Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone

Whether it’s working for free in exchange for ‘experience’, enduring poor treatment in the name of being ‘part of the family’, or clocking serious overtime for a good cause, more and more of us are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do work we enjoy. Work Won’t Love You Back examines how we all bought into this ‘labour of love’ myth: the idea that certain work is not really work, and should be done for the sake of passion rather than pay. Through the lives and experiences of various workers—from the unpaid intern and the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit employee, the domestic worker and even the professional athlete—this compelling book reveals how we’ve all been tricked into a new tyranny of work. Sarah Jaffe argues that understanding the labour of love trap will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. Once freed, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure and satisfaction.

About the Author :
Sarah Jaffe is a Type Media Center fellow and an independent journalist covering the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets. The author of Necessary Trouble, she has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation and many other outlets. She tweets as @sarahljaffe.

Review :
'[Jaffe] documents the importance of work to identity and emotional lives. Work Won't Love You Back unpicks the growing cult of work as a passion. ... The pandemic has exposed this myth, making the book a timely read.' ‘An extremely timely analysis of how we arrived at … brutal inequalities and of some of the ways in which a deliberately atomised workforce is beginning to organise to challenge them.’ ‘In her deeply reported book, Jaffe tells [the] story through a cast that includes alienated academics, tortured tech workers and subjugated shelf-stackers. … The tension at the heart of Jaffe’s book is that which exists between work and love. Rather than ending with a traditional list of leftist demands, it concludes with a moving reflection on the latter.’ 'A timely reminder. ... What [Jaffe] hopes is that people who have a nagging sense that their "job kind of sucks, they don't love it" will realise they are not alone. But they can do something about it, for instance joining a union or pushing for fewer hours.' '[Jaffe's] argument is nuanced, carefully researched and devastatingly convincing.' ‘Wry, passionate, and at times heartrending. … Jaffe explores the “labor of love” myth … and reminds us that none of this is immovable; change is always possible.’ 'Like your best “tell it like it is”, no-nonsense friend, [Sarah Jaffe] examines the labour of love (or, indeed, the love of labour) and contests the hyper-flexed and overextended phrase, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. … This is a self-help book on steroids.' 'Combining reportage with theoretical inquiry, 'Work Won't Love You Back' is at once a dispatch on the conditions of work in the United States today, an examination of a burgeoning class consciousness within a new working class, and a Marxist-feminist disquisition on the role of emotion in labor.' 'If you've been told the lie that some work should be done for passion and not for pay, then you need this book.' ‘Makes a passionate case for structural change in the labour market.’ 'At a time when leading elements in the UK Labour Party are keen to emphasise the importance of our labour not just to our sense of identity but to our moral bearings, it’s good to be reminded that there may be more to life. This book is a welcome antidote to the rising influence of such ideas...' '"Work Won't Love You Back" brilliantly chronicles the transformation of work into a labour 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.' 'This groundbreaking book will completely change how you think about work. Bringing together sharp analysis and compelling interviews, Sarah Jaffe arms us to revolt against the exploitation that workers endure in the guise of the lover's sacrifice.' 'As the world of work changes drastically before our eyes, this book could not be more timely. Jaffe does a fantastic job of bringing her argument to life through interviews with workers from across the class spectrum. A brilliant and persuasive book from one of the left's most insightful and thought-provoking writers.' 'We’re supposed to love our jobs. Yet work is one of the biggest sources of unhappiness in modern life. Sarah Jaffe's smart, witty new book explodes the myth of enthusiastic workers, revealing that work always demands "love" from the people it most brutally exploits, and reminding us that the workplace has always been a place of struggle. This is a searingly intelligent, militant book from one of the sharpest journalists working today.' 'Jaffe writes with absolute clarity on how work has taken over our lives. She charts--with brilliant precision--how we got here, what it has done to us and why resistance is mandatory. This is an urgent read for anyone concerned with freedom in the twenty-first century.' 'Sarah Jaffe's sharp-eyed analysis is a necessary tonic to the cloying PR of neoliberalism that tries to flog us exploitation as fulfilment and falling living standards as freedom. As we plunge deeper into economic and ecological crisis, Jaffe calls on us to count love's labour's true cost.' 'Work Won't Love You Back is a tremendous achievement. Jaffe's committed, on-the-ground engagement, historical range, and ferocious gathering of revolutionary thought combines to create something genuine and profound. I cannot think of another book that ranges so widely, and yet so attentively, through the variegated landscape of our current condition, and the conflicts and struggles that have composed it. Without hyperbole, this book is a gift to its reader, and to a possible future.' 'Jaffe has produced a convincing case to rethink not just our relationship to working, but also how we value ourselves and others in an increasingly unforgiving capitalist society. Her book is an urgent reminder to demand a future where our individual worth is not tied to our work.' 'Jaffe takes us back to the basics of why we work and what work is for. Her analysis beautifully and yet brutally exposes the degree to which we have internalised capitalism through our attitudes to work.' 'This is a book I hope many people read. With passion, eloquence and a fierce dedication to the people she interviews, Jaffe unpacks today's labours of the hands, the head and the heart in order to dismantle the con slogan of "love what you do".' 'Dismantling the ideological fantasy of the claim that doing something you love means never working a day in your life, "Work Won't Love You Back" is both a much-needed polemic on the harms our jobs can do to us and a vital investigation into what contemporary work is actually like for today's workers.' ‘Sarah Jaffe is a rarity in the US. Not only is she one of the few journalists still reporting on the labour movement, but she sits on an even shorter list of writers intent on covering the everyday stories of working people through a lens of dignity and empowerment. […] Work Won’t Love You Back is ambitious in breadth [while] also reach[ing] for impressive theoretical depth.’