All Day Long

by Joanna Biggs (contributor)

The average person spends 100,000 hours of their life at work, but how much do we really know about what we do with it? What is it really like to work in advertising, to be a train driver, a sex worker or an orthodox rabbi? What do we do in our working hours, and how does that colour our life, beliefs and happiness? And what happens to how we feel about work in a recession? In "All Day Long" Joanna Biggs finds the answers to these questions and more, by talking to the interns and bosses, professionals and entrepreneurs, and thinkers and doers who make up the workforce. Her journey takes us from Parliament to the long grassed fields of the Outer Hebrides, from a hospital in Wales to the wings of the Royal Opera House, introducing us to the different worlds of work and the people who inhabit them. Full of human detail and street level observation, Joanna Biggs' writing combines genuine empathy with social, cultural and political awareness. Like Studs Terkel's classic book "Working" did several decades ago in America, her book paints a portrait of the UK right now, showing us who we are through what we do.

Genres: Nonfiction, Labor, British Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 2015

Reviews

[Emma]

Very interesting book, but for me there was something lacking. If the author had met the subjects on more than one occasion, I think we would have had a very different book. I am a huge fan of Tony Parker, and really I should know that his style of writing cannot be bettered. The author meets many different people but it all seems to be on a very superficial level, which is a real shame. I am probably being grossly unfair to compare her to Parker, the Don of this type of genre (not really quite sure how to describe it!) but comparisons are necessary as she is doing a similar thing to what he did. I think the reason it fails, for me, is that we get an opinion from the author, where I think the subject should be allowed to speak and then let us, as readers decide.

[Ali]

Joanna Biggs, an editor at the London Review of Books, travelled the length of Britain to uncover fascinating stories of workers from as far apart as the Outer-Hebrides, Wales, Westminster and the industrial midlands. I am sure that undertaking such a project was a daunting one for the author – which jobs to choose? Which leave out? All Day Long is divided into 11 main chapters: an introductory opening with workers in a charity shop sets the book in some context and describes briefly how the book came into being at all. Then, each chapter takes a different area of the working world, entitled simply: Making, Selling, Serving, Caring Leading etc. concluding with a chapter about the school Biggs herself attended as a child, to discover what the children today want to be when they grow up. In each chapter we meet the people Biggs spoke to, a variety of voices sharing their world with us, we hear about when they get up what they do each day, how they first started and what they think of their work. The book is very current, set against a back drop of the economic downturn, and the upcoming General Election of 2015, it gives voice to people who aren’t always heard.

Full review; https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...

[Laura]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
In 1974, the US broadcaster Studs Terkel talked to Americans "About what they do all day, and how they feel about what they do". His book telling their stories, Working, became a seminal tract in social history, and left an indelible print of how Americans worked and felt in the seventies.

Biggs has revisited Terkel's model in her tour of contemporary Britain - her interviewees including a lawyer, care worker, fishmonger, giggle doctor (yes, there really is such a thing), ballet dancer, quiz writer and potter, among many others. The book is a beautifully-observed portrait of the United Kingdom at work in the twenty-first century.

Episode 1: The Lawyer

Joanna Biggs is an assistant editor at the London Review of Books. She was born in Willesden, North-West London, in 1982.

Readers: Ben Crowe, Teresa Gallagher, David Holt, Colleen Prendergast, Michelle Terry and Thom Tuck

Abridged by Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

[Alex Watson]

Interesting series of vignettes where the author interviews people about work. Some of the stories are affecting and full of lively detail, but overall the patchwork effect doesn't coalesce into anything greater or stronger. An eloquent final few pages on the future work, framed by a visit by the author to her old school, hints frustratingly at something bolder, more cohesive - and unrealised. 

[Bettie]

BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b061ckdt

Description: In 1974, the US broadcaster Studs Terkel talked to Americans "About what they do all day, and how they feel about what they do". His book telling their stories, Working, became a seminal tract in social history, and left an indelible print of how Americans worked and felt in the seventies.

Biggs has revisited Terkel's model in her tour of contemporary Britain - her interviewees including a lawyer, care worker, fishmonger, giggle doctor (yes, there really is such a thing), ballet dancer, quiz writer and potter, among many others. The book is a beautifully-observed portrait of the United Kingdom at work in the twenty-first century.

Episode 1: The Lawyer

2: The Giggle Doctor and the Care Worker

3: The Ballet Dancer

4: The Fishmonger

5: The Quiz Writer and the Potter

Joanna Biggs is an assistant editor at the London Review of Books. She was born in Willesden, North-West London, in 1982.

Readers: Ben Crowe, Teresa Gallagher, David Holt, Colleen Prendergast, Michelle Terry and Thom Tuck

Abridged by Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

[Judith]

Some interesting bits, but personally I would've liked it to include some of the more 'common' jobs like doctors, police, binmen etc.

3 and-a-half stars.

[Laurie]

Honestly surprised how much value I got out of this book! Incredibly insightful glimpses into different careers and lives that I would never had thought to gain perspective on. Would highly recommend!

[Desmond Reid]

It's what most of us of do every day. It defines most of our active life. Yet, is work who we really are? Joanne Biggs travels from Westminster to the Outer Hebrides to answer the question: are we really more than what we do?

As an ex - pat nearing the tipping point where I have lived more abroad than in my country of birth, my own relationship to the UK has been diiminised by time and distance. Yet, I am curious to know what is like for most people working in Britain today, which peeked my interest when I came upon this book on my last visit to my home town. Biggs study of what work and what it means to a wide cross section of people of those she interviewed, provides a very real reflection of the British character. While being celebratory of the national spirit I can recognize, more disturbingly, it also shows the real reality of the underlaying forces effecting the population as a whole.

