Will Stronge

Kyle Lewis

"Working isn't working. As precarity and low-pay spread across the labour market, and work-related stress and exhaustion become increasingly endemic, it's clear that a new, radical approach is required. Many industries already face existential threats from automation, climate breakdown, a crisis of care and demographic ageing. In this short book, Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge identify a powerful and practical 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, as well as the history of this idea and 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 equal society, one based on collective freedom and human potential"--

Why We Need a Shorter Working Week

Overtime

Why we should all work less! A radical and pragmatic manifesto for tackling the twin crises of work and care in contemporary capitalism With the rise of automation and precarious forms of work, jobs are becoming increasingly polarised. While some are overworked, there are many more people forced into precarious and underpaid work, work that falls heavily on those most vulnerable in society. All of this while countries in the Global North are experiencing a crisis of care, where the disproportionately gendered labour of care is and undervalued, and often unpaid. In this short book, Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge argue that one powerful and practical response to the worrying trend of job polarisation is the call for a shorter working week. The time we spend at work is neither natural nor inevitable. Instead the amount of time we spend working is a political, cultural and economic question. Overtime will explain what a shorter waged working week means, as well as its history and its political implications. The authors argue that any long-term plan for a sustainable, just economy must involve a reduction in the time we spend working. Drawing on a range of political and economic thinkers, Stronge and Lewis argue only by doing so can we create a more just and equal society, one that allows people the space and opportunity to develop an ethic based on citizen engagement and self-autonomy outside of market interaction.

Why We Need A Shorter Working Week

Overtime is about the politics of time, and specifically the amount of time that we spend labouring within capitalist society. It argues that reactivating the longstanding demand for shorter working hours should be central to any progressive trajectory in the years ahead. This book explains what a shorter working week means, as well as its history and its political implications. Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis examine the idea of reducing the time we all spend labouring for other on both a theoretical and political level, and offer an analysis rooted in the radical traditions from which the idea first emerged. Throughout, the reader is introduced to key theorists of work and working time alongside the relevant research regarding our contemporary ‘crisis of work’, to which the authors' proposal of a shorter working week responds.

Kyle Lewis

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