Back to (Dignity) Work

Yesterday, September 2nd, was the symbolic end of the summer and the return to work. Of course, for the vast majority of us, work didn’t stop in July or August. But nonetheless, the Tuesday after Labor Day feels different. The calendar turns, the days shorten, and we’re back to work.

Which leads me to wonder: how many of us feel that work enhances our sense of dignity? How many of us, for example, feel that being back to work fulfills our sense of purpose? Or strengthens our sense of belonging? Or helps us feel that we matter?  

And how many of us feel the opposite? That work is dehumanizing? That going back to work is drudgery? That work is cutthroat and vicious and unpleasant? That we only do it for a paycheck?

For us in the dignity movement, work and workplaces play a huge role in either advancing dignity or undermining it. Estimates suggest we spend 90,000 hours of our lives at work and that work plays a major role in affecting our happiness and health. Dignity and work should be a big topic. Does your work strengthen your sense of dignity or rob you of it?  

This is an old question. The book of Genesis in the Bible describes the burden of work as the destiny of humanity: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread until you return to the ground,” (3:19). Centuries later, the founders of the United States imagined a country where work would produce wealth. “By permitting merit to trump entrenched elites, it motivates individuals with the plum of fortune…Ambition is a summons to effort.” (WSJ, 8/1/25). The Catholic church took up the issue of work in Pope Leo XIII’s influential 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, suggesting the work was a moral vocation and that economic conditions should always respect the dignity of the worker.

So what’s all that got to do with our alarm clocks and punch cards and job descriptions? As we go back to work in September 2025, we have a lot on our minds. We’re worried that AI is going to eliminate our jobs, that groceries are too expensive, that wages aren’t growing, that the super-rich have too much power, and that the rest of the world doesn’t matter. To paraphrase Tina Turner’s classic song about love, “What’s dignity got to do with it?"

Maybe everything. Work can enhance dignity. Work can strengthen trust. Work can remind us that we’re each important, that we each have a role to play, that we can each help achieve big and important goals. Work can ease divisions and solve problems. At its best, work demands sweat and effort but gives purpose and belonging. And isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

Our Dignity Works team is focused on this challenge in a big way. We’re training managers and company leaders and new employees too. At the simplest level, we’re helping people notice when they feel contempt creeping into the workplace. They’re learning dignity phrases like, “I want to hear what you think.” And “How do you think we fix it?” And especially, “Tell me more.”  

These phrases have a common message: what the other person thinks and feels matters to you. It’s not about your rank—you don’t get more dignity if you’re more powerful. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the supervisor or a colleague or reporting up the ladder. When tensions arise—as they always will—affirming that the other person matters is what matters. We don’t have to agree at work, but it makes everything more efficient and effective if we treat each other with dignity.

The hunger for dignity is visible in recent data, too. John Lettieri, President and CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization, recently reported data that reminds us of what American workers want most: “What do workers want from their country’s leaders? Simply put: to make America affordable again. For American workers, the central economic problem of 2025 is the same as it was in 2022: The cost of everything is just too high. More than two-thirds of workers said that reducing the costs of everyday goods or housing would be the best way to make life better for the country’s labor force.”

Affordability sounds a lot like dignity to me—the ideal of working hard as a means to being able to afford a dignified lifestyle. That’s what work is at its highest and best:  a means for elevating our own dignity and the dignity of people touched by our work – co-workers, bosses, customers, neighbors – doing what we can to make sure that our work is a way of treating others with dignity, and feeling our own dignity strengthened as well. It’s finding a purpose, looking for a way to help, listening to others, and being willing to sweat and stretch to find a way forward. 

We may not be able to control a lot of things in our lives, but we can control how we treat each other. We can all treat each other with dignity. And work’s a great place to start.

Happy back-to-work day!

Tim

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