Useful work or useless toil
Much of the present generation will never know full-time employment. Richard Swift argues that we need to think about how to distribute work and income in a new way.

Street wise
Peter Stalker on the way people work without jobs on the streets of Third World cities.

Worshipping work
It is only recently that we have been conned into our current neurosis about full-time jobs. Walter Johnson looks at the history of how it happened.

Reasons to work
An NI guide to those jobs that contribute to a healthier world and those that have the opposite effect.

Quality control
Stanley Aronowitz explodes the myth that new technologies can improve the nature of our work without addressing the question - who makes the decisions?

WORK-THE FACTS

Jarrow 2036
A short story by Carol Fewster.

Mirage of full employment
Left and right cling to jobs as the way forward. Phil Resnick believes that this employment ethic is blinding us to alternatives.

NO KIDDING
The changing face of work.

Running your own show
Martin Stott looks for inspiration to India and a more co-operative way of organizing work.

Worth Reading on... WORK

The subject of work has always bothered me. So I was pleased I landed the task of putting together an issue on it. So why am I bothered anyway? Well, to start with, I'm lazy - in the course of my experience I have periodically been given a hard time because I like to take it easy. Why should this be so? I also feel a certain ambivalence about having a job - any job.

Working for the NI is in many ways an ideal job. Unlike in some of my previous jobs, such as working in a paint factory, you have a good deal of control and freedom. You have a sense that you are getting to do something worthwhile and sometime readers actually respond - not always positively, but at least you know that some one has been provoked by your efforts. But still you have to be at work every day, you have definite responsibilities, and you can't go and fly a kite all day or read a good book. I can't shake the feeling that my time has been stolen from me.

The funny thing is that when I am unemployed I don't feel better. It should be the time for me to do all those things that I have been dreaming about - travel , reading books, writing about what I think is important. Or perhaps just lying on my back on the dock by the lake - a favourite Canadian pastime - trying to figure out what the clouds look like as they float by. But it isn't that way at all or at least not for long. I begin feeling anxious. Wondering what I should be doing next. It's not just a question of money, although obviously that's important. To some extent it's the isolation - missing the joys of joint effort. But I think the root of it all is that I don't feel defined - a definition that in some way is provided by a job. This angers me. Why can't I provide myself with my own definitions and sense of purpose? I suspect it has something to do with the early and persistent shaping process that we are all subjected to. You aren't a man who barbecues or a woman who goes windsurfing - you are an engineer, a therapist, a garbage collector or 'just' a housewife.

It's as if we can't trust ourselves and our communities to be self-active. We need some kind of official sanction to certify our behaviour. This is certainly society's view. For the captains of industry and the politicians we just don't count unless we have a credit rating and are making a contribution to the Gross National Product. Most importantly we have to have a job - preferably a 'proper' job, as a friend critical of my itinerant ways frequently points out. The powers that be hold to this view in the face of overwhelming evidence that the economy as presently organized cannot possibly provide everyone with 'menial' jobs let alone 'proper' jobs. Promising jobs is obviously the passport to political success. But I think there is deeper reason for the official fixation on the myth of full employment. I get the sense that those with power and influence feel the rest of us need the discipline of work in order to teach us - and keep teaching us - the habits of obedience. Essential if we are to remain grateful for the jobs we are 'given'.

The whole business has a vaguely religious feel to me. and I don't mean liberation theology either. It's 'Idle hands do the Devil's work' spiced by 'he who does not work neither shall he eat'. Obligation peppered with guilt. Workaholics of the world unite. What doing this issue has shown me is that our fixation with a job is decidedly unhealthy. It may also be becoming unnecessary.

Well, so much for the theory. The practice is that I have just had to delay my flight to Toronto in order to finish off all the little details that go into the production of an issue of NI. When I return to the Toronto office - one room in the top of OXFAM Canada's Ontario headquarters - I will have to join my colleague Wayne Ellwood in getting on with the promotion and fund-raising that keeps the operation afloat in the New World.

The central irony of doing an issue critical of our fixation with work was brought out by Mandy - one of my co-editors - who pointed out the absurdity of my working nights and weekends in order to achieve this. I would like to say that this is the only contradiction in my approach to the world. But I doubt any of you would believe me.

Letters
Letter from Mawere
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: a Catholic priest in Soweto
Reviews: including - A Question of Power - Classic
Country profile: Ivory Coast

COVER PHOTO: Richard House
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