Overtime
Why We Need A Shorter Working Week
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Work isn’t working
As precarity and low pay become further embedded in the job market, at a time when work-related stress and exhaustion are endemic, it is clear that a new, radical approach to employment is required.
Many industries already face existential threats from automation, climate breakdown, a crisis of care, and an ageing population. In Overtime, Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge identify a powerful and practicable response to these worrying trends: the shorter working week.
This urgent and timely book shows what a shorter working week means in the context of capitalist economies and delves into the history of this idea as well as its political implications. Drawing on a range of political and economic thinkers, Lewis and Stronge argue that a shorter working week could build a more just and equitable society, one based on collective freedom and human potential, providing scope for the many to achieve a happier, more fulfilling life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this brisk and persuasive polemic, Lewis and Stronge, researchers at the U.K. think tank Autonomy, make the case for a four-day work week, without a loss in average pay for workers. They blame stagnant wages, unpaid overtime, and precarious employment on neoliberal efforts to "smash the power of collective workers," and cite Karl Marx to explain how the enclosure of the commons in the 15th and 16th centuries gave rise to wage labor, setting the conditions wherein employers can push workers "to their physical limits" and impose strict expectations and codes of conduct. They also consider how a shorter work week would benefit women (who are often saddled with the brunt of unpaid labor at home) and the environment (by reducing workers' carbon footprints). Noting that trade unions and progressive politicians in Europe and the U.S. have backed a four-day work week, and that the Covid-19 pandemic has raised awareness of the need for workplace reforms, the authors advocate for a grassroots social movement to unite behind the cause, though their analysis of the political and economic forces that stand in the way is somewhat underdeveloped. Still, this is a lucid call for harnessing the power of collective action to strike a better work-life balance.
