Episode 74: Sarah Jaffe On Why Work Won’t Love You Back
The Checkout speaks with Sarah Jaffe about being a labor journalist before it was cool, our shared admiration of Sylvia Federici, and Sarah’s excellent new book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone.
https://sarahljaffe.com/bio/: Sarah Jaffe is the author of Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone and of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. She is a Type Media Center reporting fellow and an independent journalist covering the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Atlantic, and many other publications. She is the co-host, with Michelle Chen, of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, as well as a columnist at The Progressive and New Labor Forum. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia and a bachelor’s degree in English from Loyola University New Orleans.
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Episode #74 Notes
1:00 - What drew you into labor journalism?
3:30 - On Sarah’s writing and journalism process.
6:50 - Silvia Federici’s writing on the economics and exploitation of domestic work.
11:45 - How Federici’s work evolve into modern domestics and the nuclear family.
17:00 - On exploitation and the weaponization of love.
27:00 - On worker’s centers in the modern labor movement.
34:00 - On COVID-19’s affect on food sector work.
38:00 - Sarah’s major policy priorities.
Book Recommendations!
Riding for Deliveroo, Callum Cant
To Serve God and Walmart, Bethany Moreton
Regulating the Poor, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
Poor People’s Movements, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
Make Bosses Pay, Eve Livingston
Lost in Work, Amelia Horgan
Worked Over, Jamie McCallum
The Cost of Being a Girl, Yasemine Besen-Cassino
Also, Sarah’s definition of Neo-Liberalism.
