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

  • faviconEurope’s far-right parties are anti-worker — analysis shows that the far right voting patterns on proposed EU directives do not indicate a pro-worker stance on socioeconomic issues, let alone a leftwing one. Quite the contrary: on virtually all eight issues we examined, the far–right’s voting behaviour suggests a stance that is indifferent, if not outright hostile, to workers’ rights [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Research, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconWorker Co-ops: A Pathway to Good Jobs for Immigrant Workers – As New York City struggles to accommodate an influx of people prohibited from employment, worker coops present a way to earn a livable income and build wealth [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Co-ops, Worker Ownership   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Labor Notes    

  • faviconThe Pinkertons Have a Long, Dark History of Targeting Workers — In recent times, they have tried to leave behind their thuggish image and pivoted toward more white-collar efforts, like “corporate investigations” and “comprehensive risk management,” though they’re called in sometimes to handle security during strikes [2020]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Teen Vogue    

  • faviconLabor Organizing in the Age of Surveillance — Labor law’s approach to policing workplace surveillance is woefully inadequate, as new surveillance methods yield much more and much better information for employers aiming to nip workers’ concerted activity in the bud (PDF) [2018]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Research, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconMicrosoft security tools questioned for treating employees as threats — The tendency to collect as much worker data as possible has become a broad area of concern – not only for employees and advocacy groups, but for regulators, legal scholars, and privacy professionals [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Source: The Register    

  • faviconSupport for Unions Hits 70-Year High as US Workers See Power of Organized Labor — The upswing in support for organized labor—which paradoxically comes even as U.S. union membership remains near an all-time low—has been attributed to a wave of successful organizing in recent years [2024]
    In: Trade unions    
    Topics: Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Common Dreams    

  • faviconThe Spy Who Fired Me — In industry after industry, this data collection is part of an expensive, high-tech effort to squeeze every last drop of productivity from corporate workforces, an effort that pushes employees to their mental, emotional, and physical limits [2015]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Mental Health, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Source: Harper's Magazine    

  • 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    

  • faviconGet Capitalists’ Grubby Hands Off Our Hobbies — Christian moralists long promoted hobbies as a way to occupy idle hands, bringing the work ethic into our free time. Today hobbies risk turning into side hustles — yet they also point to what work might look like if it wasn’t about making money [2024]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Leisure, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconRevolt of the Robots — We should keep fighting for better jobs and better working conditions. But the battle against workplace technology is an unequal one. The real economic struggle now is for the redistribution of wealth generated by labour and machines, through universal basic income, the revival of the commons and other such policies [2018]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Independent Blogs    

  • faviconA meta-analysis on the crossover of workplace traumatic stress symptoms between partners — Workers’ PTSD/distress from violence, harassment and abuse on the job is as harmful for their intimate partners as the traumatic stressors are for workers encountering them firsthand, shows research [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Mental Health, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconWhy You Hate Your Job: it’s a bullshit job — The creation of UBI would liberate many from degrading working conditions and meaningless work, while allowing them to take on dignified work that truly serves the society. Whether this dignity is derived from external or internal sources, it is a prerequisite to our pursuit of the good life [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, UBI   
    Comments   
    Source: Current Affairs    

  • 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    

  • faviconTech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation — The on-demand economy was marketed as serving the common good, but it was designed to meet the needs of overworked (and disproportionately well-off) professionals, while taking advantage of the labor of precarious, poorly paid workers who had little control over their work & were denied rights [2022]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: Technofeudalism, Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • faviconWhat if work is making us sick? While employment has become less physically dangerous, it seems to have become more psychologically harmful, as high demands and low control at work — known in the academic literature as “job strain” — is bad for mental and physical health [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Mental Health, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Source: Financial Times    

  • faviconIs a Four-Day Workweek the Secret to Saving the Planet? Perpetual economic growth is driving climate change and making us miserable. The degrowth movement offers a way out that we should at least consider [2020]
    In: Predatory capitalism    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Environment   
    Comments   
    Source: The Walrus    

  • 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    

  • faviconDoes less working time improve life satisfaction? Working fewer hours contributes to higher life satisfaction in Europe, and health plays an essential mediating role in this relationship, shows research [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: 4 Day Week, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconWe are still enslaved: we may not die from hunger, but we are certainly overworked and stressed out. Work has overtaken us and invaded our consciousness. And the physical hardships of working in the old mills have been replaced by new psychological hardships [2004]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Workism, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconProductivity culture and technology has been very successful at making us working more, not less. And with millions either quitting their jobs or having to work from home, this is the time we should capitalize on this moment for the good of workers, not the bosses [2021]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Productivism, Technofeudalism   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconModern welfare in the United Kingdom is a universal (dis)credit to Beveridge. Adequate social security is vital to the functioning of society, as well as to the health and well-being of the population and Universal Basic Income can help by offering stable, individual, non-means tested, and unconditional money transfers, to all citizens [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Research, UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconUK Government axes ‘gimmick’ anti-strike law as it plans major reset for workers’ rights. Insiders said the new law had not been used to resolve any dispute so far, stating that an “adversarial approach” over several years had seen the UK lose more days to strike action than France [2024]
    In: Democracy & Power    
    Topics: Worker Rights   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconHappiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression — Positive psychology, which claims to be able to engineer happiness, is a quack science; it condemns all social critics, iconoclasts, dissidents and individualists for failing to seek fulfillment in the collective chant of the corporate herd. In the land of happy thoughts, we are to blame if things go wrong [2009]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Mental Health   
    Comments   
    Source: Truthdig