Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America's Best Workers are Unhappier than Ever

In Love the Work, Hate the Job, author David Kusnet follows workers through four conflicts in the trailblazing city of Seattle. At Boeing, aircraft engineers and technicians conducted the longest and largest strike by professionals in private industry in U.S. history, but their picket signs said they were "On Strike for Boeing." At Microsoft, thousands of workers holding short-term positions founded their own Web site to protest being "perma-temps." Still, they were almost as upset about their problems testing software as they were about their own precarious prospects. At a local hospital, workers complained that patient care was getting short shrift and organized with the nation's fastest-growing union. And at Kaiser Aluminum, during a labor-manage-ment conflict that dragged on for two years, workers allied themselves with environmentalists to fight cutthroat corporate tactics.

Like their counterparts across the country, these workers cared about much more than money. Americans increasingly like the work they do but not the conditions under which they do it. In fact, a growing number of employees believe they care more about the quality of their products and services than the executives they work for. That's why the workplace conflicts of the future will focus on model employees who were forced to become malcontents because they "care enough to get mad."

Coming in the aftermath of the mass protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, these conflicts point out the paradox of globalization. U.S. companies can compete most successfully by improving quality instead of just cutting costs. But penny-pinching practices can prevent their best workers from doing their best work, fueling workplace conflicts and depriving businesses of their single greatest advantage.

With powerful storytelling, revealing detail, and compelling analysis, Love the Work, Hate the Job offers provocative insights into today's workplaces, tomorrow's headlines, and Americans' too-often thwarted aspirations to do their jobs better.

"With energy, fine reporting, and a sure grasp of the realities of people's working lives, David Kusnet has written one of the most important studies of how people do their jobs since Daniel Bell's Work and Its Discontents. Kusnet makes a case everyone needs to hear: America's workers, including high-tech professionals, want to do their jobs right and they want to do them well, and what they need is more freedom in the workplace to achieve those ends. May Kusnet's book make us realize that liberation and productivity go hand in hand."
—E.J. Dionne Jr., author of Souled Out and Why Americans Hate Politics

"David Kusnet's Love the Work, Hate the Job offers keen analysis and political insights into the plight of American workers struggling to have government pay attention to their needs. This is a must-read for anyone who finds the daily grind, well, grinding."
—Donna Brazile, campaign manager, Al Gore for President, 2000

"Ever wonder why Boeing engineers have to strike and Microsoft whiz kids can't get health insurance? Even if you haven't, you'll love this—and it's no job to read it! Don't wait for them to make this a TV series. With lots of great stories, David Kusnet explains why there's trouble in paradise."
—Thomas Geoghegan, author of Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back

"With eloquence, wisdom, and a sure grasp of recent history, David Kusnet has single-handedly revived the once-proud craft of labor journalism. Anyone who wants to understand the discontent in high-tech workplaces today must read this book."
—Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan and The Populist Persuasion: An American History