Work Won't Love You Back

by Sarah Jaffe

  47. Sarah Jaffe, “Why Are US Women’s World Cup Champs Paid Like Chumps?” Dame, July 6, 2015, www.damemagazine.com/2015/07/06/why-are-us-womens-world-cup-champs-paid-chumps; Rachel Grozanick, “Women’s Soccer Shouldn’t Be Expected to Redeem FIFA,” bitch media, June 23, 2015, www.bitchmedia.org/post/womens-soccer-shouldnt-be-expected-to-redeem-fifa; Sara Hendricks, “The Entire U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Sued the Soccer Federation for Gender Discrimination,” Refinery29, March 9, 2019, www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/03/226544/us-womens-soccer-lawsuit-world-cup; Travis Waldron, “On Equal Pay Day, U.S. Women’s Soccer Players Finally Strike a Deal,” HuffPost, May 4, 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/us-womens-soccer-players-pay_n_58e4faf4e4b03a26a3682a42.

  48. Associated Press, “Colin Kaepernick, NFL Settle Collusion Lawsuit,” Hollywood Reporter, February 15, 2019, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/colin-kaepernick-nfl-settle-collusion-lawsuit-1187235; Dave Zirin, “Colin Kaepernick’s Message to Chicago Youth: ‘Know Your Rights,’” The Nation, May 10, 2017, www.thenation.com/article/archive/colin-kaepernicks-message-to-chicago-youth-know-your-rights; Kofie Yeboah, “A Timeline of Events Since Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem Protest,” The Undefeated, September 6, 2016, https://theundefeated.com/features/a-timeline-of-events-since-colin-kaepernicks-national-anthem-protest.

  49. Aaron McMann, “Jim Harbaugh: Colin Kaepernick ‘Is Right,’ Like Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson,” Mlive, June 23, 2020, www.mlive.com/wolverines/2020/06/jim-harbaugh-colin-kaepernick-is-right-like-muhammad-ali-jackie-robinson.html; Joanne Rosa, “Spike Lee Calls NFL Commissioner’s Apology Excluding Colin Kaepernick ‘Weak,’” ABC News, June 12, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/spike-lee-calls-nfl-commissioners-apology-excluding-colin/story?id=71203109; Brakkton Booker, “Roger Goodell on Colin Kaepernick’s Possible Return to NFL: ‘I Welcome That,’” NPR, June 16, 2020, www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/16/878810674/roger-goodell-on-colin-kaepernicks-possible-return-to-nfl-i-welcome-that.

  50. Sarah Jaffe, “Don’t Call It a Boycott: NBA Players Are Inspiring a Strike Wave,” The Progressive, August 27, 2020, https://progressive.org/dispatches/dont-call-it-a-boycott-jaffe-200827; Dave Zirin, “The Sports Strikes Against Racism Have Not Been Coopted,” The Nation, August 31, 2020, www.thenation.com/article/society/nba-blm-strike.

  51. Sarah Jaffe, “The Subversive Brilliance of Marshawn Lynch,” The Week, January 28, 2015, https://theweek.com/articles/536184/subversive-brillianceof-marshawn-lynch; Zirin, What’s My Name, loc. 3980–3981, 3983–3985.

  52. Sarah Jaffe, “Why the U.S. Women’s Hockey Players Are Planning to Strike,” Dissent, March 17, 2017, www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/u-s-womens-hockey-players-planning-strike.

  53. OlympicTalk, “Meghan Duggan, Following a Trailblazer’s Path, Plans Post-Pregnancy Return to U.S. Hockey Team,” NBCSports, October 4, 2019, https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2019/10/04/meghan-duggan-pregnancy-comeback-hockey; Seth Berkman, “Contract Fight with U.S.A. Hockey Over, Hard Work Begins for Women’s Team,” New York Times, April 1, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/sports/hockey/usa-hockey-womens-team.html.

