“Quiet quitting”? Have we all lost our minds? Do words mean nothing?

Making sense of this latest expression – sure to be on the next annual list of newly added dictionary words – requires a contortion of logic so severe that it would confuse a room full of Cirque Du Soleil performers and mentalists.

It refers to workers who refuse to go above and beyond their job descriptions for employers who are quick to replace them, blame them and burn them out. These employees do their jobs, then they log off – which isn’t “quitting.”  

It might be a contradiction in terms, but labor economists should be reluctant to dismiss it as a “fake trend,” as it was described recently in a headline from The Atlantic.

“As a workplace phenomenon, workers’ mild disengagement is about as novel as cubicles, lunch breaks, and bleary-eyed colleagues stopping by your workstation to mutter, ‘Mondays, amirite?’ ” the piece states. “What the kids are now calling ‘quiet quitting’ was, in previous and simpler decades, simply known as ‘having a job.’ ”

There’s another way to think of it, however. This is the initial stage of sloganeering for what we might look back on in 50 or 100 years as the start of a new labor movement in the U.S.

Consider this from former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Twitter: “FYI: Workers aren’t ‘quiet quitting.’

“There isn’t a labor shortage, either.

“There’s a living wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage.

“Working people refuse to tolerate it. And they shouldn’t have to.”

This has a strong ring of truth.

Workers across the nation are unionizing in places they hadn’t before. A few years ago a college football team (Northwestern) tried to organize. Recently, a new group (the College Football Players Association) has come together seeking to represent athletes across the sport.

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Starbucks workers have been unionizing one shop at a time. And economists have closely followed efforts to organize at massive employers such as Amazon.    

(In the interest of disclosure, I’m a proud bargaining committee member of The Arizona Republic Guild, a union that came together in 2019 in solidarity over issues including pay, job security and health care.)

“Quiet quitting” might sound silly, and the definition has little to do with actually leaving a job, but it could portend a new era of workers’ rights.

Axios, which describes “quiet quitting” as a “rebellion against the ‘rise and grind’ ethos,” shows the phenomenon to be widespread.

According to its own polling in collaboration with Generation Lab, 82% of Gen Zers say the idea of doing the minimum required to keep their jobs is pretty or extremely appealing.

The Axios/Generation Lab poll showed that 85% of young women and 79% of young men find the idea of doing the minimum appealing, as do about 84% of Democrats, 79% of Republicans and 83% of independents.

Seems logical, right? Workers don’t want to work for free, especially for corporations where C-suite executives rake in millions while rank-and-file workers struggle with basics like rent, food and gas. Heaven forbid they want to go to the movies at the end of the week or buy a new pair of shoes.

(Still, I wish my grandfather, who taught me that “the man who never does any more than he’s paid to do never gets paid anymore” were here to debate this, but I’m certain he’s rolling over in his grave to tell my grandmother that, mercifully, they made it to glory before the world went mad.)

Look for “quiet quitting” to join “shrinkflation,” “supply chain” and “altcoin,” as Merriam-Webster’s latest new word entries from the world of business.

But don’t look for it to go anywhere.

The words don’t make much sense, but the concept is absolutely clear: Workers are no longer volunteering to do work for which they should be getting paid.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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