Playlist: Work

ABSTRACT

[...]as we dream of different futures, we face multiple, competing narratives of post-pandemic work mass refusal, as we recognize how much of life work steals from us;individual "pivots" to new careers vaunted in the media;the tantalizing possibility of universal social benefits;the cruel reality that a return to "normal" means a return to exploitation, inequality, and the daily grind of capitalism. Facing stagnating wages, poor conditions, and pandemic risks, workers across the continent are collectively organizing into unions, building solidarity, and waging successful strikes and job actions, including baristas, graduate students, video game developers, journalists, and warehouse workers. Yet, they argue, "intellective and physical labour are required to produce messages and the technologies used to disseminate them" (p. 493), encouraging a turn to labour in media and communication studies that has produced a rich and dynamic body of literature examining work and labour as it intersects with media, technology, and culture. A search of the CJC archive using the terms work and labour results in many articles on a range of work-related issues, a selective index of which could read * care work (labour, technology-mediated work) * creative and cultural industries (working conditions, contracts, collective organizing, policy) * gender and technology (deskilling, intensification, power) * journalists (professional routines, working conditions, unions) * knowledge work (theories of, ideologies of, gendered divisions, deskilling, surveillance, rationalization, resistance) * labour, unions, strikes (media coverage of) This playlist features four articles that hold enduring lessons about work for the pandemic and beyond. The so-called minority union, which represents a small part of the company's workforce, aims to engage in worker activism rather than to bargain a collective agreement, as its wall-to-wall model includes workers outside of the standard employment relationship.