Jobs report coverage lacked context, worker perspective nationofchange.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationofchange.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Specifically, she, like me, is freelance by choice: not a laid-off journalist or a parent juggling writing with domestic duty, but a childless millennial opting in, for a mix of reasons, to the gig economy. Her assignments are not the novel’s background, nor does her choice to write lead to grand arguments about
writing. Instead, Bedford puts her narrator’s mundane freelance problems When will she get paid? Is her editor exploiting her? Should she accept a dicey assignment? at the novel’s core.
Bedford is refreshingly committed to portraying writing not as a calling or craft but as work. She shows freelance writing as a form of what the journalist Sarah Jaffe, in her recent book
Why Are We Expected to Love Our Jobs? yesmagazine.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yesmagazine.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up conversations about labor conditions across the American economic spectrum, from hourly employees opting out of low-paying, physically punishing restaurant jobs to salaried staff members realizing that they’re not working from home they’re living at work. What an opportune time, then, for labor reporter Sarah Jaffe’s
Work Won’t Love You Back, which was released by Bold Type back in January. Jaffe’s mission is to break down the late-capitalist ethos of “doing what you love,” a concept that she argues sets people up for overwork and exploitation rather than true pleasure in one’s daily activities. This critique applies to the insidious 18/6 schedule of “hustle culture,” as well as giant corporations pressuring employees to accept indignity after indignity under the guise of “family.” But Jaffe’s analysis goes further, dividing 10 types of work, from housekeeping to professional sports, into two broad categories. First are
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Twenty years into the 21st century, most people in the west want to have a job that they love. And, vice versa, we expect that this love – our inspiration, devotion and care – will provide us with deep fulfillment, even satisfaction with who we are as individuals and how we lead our lives.
Yet very often the opposite happens: the “love what you do” principle supports the exploitation and devaluation of labour, as well as cutting back on social protection and welfare guarantees. You can love your work, but as US labour journalist Sarah Jaffe reminds us in her new book, it won’t love you back.