  54. Berkman, “Contract Fight Over”; Seth Berkman, “U.S. Women’s Team Strikes a Deal with U.S.A. Hockey,” New York Times, March 28, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/sports/hockey/usa-hockey-uswnt-boycott.html; Barry Svrluga, “The U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Fights the Good Fight—and Wins,” Washington Post, March 29, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/the-us-womens-hockey-team-fights-the-good-fight—and-wins/2017/03/29/28bce0ce-1432-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html; Todd Kortemeier, “Hockey Gold Medalist Meghan Duggan Gives Birth to Son, with Wife Gillian Apps, on Leap Day,” TeamUSA.org, March 6, 2020, www.teamusa.org/News/2020/March/06/Hockey-Gold-Medalist-Meghan-Duggan-Gives-Birth-To-Son-With-Wife-Gillian-Apps-On-Leap-Day.

  55. Emily Kaplan, “Sorting Out the Current Landscape of Professional Women’s Hockey,” ESPN, September 20, 2019, www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/27643375/sorting-current-landscape-professional-women-hockey.

  56. Rick Maese, “Women’s Hockey Stars Announce Boycott of North American Pro League,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/05/02/womens-hockey-stars-announce-boycott-north-american-pro-league; Cindy Boren, “As They Seek a New League, Women’s Hockey Stars Form Players Association,” Washington Post, May 20, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/05/20/they-seek-new-league-womens-hockey-stars-form-players-association.

  57. Greg Wyshynski, “PWHPA Postpones Weeklong Hockey Tour in Japan Due to Coronavirus,” ESPN, February 24, 2020, www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/28771533/pwhpa-postpones-weeklong-hockey-tour-japan-due-coronavirus; John Wawrow, “Pro Women’s Hockey Association Unveils Five-City Regional Plan,” AP, May 13, 2020, www.theoaklandpress.com/sports/pro-womens-hockey-association-unveils-five-city-regional-plan/article_9ac847cc-9552-11ea-8064-630e10c266f2.html.

  58. Greg Levinsky, “US Women’s Hockey Captain Meghan Duggan Subs in for Danvers Gym Teacher Battling Coronavirus,” Boston.com, April 11, 2020, www.boston.com/sports/local-news/2020/04/11/meghan-duggan-subs-in-danvers-gym-teacher-coronavirus.

  CONCLUSION: WHAT IS LOVE?

  1. Silvia Federici, “Wages Against Housework,” Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press, 1975, https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/silvia-federici-wages-against-housework.

  2. Mark Fisher, K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher, ed. Darren Ambrose (London: Repeater Books, 2018), loc. 8971, Kindle.

  3. Adam Kotsko, Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), loc. 1891, Kindle; Paul Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (London: Verso, 2012); Linda Jacobson, “Strike Tracker: Tentative Agreement Reached in St. Paul Public Schools,” Education Dive, March 13, 2020, www.educationdive.com/news/tracker-teachers-on-strike/547339.

  4. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 2012 [1971]), loc. 6023, 7398, Kindle; Fisher, K-punk, loc. 6897, 7015, 10054.

  5. Alyssa Battistoni, “Alive in the Sunshine,” Jacobin, January 12, 2014, https://jacobinmag.com/2014/01/alive-in-the-sunshine; Phillip Frey and Christoph Schneider, “The Shorter Working Week: A Powerful Tool to Drastically Reduce Carbon Emissions,” Autonomy, May 2019, http://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Fridays4FutureV2.pdf; Philipp Frey, “The Ecological Limits of Work: On Carbon Emissions, Carbon Budgets and Working Time,” Autonomy, May 2019, http://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Ecological-Limits-of-Work-final.pdf; Fisher, K-punk, 10054.

  6. Guy Standing, The Precariat (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), loc. 416, 421, 423, 2806–2809, 2811–2813, Kindle.

  7. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 2001 [1937]), loc. 3774–3777, Kindle; Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Penguin, 2005), 690–712.

  8. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), loc. 2, Kindle.

  9. Selma James, Sex, Race, and Class: The Perspective of Winning (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), 149; Andrew Cherlin, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), loc. 3225–3281.

  10. Cristina Nehring, A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Harper, 2009), 3; bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow, 2018), 178; Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, “Just Say No,” Slate, April 22, 2014, https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/04/white-working-class-women-should-stay-single-mothers-argue-the-authors-of-marriage-markets-how-inequality-is-remaking-the-american-family.html. See also Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Laura Kipnis, Against Love: A Polemic (New York: Vintage, 2009), 19.

