Breathe

Mindfulness is no substitute for a unionised workplace. Nap rooms don’t prevent us from working overtime – rather, they help us to do so. Free therapy may make a round of layoffs less psychologically agonising, but it does not prevent them from happening. Individualised workplace mental health initiatives can help us weather the ravages of capitalism with a smile, but they cannot address the root causes of work-related anguish. They do not even begin to touch on the underlying principle that each person must work for a wage to survive; a ‘fact of life’ that normalises mass death and alienates us from its horror. Workplace mental health interventions also have no internal politics – therapy may help the worker manage their emotions around being fired, or it can help calm the conscience of the boss who is doing the firing. Given this ability to boost productivity and smooth over the emotions associated with exploitative practices, it is no wonder that mindfulness, for example, was imported to the US workplace by Apple CEO Steve Jobs; and continues to be favoured by union-busting CEOs, for both themselves and their employees.