcomes. Ask: Who is hired? Who is promoted? Who is paid equitably? Who leaves? Whose complaints are substantiated? Who is disciplined? Who holds leadership accountable when inequity is found?

  
  

Retaliation Is Part of the Problem

Many workers stay silent because they understand the reality of retaliation - even when an organization claims it has an "open-door policy."

Under U.S. equal employment law, employers generally may not retaliate against workers for opposing unlawful discrimination, participating in an investigation, filing a charge, serving as a witness, or communicating concerns about discrimination or harassment. The EEOC notes that retaliation protections apply to employees who assert their right to a workplace free from unlawful discrimination.

That legal protection does not erase the emotional, financial, or career risk workers may feel. But it does mean retaliation is not simply "how business works." It can be a violation that deserves documentation, challenge, and accountability.

If a workplace punishes people for naming harm, it is not protecting culture.

It is protecting power.

A Better Demand

The goal is not to convince every oppressor to become compassionate.

The goal is to create workplaces where a person's dignity is not dependent on a leader's mood, a corporation's political appetite, or an employee's willingness to assimilate.

We should demand workplaces where:

• We do not have to code-switch to be deemed competent

• Employees can report discrimination without fearing punishment

• Pay, promotion, and opportunity are transparent enough to be examined

• "Belonging" is measured by safety and equity, not attendance at a company happy hour

• People can rest, eat, receive care, and retire without being forced to overwork for basic security

• Business success is not built by treating human beings as disposable inputs

  
  

This is not an anti-business argument.

It is an argument against businesses that confuse exploitation with efficiency.

The people who build the work, carry the culture, serve the customers, solve the crises, and generate the profit are not an inconvenience to manage. They are the source of organizational success.

And no movement against equity should make us forget that.

The human being is not separate from business success.

The human being is the reason business success exists at all.