  11. Alexandra Topping, “One in 10 Do Not
Have a Close Friend and Even More Feel Unloved, Survey Finds,” The Guardian, August 12, 2014, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/12/one-in-ten-people-have-no-close-friends-relate; Tim Balk, “More Than 20% of Millennials Claim to Have No Friends, Poll Finds,” New York Daily News, August 3, 2019, www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-millenials-no-friends-yougov-poll-20190804-ek5odkrxmvbfhex7ytvp2p6rwy-story.html; Sarah Jaffe, “The Cost to Connect,” Rhizome, December 20, 2012, https://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/dec/20/instagame/; Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle, and Jeremy Gilbert, #ACFM Trip 11: Friendship, podcast, June 26, 2020, https://novaramedia.com/2020/06/26/acfm-trip-11-friendship.

  12. Sarah Jaffe, “The Relational Economy,” Dissent, Summer 2020, www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-relational-economy.

  13. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life (Seattle: Seal Press, 2011), 15; Kathi Weeks, “Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work,” Verso Blog, February 13, 2018, www.versobooks.com/blogs/3614-down-with-love-feminist-critique-and-the-new-ideologies-of-work; Nancy Fraser, “Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism,” in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, ed. Tithi Bhattacharya (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 23.

  14. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, loc. 7816–7987; Michael Ballaban, “When Henry Ford’s Benevolent Secret Police Ruled His Workers,” Jalopnik, March 23, 2014, https://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-his-wo-1549625731; Kipnis, Against Love, 37.

  15. Cherlin, Labor’s Love Lost, loc. 3318–3325; Kipnis, Against Love, 21, 154.

  16. James, Sex, Race and Class, 229; Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 36; Merri Lisa Johnson, ed., Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire (Seattle: Seal Press, 2002), 50.

  17. Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert, and Keir Milburn, #ACFM Trip 8: Acid Urbanism, podcast, February 16, 2020, https://novaramedia.com/2020/02/16/acfm-acid-urbanism; Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2018), loc. 9514–9519, Kindle; Federici, Revolution at Point Zero, 4.

  18. Kipnis, Against Love, 36.

  19. William Morris, Signs of Change: The Aims of Art, Marxists Internet Archive, taken from 1896 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition, originally prepared by David Price for Project Gutenberg, www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1888/signs/chapters/chapter5.htm; Kipnis, Against Love, 40.

  20. Tera Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3.

  21. Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (New York: Vintage, 2011), 18; Fisher, K-punk, loc. 9755–9759; Caroline Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 41.

  22. Judy Wacjman, Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), loc. 166–167, Kindle.

  23. Wacjman, Pressed for Time, 170; Kathi Weeks, “‘Hours for What We Will’: Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours,” Feminist Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 115.

  24. Ben Davis, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013), loc. 3008–3026, Kindle; Kipnis, Against Love, 114; Standing, The Precariat, loc. 3072.

  25. Tithi Bhattacharya, “Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory,” in Bhattacharya, Social Reproduction Theory; Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism, loc. 8557–8559.

  26. Federici, Revolution at Point Zero, loc. 112; Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Holt, 2007), 259–260; James, Sex, Race and Class, 101.

  27. Joshua Clover, Riot. Strike. Riot. (New York: Verso, 2019), loc. 1233–1240, Kindle; Amia Srinivasan, “Back on Strike,” London Review of Books, December 3, 2019, www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/december/back-on-strike.

  28. Elijah Walker and Pierre-Antoine Louis, “After a Week of Turmoil, a Community Rallies,” New York Times, June 3, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/george-floyd-protest-minneapolis-community.html; Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” New York Times, June 12, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html; Shane Burley, “Life and Times at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” Roar Magazine, June 16, 2020, https://roarmag.org/essays/life-and-times-at-the-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone; Viewpoint Staff, “‘A Political Form Built out of Struggle’: An Interview on the Seattle Occupied Protest,” Viewpoint Magazine, June 17, 2020, www.viewpointmag.com/2020/06/17/a-political-form-built-out-of-struggle-an-interview-on-the-seattle-occupied-protest.

