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Zusammenfassung von Work Won't Love You Back

Name: Work Won't Love You Back
Rating: 3.7 (106 reviews)
Author: Sarah Jaffe

Sarah Jaffe

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

3.7 (106 Bewertungen)

24 Min.

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Arbeitskultur Erfülltes Leben

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Work Won't Love You Back
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What’s in it for me? Learn why “doing what you love” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

These days this message gets repeated ad nauseam in self-help books, career-advice articles, commencement speeches, and inspirational social media posts.

To some of us, the words may seem a bit corny and clichéd – but still, though we may express it with different language, many of us share the aspiration to work at something we love. After all, what could be better than that – to get paid to do meaningful work you actually enjoy doing?

But as labor journalist and workers’ rights advocate Sarah Jaffe points out, there are some deeply problematic assumptions, implications, and realities hiding beneath the surface of this seemingly innocuous idea.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why workers used to have very different notions about their labor;
how our current ideas about work arose from a major defeat of the labor movement; and
why “doing what you love” often ends up meaning accepting a raw deal at work.

Many modern workers have internalized the labor-of-love work ethic, which is a recent development.

If you’ve spent any time in the modern labor market, you know that employers want their employees to be working for far more than a paycheck these days. They want us to be passionate, dedicated, and enthusiastic about our work – going above and beyond for our customers, clients, companies, teams, or causes.

In short, they don’t just want our labor; they expect us to "love" our work, both emotionally and behaviorally.But what does that mean exactly? Well, in an emotional sense, it means you derive pleasure and fulfillment from your work, and place value in it. Behaviorally, it means you show your sense of commitment and devotion by making sacrifices for your job.The key message here is: Many modern workers have internalized the labor-of-love work ethic, which is a recent development.Loving your work is an ideal that's become a work ethic. It's a set of norms by which we understand and relate to our work, which the author calls the labor-of-love ethic.

As a set of norms, it's something we, as employees, are pressured to live up to, but also something many of us believe in. We want to love our work, and think of a "good job" as one that's enjoyable, meaningful, and fulfilling.But this wasn't always the case. In the early-to-mid-twentieth century, a "good job" in the US was one that provided enough free time, resources, and stability, which many were able to have. Unsurprisingly, many of these workers belonged to unions, which allowed them to organize strikes, and exercise their collective bargaining power to win concessions from their employers.

One of these triumphs was the Fordist compromise, named after the Henry Ford Motor Company. In what was effectively a truce between the two sides, the work day was reduced from 12 hours to eight, including the right to work-free weekends, and a wage high enough to support a family by a single-income earner, characterized this deal.

But, like many truces, it was an uneasy one which wouldn't last long.

Neoliberalism destroyed the Fordist compromise, and radically altered the landscape and attitudes of the job market.

Though there were continued tensions between employers and workers, the transactional relationship remained relatively stable up until the 1960s. During the social unrest that characterized this decade, employers grew frustrated with the concessions the workers won, which, they felt, weakened their ability to generate bigger profits.

This capitalist-driven desire is what caused the Fordist compromise to eventually unravel, giving way to what became known as neoliberalism. Beginning in the 1970s, this was the process by which businesses aggressively went after their goal of maximizing their profits, using politicians and policymakers to achieve this end.

In the modern conception of labor, work splits into two gendered spheres, which align with the labor-of-love ethic.

As we arrive at the present day, let’s step back and consider the bigger picture.

Roughly speaking, we can split the modern world of work into two main spheres. On one side, there’s care work. This is any type of labor – waged or unwaged – that involves caring for other human beings, like parents, housekeepers, and non-profit workers.On the other side, there’s creative work. This is any type of labor that centers around creating something: art, knowledge, technology, entertainment, sports, and so on.And as we’ll now learn, the labor-of-love ethic also comes in two distinct versions, which map onto each of these two spheres of work.

The labor-of-love ethic justifies people working harder and longer, for less money and benefits.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume all these ideas about work, sacrifice, fulfillment, gender, and the overall labor-of-love ethic are true for a moment – just to see where their logic leads us.

If care work is inherently fulfilling to women, and creative work inherently fulfilling to men, well, that almost makes it like not working at all, doesn’t it? It’s just women being women, men being men – doing the things that come most naturally to them and bring them the most satisfaction.

The labor-of-love ethic devalues our work, and weaponizes both the concept and emotions of love against us as workers.

So according to the labor-of-love ethic, work itself is now its own reward. And that makes it not really work, in some sense. Now, add in those gender stereotypes we examined earlier and mix them with some other common ideas in our culture.

Are you a woman who teaches children? That’s just being a glorified caretaker. Women love doing that.

The labor-of-love ethic discourages unionizing, and separates us from the people and activities we love the most.

So what happens if you’re really unhappy about things at work? What if you’re thinking about organizing a union, making demands, or going on strike for better pay, hours, or working conditions?

Well, nowadays, as part of the rhetoric surrounding the labor-of-love ethic, many employers encourage their workers to see themselves as part of a “family” or a “team,” making sacrifices for "the mission." It would have you believe that if you love what you do, you don’t need to organize as workers, or strike for better working conditions.

To liberate ourselves from the labor-of-love ethic, we need to reconnect with each other.

Here's the rub: With so much of our lives now being taken up by work, and with so little time or energy left over for anything or anyone else, where do we turn to fill that hole that so many of us sense inside?

Work. After all, where else do we have left to go?

The labor struggle continues.

But let’s not be naive.

Most employers aren’t going to give us shorter hours, higher pay, and better benefits out of the goodness of their hearts. The lessons of the past are clear. If we want to work less and live better outside of our jobs, we need to organize, unionize, make demands, and, if need be, strike.

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Worum geht es in Work Won't Love You Back?

Work Won’t Love You Back (2021) turns the conventional wisdom about a “good job” on its head. Drawing on extensive research, interviews, and reporting, it traces the historical origins and contemporary implications of all the ideas and rhetoric about “doing what you love.” The result is both a disturbing picture of the modern workplace and a rousing battle cry to fight for a better future.

Wer Work Won't Love You Back lesen sollte

High-wage workers feeling overworked
Low-wage workers feeling underpaid
Anyone who has heard the phrase “Do what you love” too many times

Über den Autor

Sarah Jaffe is an independent journalist who specializes in labor and the modern workplace. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Nation, and the New Republic. She is a reporting fellow at the Type Media Center, a non-profit media organization for progressive journalism, and the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.

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