Publisher’s Note: In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.

Introduction, pp 1-13

1. To begin, discuss your own critical reflections about the concept and experience of work.
   • Can we think of work as a cohesive, overarching system? Why/Why not?
   • If yes, does the current system have problems? What might some of those problems be?
   • Who has a responsibility to resolve them?
2. Why does Weeks think it is so difficult to reflect critically about work as a social system, as opposed to the more narrow project of addressing particular problems within the system? Why might it be important to critique work as a social system?
3. Weeks discusses some of the problems that arise when we think about work as a private, rather than public sphere of activity. In what ways can work be private, public, or both? What problems does the privatization of work present?
4. Weeks writes, “The social role of waged work has been so naturalised as to seem necessary and inevitable, something to be tinkered with but never escaped.” She is drawing attention to the degree to which wage work, and the norms associated with it, are taken for granted and assumed to be part of the natural order of things. Why might this be a problem?

Introduction, pp 16-23

1. How does work shape society, according to Weeks? How does the work system embed certain ways of thinking about morality?
2. How does the work system interact with gender?
3. How does the work system interact with, and influence, class and social status?
4. Do you think work legitimize a particular type of exploitation, by arranging people in hierarchical relations with an imbalance of power? Is this an inevitable feature of work, or can it be resolved (e.g. through democritization)?

Publisher’s Note: The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but ‘cogs’ in this system—but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a ‘system’. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. She asks how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls. She develops the notion of ‘transformational agency’, which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one’s organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The last part zooms out to the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to ‘the system’ or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world.

Introduction 1.1

1. Why, according to Herzog, is it important to resasses the moral nature of organisations and organisational structure? Do you find her initial arguments to be convincing?
2. Herzog writes that, within organisations, “individuals face specific moral challenges, which are different from the moral challenges they encounter in other spheres of life.” What are some examples of these challenges, either from the text or from your own experiences? Why are these moral problems different from the ones we encounter in other spheres of life?
3. Do you think organisational morality can be ‘reclaimed’, as Herzog does? Why/Why not?
4. It is relatively commonplace these days to encounter the idea that corporations are evil and that all large organisations are “irresponible monsters” incapable of moral action. But Herzog insists that organisations can be forces for good. What are some examples of this? Why might organisational morality be worth reclaiming?

Introduction 1.3

1. What factors contribute to the sense that organisational structures are amoral, or outside the scope of normal human moral demands? How has traditional normative theorising failed to account for organisations, and the particular moral problems they face?
2. What assumptions do we make about organisational structure, and why (e.g. organisations as ‘systemic’, or like machines)? How does this affect our perspective of their moral responsibility?
3. What assumptions do we make about individual agents, and why (e.g. that they behave opportunistically)? How does this affect our perspective of organisational moral responsibility?
4. What are some ways, either concrete or abstract, that we might reorient organisational life?

Publisher’s Note: This book examines the importance of work in human well-being, addressing several related philosophical questions about work and arguing on the whole that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. Work impacts flourishing not only in developing and exercising human capabilities but also in instilling and reflecting virtues such as honor, pride, dignity, self-discipline, and self-respect. Work also attaches to a sense of purposefulness and personal identity, and meaningful work can promote both personal autonomy and a sense of personal satisfaction that issues from making oneself useful. Further still, work bears a formative influence on character and intelligence and provides a primary avenue for exercising complex skills and garnering esteem and recognition from others. The author defends a pluralistic account of meaningful work, identifying four primary dimension of meaningful work: (1) developing or exercising the worker’s capabilities, especially insofar as this expression meets with recognition and esteem; (2) supporting virtues; (3) providing a purpose, and especially producing something of enduring value; and (4) integrating elements of a worker’s life. In light of the impact that work has on flourishing, the author argues that well-ordered societies provide opportunities for meaningful work and that the philosophical view of value pluralism, which casts work as having no special significance in an individual’s life, is false. The book also addresses oppressive work that undermines human flourishing, examining potential solutions to minimize the impact of bad work on those who perform it.

1. What are the features of meaningful work, according to Veltman? Does Veltman think meaningfulness – and consequently, meaningful work – is a subjective characteristic?
2. Why does Veltman think it is useful to have objective measures of meaningfulness?
3. Is all work meaningful? Why / why not?
   • Is work that is not meaningful the same as work that is meaningless?
   • According to Veltman, what characteristics makes work bad? How do you think we should respond to the existence of such work?
4. How do you think we should understand the importance of meaningful work? Is it a basic need, something all people should have a right to, or is it simply a matter of personal preference?

