Event • Philadelphia

Work Won’t Love You Back: How Capitalism Exploits Labors of Love at Penn’s Andrea Mitchell Center

In her new book, Work Won’t Love You Back, SARAH JAFFE explores the way we relate to work under the conditions of capitalism. From the unpaid intern to the professional athlete, Jaffe reveals the alienating ideology of “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” By unmaking the lie that work is defined and guided by passion, we can imagine more emancipatory futures where our lives are no longer dominated by waged labor and where we have the ability to explore our interests and loves outside an exploitative economic system. As part of the Andrea Mitchell Center’s CAPITALISM/SOCIALISM/DEMOCRACY series, Jaffe joins M. EDITH SKLAROFF for a discussion of the “labor of love” myth and its role in perpetuating current economic and social relations.

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Will VR Destroy my Future Work-Life Balance?

I was on a panel at Advertising Week Europe courtesy of my friend and longtime collaborator Cortney Harding. Live to work or work to live? As members of the creative class and its extended circles, we’re especially familiar with the rhetoric around following our passions and loving what we do. But what could and should […]

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Unionize Yoga

I joined Corey Reidy of Unionize Yoga for a chat on Instagram Live about Work Won’t Love You Back. Labor journalist and organizer, Sarah Jaffe, talks with Unionize Yoga about her new book “Work Won’t Love You Back”. They chat about its study of how we put all our eggs in one basket to have […]

Event • Seattle, WA

Thank You For Your Service (Work) At Red May

Gabriel Winant’s new book, The Next Shift, examines the fall of industry and the rise of healthcare in Rust Belt America. Jason Smith’s new book, Smart Machines and Service Work, tracks the automation-induced transfer of workers into the service sector. Sarah Jaffe’s new book, Work Won’t Love You Back, explores how devotion to our jobs keeps us exhausted, exploited, and alone. If ever books were destined to talk to one another, it is these three, but we’re not magicians, so we’ve brought together the authors instead. And to guide this panoramic look at the fate of work in 21st Century America, we’ve added Priscilla Murolo, Professor of History at Sarah Lawrence and author of From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States Gabriel Winant, Sarah Jaffe, Jason Smith, Priscilla Murolo (mod)

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Labor Looks Up After Amazon Union Vote on the Laura Flanders Show

I was particularly pleased with this appearance because my first real job in the media was working on what was then GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and one of the reasons I wanted to work for her was that people had recommended her to me as one of the few people actually covering labor in the media back then (2009, my goodness). So it’s always a joy to return to talk with Laura, the boss who was, as I said in my book acknowledgements, the exception that proves the rule that bosses won’t love you back. 

Event • Washington, DC

Lapsis at DC Labor FilmFest

Followed by post- screening Livestream Q&A moderated by Sarah Jaffe, with Katie Parker, Administrative Organizer for NPEU, the Non Profit Employees Union and EPI Policy Analyst Margaret Poydock 

New York, an alternate present: the quantum computing revolution has begun and investors are lining their pockets in the quantum trading market. Building the network, though, requires miles of infrastructure to be laid between huge magnetic cubes by “cablers” — unprotected gig workers who compete against robots to pull wires over rough terrain. Queens delivery man Ray Tincelli is skeptical of new technology, and the buy-in to start cabling is steep, but he struggles to support himself and his ailing younger brother, who suffers from a mysterious illness. So when Ray scores a shady permit, he believes their fortunes may have finally changed. What he doesn’t expect is to be pulled into a conspiracy involving hostile cablers, corporate greed and the mysterious “Lapsis” who may have previously owned his permit. Called “a smart, class-conscious sci-fi parable” by The Hollywood Reporter, LAPSIS is a darkly comic and timely look at the gig economy and the failed utopian promises of big tech. Winner, Jury’s Choice Award, 2020 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival; Nominee, Best First Screenplay, 2021 Independent Spirit Awards. Official Selection, 2020 SXSW, Mill Valley Film Festival, Trieste Science+Fiction Festival and Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Event • New York

Black Against Amazon: a Belabored and Black Work Talk Crossover

Just a few days after voting closes, historian Robin D. G. Kelley will join Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen, co-hosts of Dissent’s Belabored podcast, and Steven Pitts, host of the Black Work Talk podcast on Organizing Upgrade, to discuss the effort, its import, and what it has to say about the state of the Black working class today.

Event • London

Class Power on Zero-Hours with AngryWorkers and Sarah Jaffe

Tune in to hear AngryWorkers collective and Sarah Jaffe in-conversation with Ashok Kumar about the process of writing this unique account of the working conditions in and around London and evaluations of the effects of Covid-19.