Joanna York interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back for Welcome to the Jungle. She writes:
Do you love your job? Many workers don’t just say they do, they move cities, put in long hours or even work for free to prove just how passionate they are about what they do for a living. And being intrinsically interested in the job itself might not be enough. Increasingly we are urged to see colleagues as family, our homes as offices and to free up our leisure time to make ourselves more available to our bosses.
Studies suggest such commitment to work is taking its toll. Research from the World Health Organization in 2021 found that overwork—defined as working more than 54 hours a week—is deadly, killing three quarters of a million people a year. So why do we work with such devotion, and how can we stop?
Read the rest at Welcome to the Jungle
The questions that Sarah has raised in her book “Work Won’t Love You Back” are good ones but I would rephrase it another way that one should never die for the job. It is important for people to work hard even if it a job that isn’t great but they shouldn’t make it their life. Even in my union our Chief Stewards would say that it important for our staff to do their jobs even though they represent their members with various problems with their employer. One good piece of news is that the staff of Concordia University of Edmonton(which is different than Concordia University in Montreal)went on strike and ratified their contract last Saturday. I was one of the people who joined their picket line. Never let people tell that strikes are effective.