Can you recommend articles on work or the workplace?

July 3, 2009 8:12 AM

I am a community college English instructor, and I am working on structuring my Comp I class around the theme of work. Can anyone recommend some thoughtful articles, websites, books (easily excerpted), etc. about work or the workplace? Most of my students have limited reading comprehension skills, so I can’t use anything that is too specialized or advanced. I’m looking for articles on the level of Time or Newsweek. Thanks!
posted by alspeigh to Work & Money (23 answers total)

Studs Terkel's oral history book, Working, may or may not be applicable to your class, but it is a great book showing that everyone has something to say about their job.
posted by sciencegeek at 8:26 AM on July 3, 2009 [4 favorites]

Gig is an excellent collection of essays written by people talking about their jobs. It covers dozens of different jobs, including a rubber executive, a Wal*Mart, a train engineer and a drug dealer. All of the essays are only a few pages long and none are too taxing. Most of the essays are surprisingly entertaining and fun to read.
posted by Alison at 8:27 AM on July 3, 2009

There's the Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I read it in eighth grade; it's not that hard.
posted by bananafish at 8:28 AM on July 3, 2009

Strongly, stridently, seconding Working and Gig.
posted by box at 8:34 AM on July 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You really do have to show this in class. It's a 20 minute lecture given at TED this past December by Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs. I won't give it away, but it's a brilliant discussion about the way we as modern people think about work. He's wonderfully insightful.
posted by valkyryn at 8:35 AM on July 3, 2009

This is not an article, but I think What Work Is by Philip Levine is a great poem about the nature of work, and its relationship to love.
posted by OmieWise at 8:41 AM on July 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

For our first semester comp, we used to use the anthology "Reading Culture," which had a section of readings on work. You can see the table of contents here. I've also taught Barbara Ehrenreich's "Maid to Order," an April 2000 Harper's article that she later developed into part of Nickle and Dimed. It usually gets students talking, whether they agree with Ehrenreich or not (and many of them don't), and it's a good starting point for discussion about gender and labor.
posted by bibliowench at 9:08 AM on July 3, 2009

Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I first came across it as a magazine article (sorry, can't remember where), and then later when the book came out, read the book. Very engaging, easy to read. Great read to motivate students to get their college degree or learn a profession.
posted by jujube at 9:10 AM on July 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

There's a new book out by a guy who did a PhD in philosophy, got a couple of "brain" jobs (eg at a think tank) and disliked it so much that he quit to run his own motorcycle repair shop. The book argues that hands-on jobs like motorcycle repair can be more satisfying than white-collar jobs because they often involve more actual thinking and independent judgment with immediate consequences. The book is called Shop Class As Soulcraft. I've seen it excerpted in a few places, might google to see if you can find one of them.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:14 AM on July 3, 2009

Yes Yes YES to Working, Gig, and Nickled and Dimed.
posted by bookmammal at 9:19 AM on July 3, 2009

Also, John McPhee has had a series of articles in the New Yorker about people who work in various forms of transportation. One that comes to mind is a profile of a truck driver named Don Ainsworth.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:19 AM on July 3, 2009

The book by the motorcycle guy is not as good as I thought it would be. Working with hands, good, he says. Yes. But owning his repair shop is not the same as being a plumber for an oil delivery company, or doing carpentry for a construction firm--you are simply not in the same situation as working and owning the firm. He makes a fine point, though: blue collar work will all go to China; white collar to India. Only that which requires hands on will soon be available in America.

Nickled and Dimed ok but ushes a thesis about inequality for workers, esp. for women. Problem: most Americans bought into the anti-union notion and so we are now part of a not-nice system.

WORKING as good as it gets. Why? eventually, student readers will see what makes for work satisfaction as the interviews develop and cover so many possible jobs.
The book is (10 in paper, (2) enough there for a full text (3) easy of access (4) stories gripping.
posted by Postroad at 9:25 AM on July 3, 2009

Alain de Botton's The Pleasures And Sorrows of Work is a British POV on working and what it is and why we do it.

