“Quiet cracking” is a funny way of saying “over-exploited”.
Employers as a whole are now exploiting and extracting (i.e. stealing) so much value from labor—and demonstrating that they only want to devalue labor even more—that laborers no longer think the commercial exchange is worth their time and attention, so they disengage.
Focusing too much on laborers to help them cope or deal is a band-aid; this is a systemic breaking point, and we can’t all outrun the system. Focus on changing the system.
@drahardja it’s really impressive how many ways they can euphemize the aggressive over exploitation of the workforce without actually realizing why that’s a fundamentally bad idea.