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Work Won't Love You Back
Book

Work Won't Love You Back

How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

Sarah Jaffe
Bold Type, 2021

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Visionary
  • Eloquent
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Journalist Sarah Jaffe argues that the modern ideal of loving your job is a neoliberal myth that re-brands the gig economy, and other tenuous or ill-paid labor, as the means to a more authentic life. The new paradigm, in which employers insist that workers should love their jobs – even as those jobs become less stable, prestigious and remunerative – perpetuates exploitation across the labor market. Jaffe uses theory, historical research and case studies to unmask that exploitation, calling for solidarity across the new working class.

Take-Aways

  • The “labor of love” myth is neoliberalism’s mask for exploitation.
  • Capitalism devalues “love” as women’s work.
  • Neoliberalism pits care workers against the people they care for.

About the Author

Type Media Center fellow Sarah Jaffe also wrote Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and cohosts Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast. 

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