work

• 
• SOURCE: NextCity
  4/20/2023
  

  The 4-Day Work Week is an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

  While workers have long expressed a preference for a shorter work week, the labor market issues of the COVID pandemic have recalibrated the balance of power between workers and management in ways that have made the idea more appealing to policymakers. 

• 
• SOURCE: Harper's
  4/15/2023
  

  Beyond Quiet Quitting: The Real Crisis of Work

  by Erik Baker

  Impressionistic accounts of worker withdrawal and labor militancy both fail to capture a deeper issue: Work is failing to deliver on the promises the state has made as an avenue of meaning and fulfillment. 

• 
• SOURCE: Peste
  2/21/2023
  

  Can a "Return to Normal" Happen Without Repairing Sociability?

  by Nate Holdren

  The push to return to many pre-pandemic modes of working and living is taking place without sufficient provision for mitigating risk, and with seriously damaged bonds of trust and mutual support; people are again in proximity to each other, but far from being together. 

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Currents
  1/3/2022
  

  Edifice Complex: "Burnout" Used to Refer to the Problems of the Urban Poor

  by Bench Ansfield

  The psychologization of stress and fatigue under the term "burnout" has blunted consideration of how and why modern society makes people stressed and fatigued. The term's history shows the critical turns not taken. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  11/10/2022
  

  Lunchtime in Italy: Work, Time and Civil Society

  by Jonathan Levy

  The Italian lunchtime insists that time be organized around communal rituals and sustenance, not work. Does the utter foreignness of this attitude in America help explain the current national derangement? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/6/2022
  

  The Automation Myth (Review Essay)

  by Clinton Williamson

  Neither utopian nor cataclysmic predictions about the effects of automation made in the 20th century have come exactly to pass; technology has changed, but not replaced, work. Several new books try to connect the past and future of work.

• 
• SOURCE: Wired
  2/8/2022
  

  Women in Tech have been Pulling the Second Shift for Decades

  “The greatest trick that capitalism ever pulled was convincing the world that what women do in the home isn’t work,” says Joy Rankin, a historian of computing.

• 
• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  12/13/2021
  

  Exchange: The Violence of Work

  by Emily E. LB. Twarog

  A group of labor historians consider whether violence – manifested in workplace injury and death – is an inevitable part of capitalist labor relations. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/6/2021
  

  When the United States Almost Adopted a 30 Hour Work Week

  Historian Benjamin Hunnicutt describes the political negotiations that took place during the Depression to shorten the work week to put more Americans to work. Could similar changes work today? 

• 
• SOURCE: Places Journal
  5/10/2021
  

  The Filing Cabinet: A Material History

  by Craig Robertson

  The humble filing cabinet in fact tells the story of the rise of bureaucratic structures in capitalism and government, and the potential for information to be used efficiently – or weaponized. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/5/2021
  

  Why Trump Still Has Millions of Americans in His Grip

  Columnist Thomas Edsall surveys recent research about the past and future economic impact of automation and artificial intelligence and concludes that Democratic elites have a short time left to get ahead of cataclysmic changes in employment or else the Trump phenomenon will only be a preview of political rage. 

• 
• 5/2/2021
  

  Remember The Essential Workers After COVID: They Deserve Better

  by Joshua B. Freeman

  All of us literally owe our lives to our essential workers.  Let’s not forget it.  Giving them a fair shake is not only a moral obligation, it will make a better city for all of us.

• 
• SOURCE: Lapham's Quarterly
  4/28/2021
  

  Weary of Work

  by Emily K. Abel

  Historian Emily Abel's book on fatigue deals in part with how Progressive era reformers approached the problem of the tired industrial worker. Ultimately, they favored solutions that emphasized efficiency and management, undercutting the ability of the labor movement to demand shorter work hours. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/18/2021
  

  ‘There’s No Natural Dignity in Work’

  by Ezra Klein

  Is it time to revisit the basic premise of American welfare policies that encouraging or requiring paid labor is the best way to deal with poverty? 

• 
• SOURCE: Bartlett Annual Review
  1/28/2021
  

  How Will the Pandemic Shape the Future of Work?

  by Judy Stephenson

  The pandemic is exposing the historical contingency of "jobs" as opposed to "tasks" – as capital returns to a piecework model in the gig economy, the concept of job security is in danger of vanishing. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/2/2020
  

  What Liberals Get Wrong About Work

  by Michael J. Sandel

  Michael Young, who coined the term meritocracy in the late 1950s—and who used it as a pejorative—observed four decades later: “It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that.”

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  6/29/2020
  

  The Long, Unhappy History of Working From Home

  As the coronavirus keeps spreading, employers are convinced remote work has a bright future. Decades of setbacks suggest otherwise.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/10/2020
  

  Could the Pandemic Wind Up Fixing What’s Broken About Work in America?

  “Pandemics as a social shock do give workers more leverage to demand things,” said Patrick Wyman, a historian and host of the Tides of History podcast. 

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Exponent
  3/9/2020
  

  Women’s History Month Spotlight: Maimie Pinzer

  According to historian Melissa R. Klapper, Pinzer’s story has been of great interest to scholars of gender and working-class women because her letters are among the only firsthand accounts of prostitution during the early 20th century. “She was also quite self-aware about the role that gender norms and limitations on women, especially economic, had played in her life.”

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  1/9/18
  

  The Future of Work, a History

  by Kevin Baker

  America has a long, complicated track record of dreading that robots would take our jobs.