Susan Hornbeck
A QUARTERLY OF NEW WRITING & IDEAS
The Way
We Work
Edited by JULIANNE SCHULTZ • Edition 45
PUBLISHED AUGUST 2014 • RRP $27.99 / NZ $35.00
The way we work has changed profoundly in recent
years.
Australians are now near the top of the list of working
hours in developed countries; a substantial and growing
proportion of people work part-time with multiple
employers – not all by choice; unpaid internships are
the normal entry path for young people; women are
no longer forced to resign when they marry or become
pregnant, but the wage gap remains; manufacturing and
agricultural jobs have given way to working in services,
and now those jobs that don’t actually demand hands on
contact are also moving offshore.
Many welcome the flexibility of the new environment.
For others, though, it represents a deepening of risk and
insecurity. The proletariat is giving way to what has been
called the precariat, a new class who lack the stability and
certainty of regular work or predictable social welfare.
Griffith REVIEW 45: The Way We Work explores the
extraordinary structural changes in work caused by
technology, globalisation, economic theory, the collapse
of the unions and an ageing population.
Featuring essays from Ashley Hay, Gideon Haigh, Mandy
Sayer, Rebecca Huntley, Peter Mares, Josephine Rowe
and more, The Way We Work asks: How does work shape
our values, our citizens, cultures and communities? As
our work changes, how will it change us? How does the
blurring of work and leisure through ‘access anywhere’
technology affect our attitudes to work? How are
older Australians going to find consistent and flexible
work (as the government wants them to do) when age
discrimination is rife? Will flexible work help decrease
the gender gap?
M E D I A R E L E A S E • g r i f f i t h re v i ew. c o m
UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL
23 JULY 2014
REVIEW COPIES/INTERVIEW
To request a review copy, or to arrange an
interview with one or more of the contributors,
please contact:
Susan Hornbeck
[email protected] • 0434 01 30 80
Australia is not America, where millions struggle
to make ends meet with inadequate jobs and social
support, or one of those European countries where
unemployment rates have reached well into double
digits and remained there for years, or one of the many
countries where work itself may be life threatening.
But even here work is less secure and less predictable,
forcing us to adapt. We exist in professional landscapes
that didn’t exist fifteen years ago, that are still being
altered and transformed today, and that are probably
all but incomprehensible to our parents’ generation.
One thing remains constant though, work is essential
to economic wellbeing and meaning, so getting it
right is important.
Includes
FREE ebook
WHEN WE
WERE KINGS
The changing face
of journalism
• More and more Australian pensioners are cultivating
and/or selling illegal drugs to top-up their income, and
ensure regular visitors. MANDY SAYER’s father did
it, and she travels from Nimbin to the Gold Coast to
Sydney to meet other pensioners happily selling and
manufacturing drugs.
• Asylum seekers living in the community in Australia
are denied the right to work. PETER MARES argues
that to deny the right to work is to deny a fundamental
source of human dignity with impacts on physical and
mental health. The human and financial costs of such a
policy could be very great indeed.
• Malaysia is home to one of the largest refugee
populations in the Asia–Pacific. Anthropologist
GERHARD HOFFSTAEDTER discovers that much of
the Malaysian economy is facilitated by the influx of
illegal and undocumented workers who toil with little
or no protection. Work for them is an act of survival.
• Filmmaker ANDREW BELK works in the developing
world creating digital campaigns for child welfare. He
explains what resonates with the audience, Australian
Youth, and moves them to act through the lens of a trip
to Ethiopia.
• HAYLEY KATZEN examines the trade of domestic
workers from Hong Kong to Johannesburg and
differing cultural attitudes towards housecleaning and
a home of one’s own.
• LIZ TEMPLE shines new light on the debate of Australia’s
gendered wage gap and lack of females in executive
positions in a witty, thought-provoking and engaging
essay. Her sharp analysis tackles common myths
head on, while also offering well-argued critiques of
proposed solutions such as gender quotas.
• KRISTI MANSFIELD stresses the importance of female
entrepreneurship to Australia, the potential to go global
and the impact women are already making on the local
innovation and tech start-up culture.
• GILLIAN BOURAS, born of pioneer stock, reflects on
the differences between her own attitudes to work and
that of her mother-in-law, born and raised in rural
Greece where unremitting labour was the only way of
guaranteeing food and shelter.
