Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives - Softcover

Bunting, Madeleine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007163711 ISBN 13: 9780007163717

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

Synopsis

A hardhitting expose of the overwork culture and modern management techniques which seduce millions of people to hand over the best part of their lives to their employer.

The British now work the longest hours in Europe. British workers are also under more pressure: ‘job intensification’ affects every shopfloor, office, classroom and hospital, as a cult of efficiency has driven a missionary magnetism of fighter deadlines and more exacting targets in the most exploitative and manipulative work culture developed since the industrial revolution.

What do we get in return for this hard work? Stagnant wages, job insecurity, stress, exhaustion; the British workforce has not been so powerless for over a century. In the last decade, inequality has grown more sharply in Britain than at any time since the Edwardian era; the fat cats’ pay is now 25 times that of the average worker.

Willing Slaves exposes the paradox that, though we’re all being exploited, it’s work that has come to give our lives meaning: religion, political causes, family life have become secondary. This book reveals how this astonishing fraud has been perpetrated, how millions of workers know they face burnout but believe ‘there is no alternative’. Bunting tells us what we have to do to take our lives back – and what will happen if we don’t.

About this title

Review:

‘A brilliantly thorough and thoroughly brilliant attack on the contemporary work ethic' Guardian

From the Publisher:

The British now work the longest hours in Europe. British workers are also under more pressure: ‘job intensification’ affects every shopfloor, office, classroom and hospital, as a cult of efficiency has driven a missionary magnetism of fighter deadlines and more exacting targets in the most exploitative and manipulative work culture developed since the industrial revolution.

What do we get in return for this hard work? Stagnant wages, job insecurity, stress, exhaustion; the British workforce has not been so powerless for over a century. In the last decade, inequality has grown more sharply in Britain than at any time since the Edwardian era; the fat cats’ pay is now 25 times that of the average worker.

Willing Slaves exposes the paradox that, though we’re all being exploited, it’s work that has come to give our lives meaning: religion, political causes, family life have become secondary. This book reveals how this astonishing fraud has been perpetrated, how millions of workers know they face burnout but believe ‘there is no alternative’. Bunting tells us what we have to do to take our lives back – and what will happen if we don’t.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0007163711
• ISBN 13: 9780007163717
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400