Rethink Work

Changing how we think about work

Introduction

Changing how we think about work and how much work is needed for a good life

  • faviconBig Tech Built a Gig Economy That Works Against Us — Nearly one in four people in the U.S. now participate in some form of gig or freelance work. What was supposed to be a side hustle has become a main source of income for one third of gig workers [2026]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Gig Economy, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: CounterPunch    

  • faviconBurned out and going nowhere: the American worker is too mentally drained to even look for a new job — The exhaustion tax is the psychic cost of a labor market that demands constant hustle while delivering, for many, almost nothing in return [2026]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Mental Health   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Fortune    

  • faviconHow Do We Pay for Universal Basic Income? Tax Stock the Way Companies Already Issue It — A 1.5% annual stock dilution tax on corporations with revenue over $100M would raise over $1.4 trillion a year, enough to send every American about $365 a month, automatically [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconWill I ever retire? It doesn’t look like it — The thought of not working every waking second, of not feeling pressure to produce for the good of the capitalist machine, is undeniably appealing [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconOscar Wilde: A great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour; there is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading [1891]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconGuaranteed income helps people leaving jail and prison, and that helps everyone — Guaranteed income is an efficient way to help people succeed in reentry, reducing recidivism and quickly paying for itself [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • favicon4-day workweek advocates gain momentum as new study reveals 5th day is basically useless — Data aside, what workers want is enough time to be human beings outside of their jobs [2026]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconAI job layoffs are here: it’s time to revive the push for shorter working hours — While bosses used to push for workers to continue working at home outside standard hours, the introduction of the legal right to disconnect, combined with changes in social norms, has pushed back against this form of work intensification [2026]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Remote Working   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconIreland’s basic income for artists changed my life. Other people deserve the same luck — The state’s own research found that for every euro the government spent on supporting artists, society received €1.39 in return, and the scheme was estimated to have generated more than €100m in social and economic benefits [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: IE   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconThe Company is Watching You Everywhere — As technological methods of surveillance become more powerful and less expensive, and as the social climate becomes more receptive, increased emphasis is being placed on monitoring workers, even when they are away from work, and the distinction between on- and off-duty behavior is narrowed [1987]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: NYT    

  • faviconIreland announces new scheme providing basic income for artists — The research revealed that participants in the pilot project showed greater professional autonomy and capacity for creative work, as well as less anxiety and  higher life satisfaction [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: IE   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconMore than 200,000 UK workers switch to 4-day week since 2019 — the percentage of people in the UK who report working a four-day week has climbed from 9.8% in the final three months of 2019 to 10.9%, representing 2.7 million across full- and part-time work [2015]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconAndré Gorz Was the Theorist Who Predicted the Revolt Against Meaningless Work — We have to get rid of the productivist ideology of work, as it’s not a natural thing with inherent value [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Productivism, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconSan Juan County decides to keep 32-hour work week, citing major gains — The shift saved the county nearly $2 million in projected cost-of-living expenses that wouldn’t otherwise be available with the traditional 40-hour model [2026]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • favicon‘I awoke at ½ past 7’ — Our cursed age of self-monitoring and optimisation didn’t start with big tech: as so often, the Victorians are to blame. But tech companies have monetised this deep-rooted urge to better ourselves, providing new ways to document and compare our daily lives, which can create a perpetual sense of failure [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Aeon    

  • faviconPre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today’s — One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century [1991]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: Leisure, Research, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconGen X may be the first to need a universal basic income after late-career job loss — A larger proportion of Gen X are susceptible to hard falls than their predecessors. This demands a structural solution and a universal basic income might be the answer [2025]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconGlobal, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury [2021]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: Research, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconWe’re Being Worked to Death by Capital — Long working hours kill more than 700,000 people per year, even as millions are unable to find enough work to survive. The irrationality of capitalism has a human price [2021]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: Workism, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconSocialism Won’t Get Rid of Work. But It Will Allow Us to Work Less Under Better Conditions — The only realistic and fair way to manage production under socialism is to democratically distribute and share in the burdens of labor [2022]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconTech workers’ fight for living wages and a 32-hour workweek is a battle for all — The history of the labor movement shows that employers will never relent in even minor skirmishes, because they understand that working-class victories of any magnitude raise the morale of workers to win even more [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconCultivating a Leisurely Life in a Culture of Crowded Time: Rethinking the Work/Leisure Dichotomy — many people wish to replace this paradigm with something more liberating and meaningful, a lifestyle that is not dependent on the traditional temporal schemata of obligation [2007]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Leisure, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconAgile Workplace — The virtue most venerated in the Agile environment is autonomy – which, in practice, amounts to a cult of individual performance. Ceaseless self-education, self-training and self-improvement is required. Boundaries between work and non-work disintegrate [2021]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: New Left Review    

  • faviconAmazon’s office mandate: The hidden power play behind workplace control — The power dynamics between employers and employees are not just about market transactions; they are steeped in a history of control and subordination enforced by government bodies and public policies. Amazon’s decision is a prominent example of the ongoing dominance of employer authority cloaked in efficiency and productivity rhetoric [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Source: Social Europe    

  • faviconWe Need a United Class, Not a United Left — Workers can get rid of their bosses and run all workplaces in the interests of the population as a whole. We need to build syndicalist trade unions: self-managed, open, class unions [2023]
    In: Trade unions    
    Topics: Co-ops, Worker Ownership   
    Comments   
    Country: SE   
    Source: ZNetwork