10 books to read if you want to learn about the future of work
- Business Insider spoke to professors, police advocates, and organizers on the best books to learn about the future of work.
- Some books, including David Weil's "The Fissured Workplace," break down how employer-employee relationships have weakened since the mid-20th century.
- Here are the top 10 books they recommended for learning about the current — and future — state of work and workers in the US.
The way Americans work is undergoing tremendous change — and it's not all related to the coronavirus pandemic.
I've been covering jobs and the future of work for over a year at Business Insider, and reported on how companies are increasingly automating jobs and the dynamic of work-life balance declining while productivity increases. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic led to 20.5 million Americans losing their jobs in April, resulting in the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
Now some experts say many of those jobs won't come back.
Recruiting experts have told Business Insider that the pandemic will increase the size of the "gig economy," a job market more precarious than full-time work that doesn't guarantee workers minimum wage or health benefits.
To reflect how work has changed and where it's going, I reached out to several labor and workplace experts on the best books for understanding the future of work (and I added some of my own recommendations, too).
These books describe how Americans can prepare for careers during the time of automation and the productivity paradox, and how to understand the current state of labor organizing.
Here are the 10 best books on the future of work.
"The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream" by Steve Viscelli
"The Big Rig" reveals how truck driving went from one of the best working-class jobs in the US to a "sweatshop on wheels."
Recommended by David Weil, former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor
Find it here »"Despotism on Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace" by Alex J. Wood
This book examines how precarious scheduling — or assigning shifts to workers at the last minute — takes advantage of low-wage workers at some the largest firms in the US.
Recommended by Daniel Schneider, co-director of the Shift Project at UC Berkeley
Find it here »"Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" by Joseph E. Aoun
With many high-paying jobs getting automated away, this book examines how to "robot-proof" education for the incoming professional class.
Recommended by Mark Muro, senior fellow at Brookings
Find it here »"A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy" by Jane McAlevey
Longtime labor organizer Jane McAlevey argues here that unions, which have been losing membership for decades, might help to solve some of today's biggest social issues — from sexual harassment to the racial wealth gap.
Recommended by William Fitzgerald, organizer with The Worker Agency
Find it here »"Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It" by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen
"Overload" describes how a lack of work-life balance leads to chronic stress, burnout, and weakened performance.
Recommended by Daniel Schneider, co-director of the Shift Project at UC Berkeley
Find it here »"I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took On the Fast Food Giants and Won" by Susan L. Marquis
This book looks at how farmworkers in Florida's tomato fields — largely immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala — formed a workers' coalition and collectively and successfully fought against wage theft and dangerous work conditions.
Recommended by John Budd, a professor of work and organization at the University of Minnesota
Find it here »"Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street" by Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt
An economist and a Cornell university professor offer a comprehensive deep dive into how private equity firms disproportionately benefit firm partners at the expense of taxpayers and employees.
Recommended by David Weil, former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor
Find it here »"The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It" by David Weil
This book provides a foundational understanding for how work became so "bad," in Weil's words. It examines how, over time, big firms increasingly hived off sections of their workforce — from janitorial staff to human resources departments — to third-party contract firms, thereby absolving themselves from blame if those third parties skirted labor laws.
Recommended by Allana Akhtar, Future of Work reporter
Find it here »"The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change" by Ellen Ruppel Shell
This book takes you to different parts of the US to reveal how many initiatives on employment, including reskilling programs and trade schools, have fallen flat, while pointing the way toward hopeful clues for what may work in the future.
Recommended by Allana Akhtar, Future of Work reporter
Find it here »"Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass" by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
An anthropologist and a computer scientist reveal what life is like for "ghost workers," the new type of worker that flags inappropriate content to train machine learning algorithms. The revelation is that "artificial intelligence" relies on people — a lot of them — to work properly.
Recommended by Allana Akhtar, Future of Work reporter
Find it here »READ MORE ARTICLES ON
Popular Right Now
Advertisement