The Hard Work Of Working From Home

In a review of Nikil Saval’s Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, Jenny Diski comments on the rise of work-from-home freelancers:

These workers are a serious new class, known as the precariat: insecure, unorganised, taking on too much work for fear of famine, or frighteningly underemployed. The old rules of employment have been turned upside down. These new non-employees, apparently, need to develop a new ‘self-employed mindset’, in which they treat their employers as ‘customers’ of their services, and do their best to satisfy them, in order to retain their ‘business’.

She continues:

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that ‘by 2020 freelancers, temps, day labourers and independent contractors will constitute 40 per cent of the workforce.’ Some think up to 50 per cent. Any freelancer will tell you about the time and effort required to drum up business and keep it coming (networking, if you like) which cuts down on how much work you can actually do if you get it. When they do get the work, they no longer get the annual salaries that old-time clerks were so proud to receive.

Getting paid is itself time-consuming and difficult. It’s estimated that more than 77 per cent of freelancers have had trouble collecting payment, because contractors try to retain fees for as long as possible. Flexibility sounds seductive, as if it allows individuals to live their lives sanely, fitting work and leisure together in whatever way suits them and their families best. But returning the focus to the individual worker rather than the great corporate edifice simply adds the burdens of management to the working person’s day while creating permanent anxiety and ensuring employee compliance. As to what freelancers actually do in their home offices, in steamy cafés, in co-working spaces, I still have no idea, but I suspect that the sumptuous stationery cupboard is getting to be as rare as a monthly salary cheque.

On a related note, Karen Alpert finds that being a work-from-home parent, in particular, is the worst of two worlds:

Every day, I hear it: You’re so lucky you get to work from home. But guess what? Being a stay-at-home mom is hard, and being a working mom is hard, but being a work-at-home mom is the suckiest choice of all. It may not be worse than the single mom who has to hold down two or three jobs and never gets to be at home with her children, but it’s worse than going to an office 9 to 5 and it’s worse than staying home with the kids all day long. I’ve done all three, and that is my conclusion. ….

[B]eing a working mom and being a stay-at-home mom are both crazy hard. But being a work-at-home mom is hard in a whole different kind of way. It’s not about seeing your kids too much or too little. It’s about ignoring your kid–a lot–and feeling like you’re constantly failing them throughout the day. … Day in, day out, I have to tell my kids to leave me the hell alone, and I constantly feel bad about it. Do they think my work is more important than they are? It’s not. But sometimes it has to be.