Edition 45
The Way We Work
- Published 5th August, 2014
- ISBN: 9781922182425
- Extent: 264 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook
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?
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.
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.
Reviews
‘The Griffith Review devotes this edition to all manner of modern work practices, with topics including the “Janus face of flexibility”, the plight of self-funded retirees and negotiating timezones via Skype. A timely and insightful read, and the calibre of writers is impressive.’ Sun Herald/Sunday Age
‘As in all of its collections, the latest Griffith Review provides readers with the tools to go forth into the world armed with an increased understanding of realities so disparate from their own and what they need to do to bridge the inordinate gaps that still prevail.’ ArtsHub
Free eBook Download
When We Were Kings is a free bonus ebook of journalism and stories about journalism created to accompany Griffith Review 45: The Way We Work.
The ebook is dedicated to jailed Australian journalist, Peter Greste and his colleagues, who were given long prison terms by an Egyptian court for doing their jobs.
Features Sonya Voumard, Kathryn Knight, Phil Brown, Frank Robson, Peter Mares, Craig McGregor, Gijs Verbossen and Rachel Buchanan.
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In this Edition
Adaptation
EVERY YEAR, IN first semester, my husband teaches a tertiary course called ‘Biological Adaptation to Climate Change’ to third-year science students in Brisbane. Enrolments have roughly tripled in the time he’s been offering the program, and the students learn about things like the components...
Arbeit macht frei
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The illusionist’s trick
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The choices we make
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Working late
ANNIE WAS WORKING as a secretary when she turned sixty, a milestone she’d always regarded as her retirement age. Although she could have coped financially, she found she wasn’t ready to retire: ‘I felt there were still things that I needed to do out...
Flying high
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Gods and housework
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Not missing in action
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Two men and a picture palace
MANY MOONS AGO, before editing books was a glimmer at the end of my nib, I worked as an usher at Hoyts Midcity Cinemas on Bourke Street in Melbourne. It was the mid 1980s, which puts me in my mid-twenties.I don’t know how I...
Beyond the stethoscope
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Applying life’s lessons
LAST WINTER I was lying in the red dirt in the middle of the Sandover Highway two hundred kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. I was trying to get the jack under my Hilux campervan after a blowout. I remembered the quizzical expression on my...
Downstairs in Ethiopia
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Cross cultural keys to meaning
SOME YEARS BEFORE her death at the age of eighty-eight, Aphrodite, my Greek mother-in-law, gave up walking. There was no physical or medical reason for this; she simply decided that she didn’t want to walk any more and so developed a pattern of moving...
My life with Bob Dylan
STANZA 1 I’D HEARD OF Bob Dylan long before I met him.At the time, in the early ’60s, I was reviewing jazz and folk and pop music for the Sydney Morning Herald and playing folk songs with my brothers, and I was a good mate...
The clear days
I am not pitying myself, because I chose it. Evidently this is the way it has to be. I am committed. It is a question of writing or not writing. There is no other way. If there is, I missed it. Mavis Gallant, The Hunger Diaries 1952 THIS...
Bending over backwards
IN MARCH 2012 I found myself sitting on the floor of a living room in a suburb forty minutes’ drive from the centre of Melbourne. I was surrounded by a tight-knit circle of women in their late thirties. Most of the women – who...
Refuge without work
Shortlisted, 2014 Human Rights Award, Print and Online AwardMY INTERVIEW WITH Mr Syed did not get off to a great start. We’d arranged to meet at the Dandenong library – part of the city council building, a huge, bright orange edifice in the redeveloped...
Disrupting Silicon Beach
IT’S EARLY FEBRUARY 2014 in Paddington, Sydney at a tucked away, charismatic oasis in Underwood Street. Hidden to most people except investment seekers, entrepreneurs and philanthropists, the event is the launch of the Springboard Australia accelerator program for female entrepreneurs. The host is wealthy...
The city circle
I LIVE IN a suburb where no politician lives and therefore the trams run infrequently, often late and without proper brakes. Two, three times a month, when the driver applies a little pressure to the brakes, we are all sent hurtling to the front...
Blue people
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2014I’M BACK WORKING with the Dragon Lady after we both went overseas, again, and changed companies, again, came back to hospitality, again, and accidentally landed in the same shit-hole, again. We all go to our death, some walk, some...
Fit in or f**k off
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what the Pilbara was. I didn’t even know how to spell Karratha properly. I didn’t care about shell middens and Aboriginal petroglyphs and preservation; I just wanted money. ‘Welcome to K-Town, Lil,’ my uncle releases me from a stiff high-vis grip. ‘You’re...
Ticket-holder number 5
FOR AS LONG as she could remember, Tania had carried a canister of capsicum spray in her workbag. She’d never had cause to use it but she believed it was only a matter of time. Last Christmas Eve, Sheila from the Dandenong office, had...
The teacher
MICK FELT EXCITED coming down on the train but got cornered in the carriage by a tall heavy-boned old man with grey hair, who plonked himself down with a suitcase on wheels as they pulled out of Kerang. The man was a slow-talker but...
Aesthetic suicide
My daughter, who loves Andy Warhol, was horrifiedby your Super-8 re-enactment of his attempted executionby Valerie Solanas, who wrapped her bullets in silver foiland went after the bewildered bewigged bigwig like a batoutta hell, ranting it up with the radical ratiocinationsof the SCUM Manifesto,...
The persistence of February 1st 2012
Yesterday Wislawa Szymborska, eight-eight,died. It is the least we can doto return to this announcementand contemplate whether to endor begin the line with this verb. Ten years ago in 2002she published A Few Words on The Soulnoting its selective or infrequent appearances,unwilling to help for...
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