No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

The Detroit Sym­phony Orches­tra (DSO) has been on strike for 19 weeks now. This is not Detroit’s first exper­i­ence of con­flict between cap­ital and labour: after all, this is the city where Henry Ford learned how to con­trol dis­sat­is­fac­tion and labour turnover, where Ford — like GM and Chrysler — have spent years man­aging layoffs…

Up the lad­der, to unscrew the old satel­lite dish. Down the lad­der, it’s tucked under his arm. Back up the lad­der. You’ve got to be care­ful get­ting onto the roof, with that thing under your arm. The rest’ve already fin­ished work, they carry on drinking.

Daniel Bell died this week. He was 91. He wrote (amongst other books) The com­ing of post-industrial soci­ety: a ven­ture in social fore­cast­ing [1] (1973), where he foresaw a change to the social struc­ture of the US, and com­par­able soci­et­ies. Indus­trial pro­duc­tion will mat­ter less than ser­vice and know­ledge indus­tries; man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­duc­tion work will decline…

These days, when I travel from Brad­ford to Col­chester, I change at Peter­bor­ough onto the slow National Express East Anglia ser­vice through Ely, Whittle­sea, March, Stow­mar­ket, Diss and Ipswich. It’s an alien land­scape to me; no moor­land, no dry stone walls, no curves, it has neither the soft­ness nor the drama or the green of…

New­castle He left school at 16. Left before he was thrown out, that’s how it felt. Out, and straight to the dole office. Twenty years earlier and he’d have gone up to the shipyards, with his Dad. Twenty years after and it’d be the call centres, where his sis­ter is now. But it was 1992,…

Oh it’s snow­ing. Par­ents stay at home because the kids’ school is closed. Not even the 4x4 drivers can get up the hill to work; the buses have been can­celled, and it’d be a long walk in. And count­less pounds are being lost as the work­force stays away (snow chaos costs £1.2bn a day). It’s…

In a state of hyper-precarity, work becomes chi­meric; you must aspire to it, to find it, to love it, but it dis­ap­pears in reces­sion, and with pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing cuts and private sec­tor retrench­ment. You must be work­ing, or you don’t count as a cit­izen. You’re lazy, work­shy, a bene­fit scroun­ger. Such is the political…

Cor­rec­tion In Roma Cent­rale train sta­tion, there is a wait­ress who offers table ser­vice. Most cus­tom­ers buy from the bar; why not, it’s cheaper. People from all over the world pass through the sta­tion, and few of us under­stand the Italian ser­vice cul­ture and its demarc­a­tion of space. We sit at a table, two Brit­ish, two…

Melton, Suf­folk, Sat­urday 9th Octo­ber. It’s marked on o/s explorer map 197 (28/51) just as ‘works’, and I don’t know what this place used to make. The works are closed now [one], though I don’t think they’ve been closed for long. The chip­board is too new [two], the fences haven’t been broken down, there’s not…

Here is Stephen Trick­ett, car­penter, cut­ting a piece of mdf on a saw. Watch him con­cen­trate. The saw moves. The wood moves. The body moves. But his head? His head, his eyes, they scarcely shift. Just once, he looks down. This reit­er­ates the stu­pid­ity of a sep­ar­a­tion between men­tal and manual labour; he is con­cen­trat­ing on…