work | Novara Media

12 Books for Understanding the Future of Work

Sarah Jaffe, Dalia Gebrial, Jamie Woodcock & Craig Gent

To accompany our focus series on the Future of Work, we asked some of our friends to share their top reading recommendations for understanding changes to the organisation of work and our working lives.

Analysis: ‘Capitalism’s Wet Dream’: Amazon’s Patents Signal the Future It Hopes to Achieve

Alessandro Delfanti

By filing hundreds of patents a year, Amazon publishes its ideas for new technologies and ways of managing workers. As part of our focus on the future of work, Alessandro Delfanti explores some of the technological futures Amazon has in mind.

nursery children and teachers playing together

Report: Big Business Is Muscling in on the UK’s Nursery Racket

Sophie K Rosa

In Germany and France, around 3-4% of nurseries are private; in the UK, 84% are. All the evidence suggests that these nurseries provide worse childcare and working conditions. Is this the free market doing its thing, or the result of government negligence? Sophie K Rosa reports.

Opinion: The ‘radical nannies’ Organising to Support Each Other Through Covid-19

Veronica Deutsch

Dominic Cummings has accidentally put childcare on the agenda, writes Veronica Deutsch, but within the sector not all workers are equal. High precarity is particularly common in nannying work, and, while coronavirus has highlighted the need for better support, regulation can feel like a threat to the most vulnerable.

Long Read: Detained Migrants Are Workers. They Belong in the Trade Union Movement

Isaac Ricca-Richardson and Franck Magennis

With detained migrants encouraged to work for slave wages, rather than treating them as victims devoid of agency, trade unions must instead bring them into the movement, write Isaac Ricca-Richardson and Franck Magennis.

Opinion: Filth: Coronavirus Has Shown That Cleaners Are Essential, but Labelling Them ‘Low-Skilled’ Legitimises Exploitation

Eleanor Penny

A crisis always reveals. While pandemic society has effortlessly withstood the temporary absence of hedge fund managers, cleaners have been billeted to the frontlines, their work suddenly and mysteriously ‘essential’. In part four of her series, Filth, Eleanor Penny explores how labelling work 'low-skilled' rubber-stamps a vicious cycle of low pay, precarious contracts and hyper-exploitation.

Opinion: The Right to Work From Home Should Be a Demand Far Beyond the Pandemic

James McAsh

Once preserved as a perk of high-status jobs, for many workers the dubious obstacles to being permitted to work from home have evaporated during lockdown. On National Work from Home Day, James McAsh argues it ought to be a right, not a privilege - and not just for the duration of the pandemic.

Freelance Work Has Always Been Precarious, Not Aspirational. Coronavirus Has Made That Clear

With the government’s most recent measure to support self-employed workers leaving many with no support at all, the dangerous and uncertain nature of freelance work has been exposed, writes Sophie McKay.

Opinion: The Corona-Crisis Reveals There Is No Such Thing As Low-Skilled Labour

Phil Jones

The coronavirus pandemic has shown that our lives are in fact precariously balanced on the supposedly low-skilled labour of others - a vast majority of them women. This ugly revelation is a chance to learn and reimagine the way we value work, writes Phil Jones.

The Employability Industry: How Platforms Profit From ‘Brand You’

Phil Jones

It's time we see our so-called brands for what they are: vital data and profits for social media giants. To cut off this source of data we need a radical policy programme that privileges worker security and wellbeing, writes Phil Jones.

To Tackle Climate Breakdown, We Need to Build a Post-Work Society

Emilie Tricarico

From stagnating wages and exploitative working conditions to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, both our working lives and our climate are in crisis. A shorter working week could offer solutions to both, argues Emilie Tricarico.

Novara FM: The All-Seeing Algorithm?

James Butler is joined by Novara Media’s own Craig Gent to discuss the rise of the algorithm, the new workplace under algorithmic management, and the scope and practice of workers’ resistance to new techniques of domination.