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

  • faviconWhy Work? The meaning and significance of work have already changed fundamentally. The possibilities of increasing and using leisure time have meanwhile increased exponentially. To ignore these facts is to remain trapped in the gravitational field of classical social theory—from Hegel to Freud via Marx—and to make work a fetish [2017]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: The Baffler    

  • faviconElectronically monitoring your employees? It’s impacting their mental health — Results show 45% of those monitored report their workplaces have a negative impact on their mental health compared with 29% who are not monitored [2023]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconYour boss is watching — Monitoring technology is increasing the power imbalance between companies and workers. Protections lag far behind [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: MIT Technology Review    

  • faviconYou aren’t lazy. You just need to slow down — The idea of laziness has been effectively and expertly wielded to make people feel unproductive and unworthy. It’s a lie, and a trap that makes us believe there’s always more we could be doing — at work, in our relationships, at home — and that worth is productivity [2021]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Productivism   
    Comments   
    Source: NPR    

  • faviconThe four-day, thirty-two-hour week: analysing organisational success and failure — Based on data from 200+ global companies trialling four-day, 32-hour weeks with full pay, 90% maintained the schedule. Firms that failed to reduce stress or had more white males were likelier to revert, aligning with legitimacy theory [2025]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconFreedom Under Capitalism Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be — Libertarians argue that capitalism is superior to socialism because in capitalism anyone is free to do anything, including start a worker cooperative. In truth, capitalism constrains our options [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Ownership, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconDemocratic Workplaces Make Economies Stronger — Employee-owners who have homes, families, and friends to consider are unlikely to vote to move their businesses out of their communities in response to tariffs or other economic shocks. Nor are they going to run around the globe looking for the cheapest labor force [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Ownership, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: CA   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconIceland approved the 4-day workweek in 2019: nearly 6 years later, all the predictions made have come true — Iceland’s success proves that their predictions were far from utopian, and that a profound change in our relationship with work is not only possible, but desirable [2025]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Country: IS   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconYour Worth Is Not Your Productivity — From the draconian Poor Laws of the nineteenth century to today’s workfare conditions, governments have consistently used benefits as a tool to discipline those deemed to be ‘idle’ [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Productivism, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Tribune    

  • faviconNew research on work time reduction via a four-day week finds improvements in workers’ well-being [2025]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconHalf of UK professionals might quit if ordered back to the office full time, poll shows — Hybrid working, with time spend split between the office and another location such as home, is the working pattern for more than three-quarters (77%) of the workforce [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Remote Working, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconWe Shouldn’t Have to Work This Hard — We can reclaim our time for pursuits that give life meaning: creativity, connection, contemplation, and labors of love. To do it, we’ll need to confront the economic elites who preside over the rat race [2025]
    In: Working hours    
    Topics: Worker Rights, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconPM Anthony Albanese flags support for working from home as figures reveal five days in office costs workers $5000 per year — saying he will champion the Australian worker’s right to WFH policies which he said help ease traffic congestion, benefit women and boost rural and regional areas [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Remote Working   
    Comments   
    Country: AU   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconIceland Embraced a 4-Day Workweek in 2019 – Now, Nearly Six Years On, All Gen Z Forecasts Have Materialized — With more time for leisure, family, and friends, the stress associated with rigid work schedules has decreased, and overall happiness has increased [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Country: IS   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconThe Tyranny of Work or Why Are we Still Measured by Our Productivity? — The fixation on economic inactivity assumes that the wage relation is the only meaningful form of labour, that those who are not officially employed are doing nothing of value. But as Fortunati shows, capitalism has always relied on unpaid labour [2025]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Productivism, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: anti capitalist musings    

  • faviconExtraordinary Labor Market Developments and the 2022-23 Disinflation — How remote work contributed to the unexpected economic recovery of the U.S. post-COVID, keeping unemployment low and managing inflation [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Remote Working, Research   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: National Bureau of Economic Research (US)    

  • faviconThe most valuable work we give a value of zero — Economists and other writers like Marilyn Waring have written about how care is the most valuable work in any economy but is given a value of zero. The work of basic income is care as well [2025]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: How to be Human, UBI   
    Comments   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconBillionaire backlash shows the power of basic income — Simply put, poverty and wealth are both about power – historical and contemporary – and how this plays out in people’s everyday lives. The idea behind basic income is to rebalance that power, redistributing it from those who have plenty to ensure that all have enough [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Al Jazeera    

  • faviconHow Musk, Trump, and Your Boss Learned to Hate Democracy — when you consider that businesses are run by dictators—that a firm is not a democracy—it makes sense why a series of rich guys at the top of the capitalist world think government can be run without following any laws [2025]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Mother Jones    

  • faviconOnce You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It’s Hard to Go Back — The results confirmed what the participants had hoped. The shorter workweek improved employees’ physical health and mental well-being. Employers saw benefits, too [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Country: DE   
    Source: Bloomberg    

  • faviconThe Rise of the Worker Productivity Score — Across industries and incomes, more employees are being tracked, recorded and ranked. As these practices have spread, so has resistance to what labor advocates call one of the most significant expansions of employer power in generations [2022]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Source: NYT    

  • faviconPro-Woman, Anti-Worker — broadly speaking, the feminist movement hasn’t always operated in an inclusive way; even with the stakes so very high, some nominally feminist organizations have failed to extend a baseline measure of respect to the workers that make their mission possible [2020]
    In: Trade unions    
    Topics: Feminism, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: The Baffler    

  • faviconThomas Piketty’s Radical Plan to Redistribute Wealth — To address inequality & improve democracy, he suggests taking a large measure of control over corporations away from their managers and shareholders and give it to employees, and create a system of egalitarian funding for political campaigns, the media and think tanks [2022]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Ownership, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Source: NYT    

  • faviconWe Are All Charlie Chaplin on the Assembly Line — The most lasting legacy of Taylorism is that it divested workers of their individual control over the production process and the perpetual feeling of being a minor human cog in a vast unknowable machine [2019]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Productivism   
    Comments   
    Source: ZNetwork    

  • faviconAnalysis Shows ‘Quiet Fleecing’ of US Workers—Not ‘Quiet Quitting’—Is the Real Problem. “Workers are more productive than ever, but their pay hasn’t kept pace while top 1% wages have skyrocketed,” says the Economic Policy Institute [2018]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Research, Wage Slavery   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Common Dreams