Overtime

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.