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Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism at Pluto Press

Discussing everything from the history of work under capitalism, to social reproduction and the trade union movement, our panel are:

Amelia Horgan, author of Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism; Sarah Jaffe, a reporting fellow at Type Media Center and the author of Work Won’t Love You Back; and Orlando Lazar, a political theorist and college lecturer at the University of Oxford, whose research focuses on power and domination at work.

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Feminism for the 99 Percent at Upstream Podcast

I was one of the guests on Upstream Podcast’s episode on Feminism for the 99 Percent.

There are many ways women across the world have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. The pandemic has simultaneously increased the demand for unpaid labor from women, including childcare and homeschooling, while decimating industries like retail, leisure, hospitality, education and entertainment which are their main employers. So many of the jobs lost during the pandemic were held by women, that the resulting economic recession has been called a “she­cession” — or even an example of “disaster patriarchy.”

But our current economic system has always had a history of harming women disproportionately — in fact, in many ways, COVID has simply revealed and exacerbated already existing inequalities. But where there is a crisis, there is also opportunity. And in this space, some are asking what a feminst response to COVID could look like?

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You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Brains on Ten Thousand Posts

This week, we’re joined by labor journalist Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) to talk about her book Why Work Won’t Love You Back, which is out with Hurst Publishers. We talk about how the 2008 financial crisis permanently changed the structure of work, normalising instability and precariousness and creating foundational struggle myths to justify paying people below minimum wage. We also talk about how these confrontations have played out online, in forms ranging from self-fashioned girlboss culture, to low-paid gig economy workers beginning to unionise and demand the very basic levels of dignity.

Event • Dallas

It’s Time To Recognize The Value Of ‘Women’s Work’ on Think

The pandemic clarified which jobs are essential – and a takeaway is that many of them are also what is often considered “women’s work.” Type Media Center reporting fellow Sarah Jaffe joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how Covid lockdowns made it clear how much Americans rely on care workers – and how little […]

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Labor Looks Up After Amazon Union Vote on the Laura Flanders Show

I was particularly pleased with this appearance because my first real job in the media was working on what was then GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and one of the reasons I wanted to work for her was that people had recommended her to me as one of the few people actually covering labor in the media back then (2009, my goodness). So it’s always a joy to return to talk with Laura, the boss who was, as I said in my book acknowledgements, the exception that proves the rule that bosses won’t love you back. 

Event • Seattle, WA

Thank You For Your Service (Work) At Red May

Gabriel Winant’s new book, The Next Shift, examines the fall of industry and the rise of healthcare in Rust Belt America. Jason Smith’s new book, Smart Machines and Service Work, tracks the automation-induced transfer of workers into the service sector. Sarah Jaffe’s new book, Work Won’t Love You Back, explores how devotion to our jobs keeps us exhausted, exploited, and alone. If ever books were destined to talk to one another, it is these three, but we’re not magicians, so we’ve brought together the authors instead. And to guide this panoramic look at the fate of work in 21st Century America, we’ve added Priscilla Murolo, Professor of History at Sarah Lawrence and author of From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States Gabriel Winant, Sarah Jaffe, Jason Smith, Priscilla Murolo (mod)

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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 […]

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.