Recommended for the parts on him following a high-flying accountant around for a day [ending with said accountant drinking alone in his kitchen after being the office 'star' that day] and also following around a woman who works on slogans for biscuit makers, slumped at her desk under undue stress if the next marketing campaign fails. Also covers a career advisor for a day and how he handles advising staff of a local manufacturing plant that's just been laid off.

The book can be a bit tedious at times - well, more like *depressing* - but an interesting insight into the rat race, etc.

Amazon link
posted by Chorus at 9:27 AM on July 3, 2009

Life Work by Donald Hall.
posted by ericb at 9:34 AM on July 3, 2009

Also--Selling Ben Cheever by (oddly enough) Ben Cheever, who happens to be the son of John Cheever. It relates his experiences of working in the service industry--sandwich shop, book store, big box electronics store, car dealership, etc--after his writing career stalled in the mid-nineties. Interesting and gets you thinking about how our jobs help to define our self-worth. Chapters should be able to be exerpted for your purpose.
posted by bookmammal at 9:38 AM on July 3, 2009

I took an English class at Rutgers in the '90's that was completely devoted to the topic. Studs Terkel's Working (mentioned above) was the first book we read, and it was fantastic. It's rooted in the time it was written (nearly 40 years ago and hence not politically correct,) but it's truly a brilliant work. We then read Nickled and Dimed (and a few photocopied essays) by Ehrenreich and The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure by Juliet Schor.

Worth noting that both Ehrenreich and Schor are generally anti-corporate America.
posted by zarq at 9:43 AM on July 3, 2009

I've got a few very short, easy-to-read magazine articles by Japanese corporate executives who compare Japan and US workplaces/work ethics. They would be ideal for students with the abilities you describe and the opinions in the articles would likely spark debate. I use them in class myself.

Memail me if you are interested and I will send them after the holiday weekend.
posted by vincele at 9:51 AM on July 3, 2009

nthing others:

I came to recommend Terkel's "Working" (especially, as I recall, the introduction, which contains a memorable line to the effect that, since it is a book about work, it is also a book about human misery), and Levine's "What Work Is" (in particular the title poem and "Burned"). Levine is a very plainspoken, rust belt poet: it wouldn't be hard.

I read a review of "Shop Class as Soulcraft" that panned the hell out of it for basically being a celebration of machoness.

Other suggestions about manual labour:

Michael Ondaatje, "In the Skin of a Lion."
Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" or "In Dubious Battle"
posted by Beardman at 10:22 AM on July 3, 2009

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot Bertrand Russell's essay, "In Praise of Idleness".
posted by Beardman at 10:24 AM on July 3, 2009

Douglas Coupland's Microserfs.
posted by skewedoracle at 12:18 PM on July 3, 2009

Arlie Hochschild's "The Managed Heart" has very readable sections about being a flight attendant and about gendered "emotional labor." I've taught it to working-class students very successfully in the past. It's dated, but the concept of emotional labor is highly relevant.

I taught a course on working class culture for several years to primarily blue collar students back in the 90s (college level). Don't dumb it down *too* much; the biggest favor you can do for students from disadvantaged or low-literacy backgrounds is to teach them to read with their minds and not just their eyes.
posted by fourcheesemac at 4:44 PM on July 3, 2009

1) Rivethead (memoirs of a union worker in an automobile factory; a different kind of job than others covered here)

2) Max Barry's Company or Sugar (the former is an Office Space or Microserfs novel, the latter more marketing in fantasyland. They're both totally contrary examples to some of the more serious literature above)
posted by whatzit at 6:21 PM on July 3, 2009

Seconding Ben Hamper's Rivethead. Also, you could check out a couple of books from Iain Levison - A Working Stiff's Manifesto and Since the Layoffs. I'm not sure if those books are quite the tone you're going for, but I enjoyed all of them.
posted by just_ducky at 9:45 AM on July 4, 2009