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

a book by Sarah Jaffe
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America’s Mothers Still Struggling to Balance Work and Child Care Post Pandemic

Throughout this pandemic, we witnessed a mass exodus of women in particular, from the workforce. A number of women say an increase in home and child care responsibilities forced them to make a decision they never thought they would; to simply quit their jobs. Many others had the decision made for them and were laid […]

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Work Won’t Love You Back at San Mateo County Libraries

We’ve all heard the saying, “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Sarah Jaffe’s book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone is both a radical idea and comfort to all who have felt betrayed when their jobs couldn’t […]

Event • Toronto

Collective Action Works: Inside the Movement to Organize Media and Culture

Labour journalist and author Sarah Jaffe hosts a virtual forum on organizing in the media and cultural sectors. As the digital media union movement has not let up for more than five years now, and as the pandemic begins to recede, it’s time to take stock of what we’ve won, to reflect on new strategies, and to frankly assess the challenges that lie ahead.

Union members in new media and culture unions discuss what they’ve won through collective bargaining, what’s sustaining the push to organize amid the pandemic, and how equity goals are reflected in their campaigns.

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Belabored Live: The Great Resignation

On Thursday, December 16, at 7 p.m. (EST), Belabored co-hosts Michelle Chen and Sarah Jaffe will host a live podcast episode. Join them and their guests, Rutgers University professor and union leader Rebecca Givan and Strikewave’s C.M. Lewis, to discuss what the past year has meant for workers. There will also be a question-and-answer period.

Event • London

Occupy! Ten Years After

What has been the legacy of Occupy, ten years later? How are we to locate the Occupy movement in light of earlier protest waves, such as the student uprisings of 68 and the worker protests that followed, or the anti-globalisation marches of the late 1990s? What new social and political dynamics has Occupy bequeathed us today? In this panel debate we welcome leading writers and thinkers on the Occupy movement to reflect on these questions as a part of our “Aftermaths” series of events.

Event • New Jersey

We Still Can’t Eat Prestige: Panel with Museum Workers

Join unionized museum workers, organizers, activists, and scholars for a discussion about the future of organizing in museums.

Event • London

The Time of Our Lives at the Institute of Art and Ideas Live

I joined IAI Live to talk about time–what it is, how we use it, how capitalism shapes it–alongside Ron Purser (Zen Priest, Business professor, author of McMindfulness) and John Paetsch (poet, philosopher).

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Your Job Is CHEATING On You on the David Feldman Show

Grace Jackson, from “Literary Hangover,” talks with Sarah Jaffe, author of “Work Won’t Love You Back.”

Event • Philadelphia

Work Won’t Love You Back: How Capitalism Exploits Labors of Love at Penn’s Andrea Mitchell Center

In her new book, Work Won’t Love You Back, SARAH JAFFE explores the way we relate to work under the conditions of capitalism. From the unpaid intern to the professional athlete, Jaffe reveals the alienating ideology of “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” By unmaking the lie that work is defined and guided by passion, we can imagine more emancipatory futures where our lives are no longer dominated by waged labor and where we have the ability to explore our interests and loves outside an exploitative economic system. As part of the Andrea Mitchell Center’s CAPITALISM/SOCIALISM/DEMOCRACY series, Jaffe joins M. EDITH SKLAROFF for a discussion of the “labor of love” myth and its role in perpetuating current economic and social relations.

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Will VR Destroy my Future Work-Life Balance?

I was on a panel at Advertising Week Europe courtesy of my friend and longtime collaborator Cortney Harding. Live to work or work to live? As members of the creative class and its extended circles, we’re especially familiar with the rhetoric around following our passions and loving what we do. But what could and should […]