Publisher’s Note: Perhaps Studs Terkel's best-known book, Working is a compelling look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews with everyone from a gravedigger to a studio head, from a policeman to a piano tuner, this book provides an enduring portrait of people's feelings about their working lives.

1. What are some of the general conclusions that Terkel draws from his interviews? What values or experiences does he notice are common across different kinds of work?
2. Do these align with Veltman’s objective measures of meaningful work?
3. Do you think it is important for one’s work to be meaningful? Why / Why not? What role has meaningful work played in your own life?

Abstract: A tale of two truckers in Grand Island, Nebraska: former real-estate agent Kenyette Godhigh-Bell, and third-generation owner-operator Jared Sidlo. One is testing the waters of a new career, while the other weighs the personal costs of a job he can’t (and won’t) quit.

1. The interviewees discuss the experiences of their work as truck drivers. Are there any common experiences or features that emerge in the interviews? Are any of these experiences universal or shared across other professions? Discuss how your own experience of work relates to these interviews.
2. Do you see evidence of Veltman’s objective measures of meaningfulness in the interviews? Give examples and discuss.

Abstract: This chapter is part of a larger work concerning what I call 'property fetishism', which is, briefly and roughly, a particular phenomenon or outlook in moral and political philosophy under which the "social thesis" is denied, or obscured, or diminished. The "social thesis" is the thesis that the "default" characterisation of human existence for the purposes of exploring interpersonal (including political)morality is not that of a hermit in some state of nature who shares no interests with others, but one in which interpersonal relations of real significance are native or natural to human existence. As such, those normative means, like the power to consent or to make agreements so as to be able to act cooperatively with others, are not some cultural achievement which we could plausibly be without, but are part and parcel of our natural endowments, in the same way as our basic responsiveness to reasons makes us (in part) the kind of creature that we are. Property fetishism works to deny, obscure, or diminish the significance of this human sociability principally by characterising acting in the social and political sphere as the interaction of "self-owners", as individuals principally constituted by the way in which they interact as possessors of property. As a rough picture that will do for the nonce; we shall return to the idea below.

1. What is the author’s main aim in this article?
2. What is the distinction between labour, work, and action that Arendt makes? Why might this conceptual distinction be useful?
3. The author argues that remuneration was once conceptualised differently, through the practice of patronage. How did remuneration function in the case of the professional gentleman, according to Penner?
   • In what ways is this conception different from our current one?
   • Why makes such a conception attractive to the author? Why might it be useful?
4. What are some objections that might be raised against this model of remuneration? How does the author respond?
5. Do you find Penner’s argument convincing? Why / Why not?

Abstract: In this chapter I argue that we have a human right to livelihood. Although some economic rights have been defended under a human rights framework, such as freedom of occupation and the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to livelihood requires a separate defense. We have a livelihood when we are able to exercise some control over how we generate income and accumulate wealth. I argue that this control is good in itself, and that it leads to two further goods, social contribution esteem and a sense of self-provision. Beyond its being a right per se, having a livelihood also fulfills Joseph Raz’s conditions for being a constitutional right, insofar as it is a right that can be fairly and effectively protected through legal mechanisms, and for being a human right, insofar as it a right that can be suitably enforced through a system of international law.

1. What is the author’s main aim in this article?
2. In what three ways, according to the author, does a livelihood contribute to a person’s well-being?
   • Is having control over resource inflow the same as complete economic independence?
   • How is social contribution esteem different from simply the personal satisfaction of a job well done?
   • In what ways is the opportunity for self-provision morally significant?
3. Why does the author think that market-based income is superior to publicly financed income?
4. Is Greene’s argument persuasive? What might be some objections to a right to livelihood?

Abstract: Rarely do labour law theories draw on disability studies. However, with the growing acceptance that both disability and labour are human rights issues that are concerned with dignity and equality, and that both fields of study tempt to address the social context of disadvantage, an opportunity emerges to bring the two discourses together. In this chapter, I take advantage of this opportunity to discuss the right to work. The interest lies in the new and crucially important direction that Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (hereafter the CRPD or the Convention) has taken. Article 27, the latest international human rights instrument that has been adopted regarding the right to work, offers what I consider to be an innovative and welcome approach towards this right, while addressing some of the main concerns that were raised in the literature regarding the right to work as adopted in other international human rights documents and implemented in practice.

1. What are some of the barriers that persons with disabilities face in the labour market and workplace?
2. Why might access to work be especially important for persons with disabilities to feel like full members of society? Albin discusses this in Section I, but you can also think about previous discussions on meaningful work.
3. Why, according to Albin, does the CRPD represent a critical shift in the discussion about a right to work for persons with disability?
4. What does Article 27 of the Convention state? Discuss any features of the article that you find interesting.
5. What are some of the main concerns that confront a universal right to work? How, according to the author, does Article 27 provide an answer to these problems?
6. What argument does the author provide as justification for a universalist approach? How does thinking about a right to work in terms of ‘abilities’ augment an understanding of the right to work?