  29. Fisher, K-punk, loc. 10039–10147, 12912.

  30. Sarah Katherine Lewis, Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me (Seattle: Seal Press, 2008), 256.

  31. Angela Y. Davis, “Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1998), 179.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. Throughout this book, Jaffe discusses how much of what we love about work is not the work itself, but rather the quality of life afforded by it, our coworkers, or rare moments of pleasure. Do you like your job? Did reading this book change your feelings toward work?

  2. Have you experienced burnout? How did you deal with it?

  3. Jaffe writes widely about different kinds of unions, as well as their historical victories and losses. Do you belong to a union? How has it protected you and your coworkers?

  4. Jaffe writes that when work “demand[s] our love along with our time, our brains, and our bodies,” our relationships and lives suffer. Can you relate? When have you had to sacrifice personal well-being or social time in order to be seen as a good worker or to survive?

  5. In the introduction, Jaffe writes about the process of outsourcing jobs from the United States and western Europe into poorer countries, as well as the flows of migrants from colonized nations into the United States seeking work. How did neoliberal capitalism shape these global patterns? Does this argument change how you think about working conditions outside the United States?

  6. Throughout the book, Jaffe calls readers toward collective action and organizing. After reading this, what kinds of actions do you want to take to make your working conditions better for you and fellow workers?

  7. In Chapter 1, Jaffe writes that the family is an economic and political institution and that women do “reproductive labor” within and outside the home. Growing up, who did the maintenance work of cleaning, cooking, and providing care in your family? What have you observed about reproductive labor in your current household?

  8. Jaffe discusses the various ways that anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and misogyny harm the most marginalized workers in every field, from service work to social work, from academia to athletics. What are some of the ways you’ve experienced or witnessed these dynamics in your own workplace? Have you been able to combat them, whether collectively or individually?

  9. Throughout the book, Jaffe challenges the distinctions made between “skilled” and “unskilled” labor, especially as it relates to the qualities we tend to believe are innate for “women’s work” or for “men’s work.” What are some skills you have had to learn, or unlearn, to do your job? Where do you see these binaries enforced in your own life? Whose labor do these binaries view as more or less valuable?

  10. In the conclusion, Jaffe points to the reclamation of public space in the spirit of liberation as essential to contemporary social movements. Have you ever been in spaces where you get to slow down, be present, and connect with other people—where you can begin to glimpse a vision of society outside of, or after, capitalism? How did it make you feel?

  11. What surprised you most in this book?

  12. Consider what Jaffe asks in the conclusion to this book: What would you do with your time if you didn’t have to work?


  Amanda Jaffe

  SARAH JAFFE IS A TYPE MEDIA CENTER FELLOW AND AN INDEPENDENT journalist covering the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets. She is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The American Prospect, and many other publications. She is the cohost, with Michelle Chen, of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, as well as a columnist at The Progressive and New Labor Forum. You can find out more about her at sarahljaffe.com.

  PRAISE FOR WORK WON’T LOVE YOU BACK

  “Work Won’t Love You Back brilliantly chronicles the transformation of work into a labor of love, demonstrating how this seemingly benign narrative is wreaking havoc on our lives, communities, and planet. By pulling apart the myth that work is love, Jaffe shows us that we can reimagine futures built on care, rather than exploitation. A tremendous contribution.”

  —Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal

  “Sarah Jaffe gives us engrossing stories of how ordinary people in familiar jobs navigate the precarious and all-consuming conditions of work and fight back against them. How did we come to this? Through sharp analyses of the recent history and social contours of each occupation, Jaffe helps us understand the contemporary landscape and provides tools to contest how we are put to work. The result is a marvelously lucid, thoroughly readable, and wonderfully engaging book.”

  —Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries

  “Sarah Jaffe’s months in the library have built the kind of analysis that you’d find in an institute of advanced study. Her years as a labor reporter have let her see frontlines where others have failed to look. And a lifetime of elegant writing has produced a prose style that pulls you through a book of rare importance. You’ll find it on the picket-lines of sports, non-profits, art, retail, teaching, domestic work, gaming and the academy. And once you’ve finished it, you’ll find it close to your heart, too.”