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Nice Work provides insight into a sea change in labor markets and work lives that has occurred over the past forty years. It is an intelligent work that raises thought-provoking questions about contingent labor. -Steven T. Sheehan,Enterprise and Society Economic liberalization, [Ross] demonstrates, has opened up a frenetic global traffic in jobs and migrants, uprooting people in a manner both useful and troubling to the managers of capital. In short, more people are available to exploit, but they are also harder to control... A thorough and thoughtful study of global professional insecurity. -The Times Literary Supplement This excellent and, in places, brilliant book should be read by anyone interested in a timely and astute analysis of the malaise of life and work in neoliberal postmodern society... Highly recommended. -Choice Illuminating... Who knows what will be on the table when the damage of the global crisis is told? At the very least, one may hope for a return to security, sensible financial regulation, and a renewed interest in economic equity. Other worlds are possible, and with luck thinkers like Ross can point the way to imagining them more fully. -BookForum According to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on 'social responsibility' public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies. -The New Yorker Nice Work If You Can Get It, is impressive for its extraordinary range and sweep, and for asking questions about the kinds of transnational and cross-class alliances that might be made, the kinds of solidarities that might be forged, between differently positioned members of the global 'precariat': sweatshop labourers, janitors, academics, and creatives. In doing so it offers a passionate, humane critique of contemporary capitalism. -Times Higher Education Supplement With admirable timing, [Ross] examines a global workplace infrastructure that's as shaky as the economy would indicate... Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity. -Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Though Ross favors ironic twists on cliches like Nice Work If You Can Get It, he might also have titled the book Working Absurd. And though he would probably resist the high handed aspect of the public intellectual, he has fleshed out the precarious and inequitable terms of contemporary labor, meeting people where they are. -The Chronicle Review Nice Work If You Can Get It, insists that the combination of transnational capitalism and globalization has eliminated stability and security from the lives of working people. -The New Leader What is compelling about Ross's analysis of precarity is recognition that the 'movement' of these part-time workers is loaded with a host of internal contradictions. The concept of precarity has been deployed by academics and organized labor to describe the 'condition of social and economic insecurity associated with post-Fordist employment and neoliberal governance (p. 34). [...] As Ross asks: 'Even if this concept is theoretically plausible, does it make sense to imagine cross-class coalitions of the precarious capable of developing a unity of consciousness and action on an international scale?' (p. 6). Indeed, this remains a pertinent question considering the debates emerging as a result of the international Occupy phenomenon. -Critical Sociology

There are no easy answers in Ross's often surprising case studies of work in the new millennium. His reach is global, from North America to Europe to Asia, as he teases out the contradictory character of contemporary employment. Cary Nelson, University of Illinois Ross takes us on a wide-ranging journey through the global economy to analyze the dynamics of precarious work in the twenty-first century. Along the way, he poses an urgent question: can creative-class professionals make common cause with low-wage laborers, based on their shared experience of economic insecurity? Ruth Milkman, University of California, Los Angeles

"""There are no easy answers in Ross's often surprising case studies of work in the new millennium. His reach is global, from North America to Europe to Asia, as he teases out the contradictory character of contemporary employment."" Cary Nelson, University of Illinois ""Ross takes us on a wide-ranging journey through the global economy to analyze the dynamics of precarious work in the twenty-first century. Along the way, he poses an urgent question: can creative-class professionals make common cause with low-wage laborers, based on their shared experience of economic insecurity?"" Ruth Milkman, University of California, Los Angeles ""...illuminating...Who knows what will be on the table when the damage of the global crisis is told? At the very least, one may hope for a return to security, sensible financial regulation, and a renewed interest in economic equity. Other worlds are possible, and with luck thinkers like Ross can point the way to imagining them more fully."" -Bookforum, April/May 2009 With admirable timing, this volume examines a global workplace infrastructure that's as shaky as the economy would indicate. Taking a hard line against exploitation of workers in a variety of roles worldwide, Ross looks closely at workers on the verge, and those putting them there. In the chapter ""China's Next Cultural Revolution?"", he warns that ""Beijing's rulers have nothing to worry about"" so long as ""the creative sector behaves like other industries... They can be groomed and promoted... to absorb foreign investment and foreign ideas, to exploit low production costs..."" He tackles the Western world with the same nonplussed tone, as when discussing corporate PR tactics to deny ties to labor abuses by promoting social good, naming names like Nike, Reebok and the Gap. He also hits higher education, where much of the workplace is shaped, noting that it's ""all too easy to conclude that the global university, as it takes shape, will emulate some of the conduct of multinational corporations."" Rejecting the widely influential, free marke teer notion of a worldwide ""playing field,"" Ross leaves no room for easy answers (or an ""alternative, and equally snappy, image"" to answer Thomas Friedman's or Richard Florida's). Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity."" Publisher's Weekly, May 2009 ""According to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on ""social responsibility"" public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies."" The New Yorker, 29th June 2009 ""Economic liberalization, [Ross] demonstrates, has opened up a frenetic global traffic in jobs and migrants, uprooting people in a manner both useful and troubling to the managers of capital. In short, more people are available to exploit, but they are also harder to control... A thorough and thoughtful study of global professional insecurity."" The Times Literary Supplement ""With admirable timing, [Ross] examines a global workplace infrastructure that's as shaky as the economy would indicate... Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity."" Publishers Weekly, Starred Review ""According to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on 'social responsibility' public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies."" The New Yorker ""Illuminating... Who knows what will be on the table when the damage of the global crisis is told? At the very least, one may hope for a return to security, sensible financial regulation, and a renewed interest in economic equity. Other worlds are possible, and with luck thinkers like Ross can point the way to imagining them more fully."" BookForum ""...whereas for Euro-Americans the path is from Keynesian consensus to its unravelling by the savagery of neoliberal capitalism. Ross is one of those keen to point out that now, with historical hindsight, the Keynesian moment where state security (in the form of public pensions, education and so on) offsets the wilder excesses of capital increasingly looks like a historical blip. But he points out that not only did the temporary Fordist truce rely on imperialism, rigid social hierarchies and a reservoir of unpaid domestic labour, but that today is no simple neo-Victorian age: pre- and post-Fordist moments are qualitatively different. For whereas the Great Depression was the result of a collapse of capitalist control, contemporary precarity is the result of capitalist control, as organizations have eagerly embraced the flexploitation of short-term contracts and outsourcing as the new template for work ... as we are encouraged to be entrepreneurial subjects scrabbling over each other for success in a so-called 'meritocracy'."" - Radical Philosophy, November 2010"

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Andrew Ross is Professor of American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including No-Collar, Fast Boat to China, No Respect, Strange Weather, and, from NYU Press, Anti-Americanism and Real Love.

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