There are entire classes of work, like digging ditches and driving equipment, that can be sweaty and rote. Not designed to be fun, but to get something done. For pay. This is becoming regarded as mentally or physically abusive.
It helps to consider the pay as recompense for whatever hardship you endure to deliver value to the employer. Which seems obvious but apparently is not.
An acquaintance of mine working in academia told me that her boss was being bullying and abusive. I was really concerned and asked what was happening. She told me that her boss and department were making her come into the office (pre-covid) at 9am despite that she assured them she could do all her research remotely. When she would not come in or come in late, her boss was verbally reprimanding her.
This scenario is certainly bureaucratic and not the funnest, but it’s funny to me that bullying is considered making people come into work at an established time.
An awful lot of corporate culture is abusive, and designed primarily to give managers a warm fuzzy feeling of absolute control over their subordinates. Much of it derives directly from the assembly-line era, and much of the overall philosophy behind it is just thinly-veiled feudalism.
"But everyone does it this way" is not a valid defense against "this behaviour is abusive and designed to squeeze the agency and will to be more than a drone out of me."
I think the difference in what is reasonable and what is reasonable. If I question a reasonable start time “9am” that makes me someone that few want to work with. Whereas questioning forced, unpaid overtime is an entirely different, and I think reasonable question.
Reasonable rules like “be here by 9am” are not emotionally abusive to enforce. Perhaps you feel that way, but I think that’s unreasonable and will result in tons of emotional abuse as you go through the world.
Is a stop light emotionally abusive? Is not paying me $100k emotionally abusive?
I’m glad that we’re not actually under feudalism, but I think employment is not feudalism.
If there is no actual business purpose for it—beyond "I'm the boss and I want it that way"—then why shouldn't the boss be compassionate, and allow flexibility? Meetings with coworkers, as we've seen in the past few months, can work just fine being scheduled at times that actually work for everyone, rather than expecting everyone to be constantly available (and thus never able to truly focus on their actual work).
Unions are a horrible solution and should be avoided at all costs because they're a competitive disadvantage and will sink the company long term. The better solution is to pour money into creating more jobs and uplifting people out of a shitty job into one where there is more leverage.
Every industry should be a sellers market.