Abstract: Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal.

1. What is the author’s purpose, in this article?
2. In what way, according to the author, does the current debate around basic income fail to recognise the social experiences of women? Why is it important to do so?
3. How does basic income literature typically treat references to women and questions of gender inequality, according to the author?
4. What solution does the author propose to these problems? How does she argue we should reconceptualise work?
5. Why does the author refer to traditionally female work as “invisible”?

Abstract: In view of the explanatory significance of joblessness, some social scientists, policymakers, and commentators have advocated strong measures to ensure that the ghetto poor work, including mandating work as a condition of receiving welfare benefits. Indeed, across the ideological political spectrum, work is often seen as a moral or civic duty and as a necessary basis for personal dignity. And this normative stance is now instantiated in federal and state law, from the tax scheme to public benefits. This Article reflects critically on this new regime of work. I ask whether the normative principles to which its advocates typically appeal actually justify the regime. I conclude that the case for a pro tanto moral or civic duty to work is not as strong as many believe and that there are reasonable responses to joblessness that do not involve instituting a work regime. However, even if we grant that there is a duty to work, I maintain that the ghetto poor would not be wronging their fellow citizens were they to choose not to work and to rely on public funds for material support. In fact, I argue that many among the black urban poor have good reasons to refuse to work. Throughout, I emphasize what too few advocates of the new work regime do, namely, that whether work is an obligation depends crucially on whether background social conditions within the polity are just.

1. What is the author’s main aim in this article?
2. Does the author assume there exists a civic obligation to work? On what grounds? Do you agree or disagree with this assumption?
3. What are some reasons, according to the author, for which the ghetto poor may reasonably refuse to work but which could be altered by small structural changes to American society? How does the author think these reasons could be addressed or resolved?
4. What are the three major objections to a pro tanto civic obligation to work that the author presents? How does the author think these could be addressed or resolved?
5. Do you think that these major objections are enough to override a pro tanto obligation to work?

Abstract: Intelligence is closely associated with formal education - the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long - and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence. These assumptions run through our cultural history, from the post-Revolutionary War period, when mechanics were characterized by political rivals as illiterate and therefore incapable of participating in government, until today. More than once I've heard a manager label his workers as "a bunch of dummies." Generalizations about intelligence, work, and social class deeply affect our assumptions about ourselves and each other, guiding the ways we use our minds to learn, build knowledge, solve problems, and make our way through the world.

1. What basic assumptions about work and intelligence is Rose attempting to challenge in this essay?
2. What values are tradtionally associated with the working class, according to the author? Can you list any that he does not mention?
3. What are some cultural or conceptual reasons, according to Rose, why we might associate working class jobs with low intelligence, lack of cleverness, etc.?
4. What are some examples – involving verbal, mathematical, or physical skills – that the author raises to counter these long held cultural assumptions?
5. What might be the value of subverting or challenging these basic assumptions? How could it help us create a fairer, more just system of work?

Abstract: Amidst signs of declining social capital, the typical workplace is a hotbed of sociability and cooperation. And in a still-segregated society, the workplace is where adults are most likely to interact across color lines. The convergence of close interaction and some racial diversity makes the workplace a crucial institution within a diverse democratic society. Paradoxically, the involuntariness of workplace associations—the compulsion of economic necessity, of managerial authority, and of law—helps to facilitate constructive interaction among diverse co-workers. Where racial diversity is a fact of organizational life (and the law can help to make it so), then employers and workers have their own powerful reasons—psychological and economic—to make those relationships constructive, even amicable. I contend here that it is where we are compelled to get along, and not where we choose to do so, that we can best advance the project of racial integration.

1. What are the author’s main claims in this article?
2. What are some of the reasons why diversity can be good for communities?
3. What two propositions about the workplace does Estlund make before beginning her argument? Do you agree or disagree with these fundamental assumptions?
4. What are some of the social benefits of work – the benefits of connectedness – that Estlund identifies?
5. Why does Estlund think that the workplace presents a unique location for integration?
6. What does Estlund argue are some of the consequences and social implications of racially diverse workplaces?
7. What are some of the challenges still present in racially diverse workplaces?
8. What are some of the political implications of diverse workplaces for democracy? What are some suggestions Estlund offers for how to promote or protect diversity in the workplace? Are there any ideas you might add?