Employment: Salary With Benefits :Effort, None

"The position holds no duties or responsibilities, other than that it should be carried out at Korsvagen."
"Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work."
Job description for "Eternal Employment"

"In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the impending threat/promise is that we will all become productively superfluous."
"We will all be 'employed at Korsvagen', as it were."
Artistic proposal and social experiment

In this concept illustration, the presence of the eternal employee will flood Korsvägen station with light. Visualization: Anna Heymowska

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the fortunate individual who will eventually be chosen, this might represent the ultimate "perfect job". A salary guaranteed for life, just clock in and clock out daily. The list of tasks to be performed is slight, so slight as to be non-existent, but for that clocking in, morning and evening. Hardly exhausting. On the other hand, perhaps not very inspiring, either. If it is regarded as a conventional employment opportunity. If, however, it is considered a living wage enabling the employee to do whatever else truly represents for that person the opportunity to relish the freedom of time and freedom from concerns over living expenses so they can get on with a beloved avocation, perhaps this job as a means to an end is ideal.

They'll have to wait, though until 2026 rolls around to begin this brave new experiment in lifetime employment. This is a conceptual art project fully funded by the Swedish government in Gothenburg. The sole "Eternal Employment" worker must report daily to a train station, Korsvagen, still under construction. For that person's time clocking in and out, a salary of roughly $2,320 monthly with annual wage increases, vacation time and a retirement pension will more than adequately recompense for dedication to this job.

Show up at the train station in the morning and punch the time clock: 'I'm here!'. And then you're free to turn about, and leave. Your time henceforth your own, to do with as you wish, you fortunate individual. Punching that time clock triggers a bank of fluorescent lights over the platform so travellers and commuters understand that the employee has performed their function and all, presumably, is well. Wait! not so quick, there's more; the need to clock out so the lights turn off when the station closes. As for that wide space of time between clocking in and out, go anywhere you like.

To qualify simply apply. No previous anything required. Application open to anyone the job happens to appeal to. Public Art Agency Sweden and the Swedish Transport Administration had opened an international competition available for artists who might have an interest in contributing to the station's physical allure. Whoever won the contest on the quality of their conceptual design would have the 7 million Swedish krona that came with success (the equivalent of about $750,000).

This gave the winning artists, Jakob Senneby and Simon Goldin food for thought. These Swedish artists suggested that the typical murals and sculptures so frequently seen in transit hubs be dispatched with. They would, instead, use the prize money, they explained, to pay a salary for a single worker, in the process giving them the opportunity to be gainfully employed in exchange for performing precisely no duties whatsoever other than showing up twice a day.

Their proposal was that by creating a foundation which would bypass taxation on the prize money, it would be invested in the market and in so doing it would fund on a continual basis an "eternity" salary for a single employee whose presence alone represented the pivot of their project. Lars Hjalmered, a member of Swedish parliament, felt the artwork as described represented sheer "stupidity", and his unkind opinion was evidently echoed by many other Swedes when the contest winner and the description of the art project was publicly announced.

A train at Gothenburg Central Station, currently the main pipeline for transportation in the city. Andrzej Otrębski/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-4.0