Rethink Work

Changing how we think about work

US

There are currently 43 articles in this category    RSS

  • faviconTech execs pushed for a return to the office – now they’re backtracking amid a workforce revolt, with only 3% of firms asking staff to return full-time. Despite reports suggesting that a full return to office is inevitable, frequent backlash from staff and statistics show that hybrid working practices appear to be here to stay [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Remote Working   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: ITPro    

  • faviconThe Invisible Work of America’s Domestic Workers — For decades, feminist activists have said that work in the home—often performed for no pay by wives, mothers, and daughters—has been misunderstood as separate from “real” labor. This feminized care has been relegated and detached from a labor movement focused on men [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: How to be Human, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Mother Jones    

  • faviconAmerica’s New Corporate Tyranny: Private power is power, no less than government power. You can be immobilized, impoverished, humiliated, tormented, and perhaps driven to suicide by hostile businesses and banks in an otherwise functioning liberal democracy, just as surely as by a dictatorship [2021]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Tablet Magazine    

  • faviconIn Praise of the Worker-Owned Company — In publishing, as with far too many industries, democracy is all but absent in the workplace. The people who do the day-to-day work don’t get a vote on whether their company should be sold, or to whom. We tend to think of this as the natural order but it doesn’t need to be this way [2022]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Ownership, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Literary Hub    

  • faviconThe shift to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic gave Americans 60 million hours of their time back. And recent research indicates that those workers who no longer spend hours commuting to and from the office are using that reclaimed time to focus on their well-being [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Remote Working   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: CNBC    

  • faviconThe (ongoing) fight against workplace AI surveillance — A shift to virtual work during the pandemic and recent advancements in AI technology have led to worries about increased surveillance, with very few guidelines on how companies deploy the technology. The technology also isn’t foolproof, which can be problematic [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Remote Working, Technofeudalism, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: The Week    

  • faviconLos Angeles gave families $1,000 a month in the biggest basic income pilot in the country, reporting positive results for the recipients. Participants reported fewer housing burdens, better food security, safer home situations, and were more likely to secure full-time work than remain unemployed [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Business Insider    

  • faviconWealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Research   
    Comments   
    Country: DE,  UK,  US   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconThe 32-Hour Work Week is Not a Radical Idea – While CEOs are making nearly 350 times as much as their average employees, workers throughout the country are seeing their family life fall apart as they are forced to spend more and more time at work [2024]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: How to be Human, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: CounterPunch    

  • faviconCorporate dictatorships rule the lives of perhaps 80 percent of working Americans. These corporations, with little or no oversight, surveil and monitor their workforces. They fire workers for expressing leftist political opinions on social media or at public events during their off-hours. They terminate those who file complaints or publicly voice criticism about working conditions [2019]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Rights, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Common Dreams    

  • faviconEvery company should be owned by its employees – There are serious benefits to the company for operating this way. ESOPs are a viable alternative to unions—there is no rift between the owners and the workers, workers are the owners! They are also exempt from paying income tax—though they tend to spend those dollars on their employees instead [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: ESOP, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconAlmost half of Dell’s full-time US workforce has rejected the company’s return-to-office push. Close to 50% of Dell’s full-time workers in the US have opted to stay remote, even when that meant giving up the chance of promotion, a punitive policy Dell implemented to get employees back in the office [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Remote Working   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Business Insider    

  • faviconThe Class Struggle in Silicon Valley — A generation ago, tech workers viewed themselves as billionaires-in-waiting, working extremely long hours at the expense of sleep and social life in the hope of making “a dent in the universe.” But deteriorating working conditions have led to a shift in perspective, sparking an unprecedented wave of worker activism [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: ZNetwork    

  • faviconRemembrance of Work Time Standards Lost – Mainstream economists have completely blown the issue of working time; we should call the bluff of the textbook-thumping experts who seem to think that a toxic cocktail of overwork and underemployment is “good for the economy” [2001]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Straight Goods    

  • faviconThe Protestant work ethic is the notion that your worth is a function of your hard work: what you produce. This is the mental illness of our time. The idea of hard work put forth in American society is a burden that crushes the broken and disenfranchised and suffocates the souls of those who grit their teeth and bear it [2018]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Mental Health, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Life After Dogma    

  • faviconDollar Stores Show Capitalism at its Worst – A firsthand account of the unsafe working conditions, low pay, and corporate surveillance at one of the most profitable retail chains in the US [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Current Affairs    

  • faviconUnited Auto Workers president Shawn Fain spoke before Congress in support of Bernie Sanders’s new 32-hour workweek bill: ‘We find associated deaths of despair, from addiction and suicide, of people who don’t feel a life of endless, hopeless work is a life worth living’ [2024]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Deaths of Despair   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconAs America’s attitudes toward religion have continued to shift, it was perhaps inevitable that Americans would now worship at the altar of work instead. There’s a word for seeking such validation, identity and community in your career: workism [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: The Week