CONTRIBUTORS
• In a broad-ranging essay, award-winning author
ASHLEY HAY explores the way species adapt or become
extinct, and looks at jobs that have become extinct. She
draws parallels with the insecurity that climate change
provokes and wonders at our ability to adapt to new
professional landscapes.
• GIDEON HAIGH examines the shift from blue collar
to white collar and service sector jobs and asks: How
does work shape our values, our citizens, cultures and
communities? As our work changes, how will it change
us?
The automotive industry did not simply make cars: it made
lives, by helping its workers build families, towns, suburbs and
networks of relations. – Gideon Haigh
• Freelance writer and editor VIRGINIA LLOYD
‘commutes’ from her bedroom in New York to her
clients in Australia via Skype. Despite the promise of
flexibility, she argues, freelance ‘knowledge economy’
workers are a powerless group, as well as a precarious
one.
• DAVID PEETZ explores the history of work in Australia
and argues that we, as a society, face choices that affect
what we do, the way we work, the nature of work, and
who benefits and who suffers from it. Our choices affect
millions of others.
One person’s flexibility is another person’s insecurity. The
mythology of the ‘portfolio’ career, as if somehow workers like
to be shunted from industry to industry over their lifetime,
hides the fact that workers are treated as more disposable than
before. – David Peetz
• Having too much to do in the home and a lack of
flexibility in the workplace are seen as key obstacles
to mothers maintaining fulfilling careers. And yet
REBECCA HUNTLEY discovers that casual ‘flexible’
jobs are slowly forcing women out of the middle class.
• Improved health and longevity means that more
people are looking for something to fill that 20 years
or so beyond what used to be ‘retirement age’. DARRYL
DYMOCK looks at the reasons people return to work
post-retirement, and discovers the very real problem of
age discrimination.
M E D I A R E L E A S E • g r i f f i t h re v i ew. c o m
‘Griffith REVIEW
is a cornucopia
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MORE CONTRIBUTORS
• In a very funny memoir, DMETRI KAKMI recalls
working at the less-than-glamorous Hoyts Cinemas on
Bourke Street, Melbourne in the mid 1980s.
• We rarely consider the wellbeing and experiences of
doctors. Forced into rushed consultations by Medicare
and waiting room economics, LUCY MAYES’ moving
essay looks at the stress that doctors experience by being
unable to take ‘time to care’, leading to burnout and even
suicide.
• JULIE JAMES BAILEY reflects on the School of Air
near Alice Springs and the unbalanced education of
Aboriginal children in comparison to isolated white
children. She looks at the lack of appropriate literacy
programs in remote and indigenous communities.
• On the eve of another Australian tour, journalist and
music writer CRAIG McGREGOR recalls his up-down
relationship with Bob Dylan since 1966, and argues he is
the greatest songwriter since Homer.
• As snow blankets the Montreal cityscape outside her
window, JOSEPHINE ROWE explores her ongoing battle
with depression.
• With fiction by GREGORY DAY, PADDY O’REILLY,
ADAM NARNST, ELIZABETH WOODS and MELANIE
CHENG.
• With poetry by JUSTIN CLEMENS and JOHN
WATSON.
• Includes a free e-book When We Were Kings examining
the changing face of journalism featuring PHIL BROWN,
FRANK ROBSON, RACHEL BUCHANAN, SONYA
VOUMARD and KATHRYN KNIGHT.
• Online essays by TANVEER AHMED, RACHEL
FLYNN, FRANCES GUO, ANNEE LAWRENCE,
KATE McMURRAY, JENNY SINCLAIR and poetry by
DUNCAN RICHARDSON and LAURA JAN SHORE.
M E D I A R E L E A S E • g r i f f i t h re v i ew. c o m
ABOUT THE EDITOR
JULIANNE SCHULTZ AM FAHA is the founding editor of
Griffith REVIEW, the award-winning literary and public
affairs quarterly journal. Professor Schultz Chairs the
Australian Film Television and Radio School, is a member
of Australia Council for the Arts’ Pool of Peers and was
until recently a non-executive director of the boards of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Grattan Institute.
Julianne is an acclaimed author, and in 2009 became a
Member of the Order of Australia for services to journalism
and the community
REVIEW COPIES/INTERVIEW
To request a review copy, or to arrange an
interview with one or more of the contributors,
please contact:
Susan Hornbeck
[email protected] • 0434 01 30 80
UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL
23 JULY 2014
Includes
FREE ebook
WHEN WE
WERE KINGS
The changing face
of journalism
