Issue 534 of New Internationalist

November-December 2021

Shifting horizons: the future of work

Workers have been getting increasingly squeezed, with year-on-year declines in the labour share of profits and bargaining power. The great worldwide jolt of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the fault-lines and brought calls for a better deal. Now, as business-as-usual resumes with a vengeance, the need to imagine and create fairer, more dignified futures for workers becomes more urgent. This edition explores the threats and the possibilities. The age-old, ongoing struggles for unity, better working conditions and greater autonomy remain vitally important. But more radical questions also need raising. Such as, do we really need to work quite as much, when we can provide comfortably for the needs of all? And whether chasing full employment is any good for a planet pushed to its ecological limits.