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

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…

A while ago, Dawn wrote about the trousers her friend wears for build­ing and plumb­ing jobs. I recently inter­viewed a car­penter, who took a novel approach to res­cuing his cloth­ing from the dam­ages of his work: good, thick tape. “The work trousers always go at the zip”, he says.

That stal­wart of Amer­ican Cap­it­al­ism, the Ford Motor Com­pany has done a lot for social sci­ence. Trainee eco­nom­ists learn about Dodge Broth­ers vs Ford, tak­ing from the judge­ment either the text­book les­son that com­pan­ies are run to max­im­ise share­holder profit, or a les­son in sharp prac­tice from Henry Ford’s attempt to squeeze out minor­ity shareholders…

To build this, first unload your lor­ries and put lots of things into tidy piles… You need these…

The open­ing scene of Con­flu­ence (Akram Khan and Nitin Sawney, Sadlers Wells 2010) is a story about hav­ing your pass­port taken away for check­ing. The bor­der guards watch you, their eyes con­tain the power of the state. You watch your pass­port leave the room, you hope it reappears.