The Photographic Unit of the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information took thousands of photographs during the decade from 1935 – 1945. They reflected all aspects of American life in the period, not just work, but the online collection (of over 160,000 photographs) has a ‘search by subject’ facility. The collection includes, for example, Dorothea Lange’s well-known pictures of a migrant worker family’s living conditions.

The New Deal Administration provided much of its relief to the nation’s unemployed in the form of work relief. The New Deal Network has an extensive collection of photographs, searchable by subject or by agency responsible, as well as other primary source material.

Some of the public work schemes allowed white-collar workers, or those in the creative arts, to use their existing skills. Graphic designers were employed to produce ‘public information’ posters, some directly relating to the world of work. There is a detailed index by subject.

The Federal Writers Project for unemployed writers carried out a number of projects with reference to the world of work. For example, they conducted interviews with ‘ordinary’ Americans to capture their life histories, including information on education, qualifications and work. For an account of the Federal Writers’ Project, and a sample of the life histories they collected, see this online collection.

The same project also interviewed many elderly African-Americans who had been born into slavery, thus offering an important window into the experiences of enforced labour.

The Farm Security Administration ran a number of camps for migrant workers, many of whom were attracted to California in the hope of obtaining seasonal work in agriculture. There is an online collection of various sources describing the daily experience of residents of these camps.

Nonsense. It’s work. And the centrality of work, however conceived, to identity is never more clearly revealed when the chance to do it is removed. When business closures or downsizing mean job losses. When Woolworths can’t outlast an economic downturn so women with 20 years of experience lose their purpose (Panorama, BBC, 13th April 2009). Even when inflected with other identity-anxieties (of nationality, as in the Immingham dispute; of gender in arguments over family breadwinner status), it is work.

And there will be more of this. I remember one thing that made sense in A level economics class: hysteresis. Named by economists (see Layard, Nickell and Jackman, 1991), but needing a sociological vision to explain it, refers to a short term rise in unemployment which then sticks. The unemployed find it increasingly hard to get back into work. The longer unemployment lasts, the more likely it is to last a long time. And this is not because unemployment produces fecklessness and a desire to sit around on those generous benefits, as the discourse of benefit-dependency suggests . It is because of the social and psychological impact of joblessness in a world where work matters, and where work identity matters. It is because of losing connection to the world outside home other than in mediated ways. It is because, regardless of fault, when hard work is a virtue not working means a lack of virtue. And it is also about a loss of skills. But to only refer to skill is to miss out the central significance – unemployment is felt and lived with, it is more than a status.

Bibliography

1. Bauman, Z (2005) Work, consumerism and the new poor. 2nd Ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
2. Layard, R., Nickell, S. and Jackman, R. (1991) Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Ransome, P. (2005) Work, consumption and culture: affluence and social change in the twenty-first century. London: Sage Publications.

cash registers by Lynne Pettinger

Though they don’t half make it hard. I’ve been looking in all sorts of fancy-pants shops for door handles, one’s that don’t even have to turn: the simplest of technologies, and fundamental to the effectiveness of a door. One shopkeeper promises to call once they’ve checked stock, but never does. One looks at me in shock, “we do not DO doorhandles” he booms, forbiddingly and indeed forebodingly for the future of his empty shop. In the next shop, she’s on the phone. The one after used to sell door handles but doesn’t anymore, the next might sell them in the future as quite a few people have been asking. I end up on Ebay.

There’s a little more to this post than just a rant about bad customer service. It’s not insightful to say that to ‘survive’ the recession, a business must deliver on customer service, especially when it is selling luxury. It makes me sound like a cheap consultant. Why the failure to serve then, in a month where fear of business failure must be present in all these traders minds? Well, to some extent its about class; there’s a difficulty in delivering service when you’re the boss and when customer service is coded as low status. It is also about the greater demands for emotional labour produced by the recession: pretty pink presents for women don’t sell themselves in a recession; this makes it hard for ephemera shops to survive. And for the shopkeeper to put on a friendly face now involves forgetting creditors pressing, it demands not thinking about the newly empty shop next door, not reading newspaper advice columns telling customers how to cut back spending by not buying the very things your shop sells. It’s harder emotional labour. And if you never needed customer service skills pre-recession, you’ve a whole lot more to learn now even as you’ve a lot more to forget about. So if a small trader in a fripperies shop tries to smile at you; be nice back – it’s harder for her than you imagine.