Work Won't Love You Back

November 9, 2020
The notion that people should love what they do leaves workers dissatisfied and vulnerable to exploitation, according to this alarming study of modern-day employment trends. Devoting each chapter to a different job, journalist Jaffe (Necessary Trouble) provides historical context and speaks to professionals about their pay, job security, and work-life balance. She examines neoliberal economic policies that led to manufacturing layoffs in the 1970s, tracks a Long Island woman’s shift from customer service to labor activism after she lost her job of 29 years at Toys R Us, and discusses how “the internship... naturalizes lousy—and gendered—working conditions.” Through the lens of a Caribbean nanny’s experiences working in New York City, Jaffe explores the racial history of domestic work, contending that practices begun during the Reconstruction era inform people’s lives and job prospects today. Jaffe is an expert researcher and a witty narrator, but some of her history lessons seem needlessly in-depth (a chapter on adjunct professors chronicles the evolution of the university from 11th-century Italy to today), and she offers few practical solutions. Still, this is a noteworthy and persuasive call for returning to a more pragmatic view of work. Agent: Lydia Wills, Lydia Wills LLC

Starred review from February 1, 2021

In this latest work, journalist Jaffe (Necessary Trouble) offers a searing indictment of the way employers leverage the language of love to undermine workers' ability to organize for better working conditions. Focusing on the carework and creative sectors broadly construed, Jaffe explores how, over the last half century, workers have fought for more authenticity in the workplace only to be faced with "demands to love their jobs," often at the expense of nonwork life. Each of the book's ten thematic chapters focuses on a specific type of care or creative work--such as childcare, customer service, teaching, professional sports, video game development--through the lives of individual workers, often those who have politicized their experiences and organized for change. The first five chapters focus on domestic labor and carework: the unpaid and underpaid jobs that "make all other work possible." The second half of the book considers how getting paid to "do what you love" in creative and knowledge sectors is often a recipe for exploitation. VERDICT As many of us rethink the power dynamics that shape our jobs and workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jaffe's passionate call to reimagine our relationships with work and one another, and imagine new possibilities, is indispensable reading.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc., Boston

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2020
A welcome cri de coeur against the soulless machinery of late capitalism. While Jaffe admits that her freelance employment often involves financial scrambling--"I don't have an employer that pays for my health insurance, and forget about retirement benefits. Vacation? What's that?"--she enjoys more freedom than many Americans, even if she begins her argument with an extended refutation of the notion that if you do what you love, "you'll never work a day in your life," a hollow mantra that substitutes for the reality that most of us work longer and harder than ever before for less money. The author attacks the fetishization of work brought to the world courtesy of neoliberalism, "a set of choices made by the winning side in a series of struggles"--not to mention the economic doctrine born of the fascist coup that overthrew the socialist government of Chile's duly elected president, Salvador Allende, in 1973. As Jaffe astutely points out, the subsequent Thatcherism and Reaganism were just Pinochet with a somewhat friendlier face. Neoliberalism also assumes, as did earlier brands of capitalism, that women's work is less valuable than men's, a notion that still prevails. It also gives primacy to the unpaid internship as a means of securing free labor. "The internship advanced alongside other forms of contingent work," writes the author, "and alongside the idea that trading in security for enjoyable work was a deal worth making." Even highly desirable jobs such as a tenured professorship have become precarious. In a nice turn of phrase, Jaffe writes that even as the vaunted "knowledge economy" came into being, "the labor of knowledge workers was being devalued and deskilled." The book is long on description and short on solution, but Jaffe does suggest, soundly, that as the current economy cracks along its fissures, it affords room to imagine something better. Working people of all stripes have much to learn from this book.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2021
Jaffe is an independent journalist who examines the myth of the "labor of love."" Through extensive research and interviews, she supports her narrative with real-life stories of those who are told to be grateful for work and reminded that hundreds are in line for the opportunity to do so. Jaffe presents her ideas in two parts: ""What We Might Call Love"" and ""Enjoy What You Do!"" In part one, she focuses on domestic work, teaching, retail, and not-for-profit sectors. In part two, she talks about self-employment, internships, academia, technology, and sports sectors. In delving into academia, Jaffe notes that adjunct professors don't get paid for hours preparing lessons and grading, whereas employees do. While adjunct professors may be doing what they love, they are exploited by a system that won't recognize their value. This, she notes, is true of any profession, notably ones where people are unpaid, like interns. Jaffe peels back layers of laboring for love so that the reader can see the trap and be empowered to demand their worth. This book will appeal to general audiences looking for career guidance.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.