
Issue No 52		05 May 2000

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Review

A Book to Set the Left Right

Reproduced from The Australian Financial Review, May 3

The Australian Finacial Review's Stephen Long gives his verdict on 'Tales from the new Shop Floor'.

''This book, being about work, is by its very nature about violence - to the spirit as well as to the body,'' Studs Terkel wrote in Working, his seminal oral history. ``It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is above all (or beneath all) about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among many of us.''

Twenty-eight years later, a Sydney author has followed in Terkel's footsteps, telling the story of people's working lives as the industrial age gives way to the information economy. His conclusion? Terkel's grim take on the world of work is an anachronism. The jobs that are emerging today are less secure, but they are also less routine, boring, and soul destroying.

``The Information Age is delivering smarter and more satisfying jobs for those prepared and equipped to embrace it,'' Peter Lewis writes in tales from the new shop floor.

His 15 subjects reflect how work is changing. You won't find factory workers here, but you will meet a call-centre specialist, bush regenerator, web designer, personal trainer and an organic vegetable retailer, among others.

Sole traders, contractors and small business people almost outnumber employees. Full-time employees account for less than half the total. And the young people profiled are confident and unfazed by the tide of instability troubling a generation raised on the certainties of the long boom.

Lewis suggests that the demise of the jobs-for-life era and employer paternalism has empowered a younger generation of workers to take responsibility for their careers and destinies. His personal background lends a heretic quality to the conclusion. As media adviser to the NSW Labor Council and editor of its internet newsletter, Workers Online, Lewis catalogues the downsides of working life today: a litany of alleged transgressions by harsh bosses, the impact on working conditions of ``contracting out'', the toll of workplace stress.

He has pitched the book as an antidote to the political Left's romanticizing of blue collar work and its denigrating as ``McJobs'' many of the emerging service-sector occupations. I'm not sure, however, that he isn't knocking down a straw person. When did anyone argue that underground coal mining or shiftwork on an assembly line was pleasant or fulfilling? And despite Lewis's optimism, his profiles show the harsher side of some ``new'' jobs.

Does Vanessa, the child-care worker, really deserve a meagre $360 a week?

It's questionable how representative his sample is, too. On Lewis's own admission, the subjects are his friends, or friends of friends. With few exceptions, they are young and childless, which makes it a tad easier to embrace uncertainty. Most, like him, are also gifted and creative. Life might be tougher for those born on the wrong side of the bell curve.

These issues aside, his beautifully written profiles convey the dignity that people bring to their working lives the skill and ingenuity involved in jobs sometimes decried as mundane together with their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

I reckon Studs Terkel would approve

Stephen Long's 'Work Relations' column appears in the AFR every Wednesday.

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  Issue 52 contents

Interview: War Stories from the Shakey Isles
After being flat-earthed, New Zealand unions are making a comeback under a new progressive government. Darien Fenton is at the forefront of the resurgence.

Unions: Laying It On the Line
A complex international legal web underpins a long-running South Coast picket.

International: Alive and Kicking
Those representing right wing political forces and strategists for multi-national corporations would be disappointed by the success of the recently concluded Congress of the WFTU in Delhi.

Economics: Fair Trade not Free Trade
The successful MAI and Seattle campaigns have sparked a new debate about the role of the World Trade Organization.

History: The Manchester Movement
Manchester, in Asa Briggs memorable phrase, was the shock city of the early nineteenth century, a small and obscure market town that in a matter of a few years had become a huge city.

Satire: Passing the Buck
Government report tells bosses how to lie and pass the buck: Reith blames Kemp

Review: A Book to Set the Left Right
The Australian Finacial Review's Stephen Long gives his verdict on 'Tales from the new Shop Floor'.

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» Maternity Protection Goes Global

» Ten Years Hard Labor for Shaw

» Sydney CD's Head For Dili

» May One - Ground Zero

» The Soapbox

» The Locker Room

» Trades Hall

» Tool Shed

» Negotiation - Reith Style

» Propaganda or News?

» A Recipe for Modern Unionism

» Disappointed by May Day Coverage

» Politics in the Pub

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