WORK WON'T LOVE YOU BACK

Under late capitalism work has become casualised and real wages have declined. Yet we are still told work provides us with self-esteem and purpose. But, writes journalist  Sarah Jaffe, the labour-of-love mythology only obscures the brutal inequalities of the modern workplace.

EVEN AS JOBS DISAPPEAR and the working conditions in the jobs that do remain continue to deteriorate, the big lie is that  our jobs are  still supposed to provide us with self-esteem, fulfilment and purpose. So writes Sarah Jaffe in her new book  Work Won't Love You Back :  How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. Even unemployed folk who get sent to flip burgers  at McDonald's for minimum wage are reminded by the politicians that its good for their 'self esteem' and a chance to get on to the 'corporate ladder'. It's not enough to just do the job and the go home, we're expected to be a 'team player' and there are plenty of 'team leaders' around to remind  us of our 'team obligations'.

The idea that jobs are about something more than simply surviving is a pervasive one. Even trade union officials blow smoke about the 'dignity of labour' even in an age when  capitalism treats workers with, at best, a grudging respect. And that's a generous assessment. In the end everyone is disposable and that has been underlined by the millions of jobs that have vanished as the corona pandemic has spread its tentacles around the world economy and squeezed it to an inch of its profit-driven life. It has been much the same in New Zealand and many jobs that do still exist today only exist because they have been propped up by government money. The work we are told we should love would almost certainly not be there if it wasn't for an array of  wage subsidies. You might be expected to love your job but the job isn't going to love you back. Its just as likely to pack its bags and leave.

While it might be difficult for a free market lovin' parliamentary politician on a six figure salary (plus expenses) to get a grip on the brutal  economic reality of late capitalism, the fact is that folk find themselves  having to work longer and longer hours just to survive. And even this is often not enough. The 'working poor' are people like the Wellington worker who told one of the six clock news bulletins this week that after paying the extortionate rent and struggling with the bills, she was left with $20 to live on till the next pay day. The concept that we should work a 40 hour week in return for a wage that allows us to live a decent kind of life has all but disappeared with, it seems, barely a whimper of protest from those who claim to represent us. In fact, most of the time they have been walking hand in hand with capital.

But the idea that we work because we want to and not because we have to is a persuasive one that is largely unquestioned, even now. And while the idea that bullshit minimum wage jobs should be in any way 'fulfilling' seems - and is - absurd, Sarah Jaffe refers  to Antonio Gramsci's observation that 'common sense is itself a product of history', born of the materials conditions of the time.

Observes Jaffe: ' So many features of what people used to consider 'employment security' are gone, melted into air. Instead, as a thousand articles and as many books have told us over and over, we're all exhausted, burned out, overworked, underpaid and have no work-life balance (or just no life)...At the same time, we've been told that work itself is supposed to bring us fulfilment, pleasure, meaning, even joy. We're supposed to work for the love of it, and how dare we ask questions about the way our work is making other people rich while we struggle to pay the rent and barely see our friends.'

In the end, she writes, the 'labour of love' is a con because capitalism cannot love. Sarah Jaffe says the delusions foisted on us by the 'labour-of-love' mythology can only be fought by a social solidarity and class struggle. Because, in the end, 'exploitation is not merely extra-bad work, or a job you particularly dislike...exploitation is wage labour under capitalism.'

Presently locked down in her New York apartment, Jaffe recently told the Guardian : 'We're at a horrible, horrible moment. But perhaps we can also start to see how to fight for a good future.'

Work Won't Love You Back is published by Bold Type Books, New York.