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.

MEDIA REVIEWS

‘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.’