From high achievers - 'you do make your own luck' to the unemployed forced to attend a mandatory work program, Biggs attempts to find a human face to those who work across the infinite variety of jobs today. Crofters, a Lord, Sex worker, Rabbi, Cleaner and Army Major. This portray of Britain today, shows a country very much taken with the more extreme model of capitalism as seen in the US. Corporate interest as against Britain post war welfare model. When the pursuit of profit is as pervasive as it now appears to be in today's Britain, those that can, benefit significantly. Those that can't, find it increasingly difficult to keep up. Britain is still a significant player in the global economy, yet as one reads the testimonies of this varied cohort, one can't help feeling regardless where on the economic spectrum, the majority are finding it hard to keep up. Zero hour contracts, unpaid internships and graduates with seemingly worthless degrees paint a picture of a very cynical and divided country.

Britain's significance as a manufacturing industry has slowly been diminished to administration masquerading as service: HR, PR and services that feel pointless to those that do them and most wouldn't miss if they disappeared. Maybe it was the contrast between what T, a call centre advisor stated: 'The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. Yet virtually no one talks about it' to daily life of a Rabbi in Bury which stuck out. Britain appears more divided than ever, between the haves and have not's. All those between are increasingly finding hard to provide.

Biggs study still shows the resilience of the British that shines through. Yet as the checks and measures of the post war egalitarian welfare system is slowly dismantled, to provide the best conditions for business to thrive, people will suffer when they are increasingly seen as faceless pawn of the machine.

An interesting read what shows what makes Britain still great today - the people who live there. Yet, a nation increasingly enamoured to a model that exist in the US: Business first, people second also provides stark reading here.
Biggs touches on an idea gaining significant traction - a guaranteed annual income. Replacing benefits with a minimum income above poverty for all, has been tried before in Manitoba in the 1970's. It reduced poverty, less use of health care, increased high school completion rates and fewer work place injuries. I can hear corporate lobby screaming now. Yet, a healthier more equal society benefits all - including the very corporations that need a educated and viable workforce that can change within a global economy.

Biggs intention was to show we are more than our work. Surely a more humane society can coexist with corporate interests which benefit as all.
7/10

[EunSeong]

This is a beautifully written book on the meaning, nature, joys and travails of work in modern Britain. It is reminiscent of Studs Terkel’s book “Working”, where he interviewed people from all walks of life in the 70s in America.

Biggs writes with lyrical detail the movements of people at their craft, such as pot glazers or shoe makers. She writes engagingly of what might otherwise be considered the mundane day-to-day activities of care workers, hereditary lords, apprentices, and dancers. The changing nature of work and the implications of what it means to people today over a swathe of different occupations, inevitably affected by the global economy and the financial crisis of 2008, lends to tension that is acknowledged but understandably unresolved. It is, for some, between work that one loves and the exploitation of their labour because of the unliveable pay, or work one must do to survive within a shrinking benefits and growing workfare system. The former is a battle against an overarching economic system of capitalist exploitation, the latter with the influence of the same economic system changing the nature of a citizen’s relationship with the state.

Her reflections of work versus life are what one would hope is obvious, but understandably forgotten in today’s productivity-obsessed, money-driven, job-focused world — that one’s job does not define a person’s entire being either in their character, identity, or worth. One person she interviews who is forced to take on a job of ‘furniture deconstructor’ states that what he does all day is not who he is. Nor is he the only one who expresses that view in the book. The dangers of emphasising workfare, she writes, “ingrains the idea that every citizen of the UK is simply a past, current or potential worker” — nothing more and nothing less.

Biggs weaves in historical context to add depth to our understanding where appropriate while introducing her subjects and telling their stories. Her own viewpoints never crowd out or take centre stage from their lives. She only briefly alludes to or touches upon her own reflections regarding the problems of work and her own concluding views throughout her interviews. The idea of a universal basic income, for example, as “a way of reimagining our relationship to the state” would mean that “work would no longer be so important” and possibly kill off the “unproductive ‘bullshit’ and low-paid jobs that have proliferated since 2008 in the UK.” Or, after listening to the experiences of those she interviewed, her wish that the way work is organised in a society be more fair, and a hope “for more resistance to the way it’s organised now” is only very briefly reflected on in the conclusion, rather than an obvious recurring or running theme throughout the book. Instead, she lets the people interviewed in their own words and lived experiences speak for themselves regarding these issues. She notes the incredible significance work has over our lives, observing that “Work is now one of the ways we understand ourselves, how we give our lives meaning when religion, party politics and community fall away.” She ultimately concludes, however, that the good life can be one where work doesn’t mean being subsumed by it: “When we ask someone: ‘What do you do?’, we’re not asking who they are. If nothing else, I hope this book shows that we are all more than what we do all day.”

[Chris]

As an Anglophile who's always interested in learning more about British culture, I found this book worthwhile. I enjoyed hearing from people who do obscure and/or uniquely British jobs: a maker of ballet shoes, a Parliamentary "spad," a crofter, a hereditary lord, etc. I didn't expect the book to also profile a handful of people who don't have paid jobs: volunteers at a charity shop, a stay-at-home mum, someone who was unemployed, someone on workfare, etc. If I had one complaint about how Biggs chose her subjects, it's that she sometimes targeted folks in low-wage professions who were already public figures in their fields (e.g., involved in unionization efforts). I suppose such people are more likely to be willing to talk, but I'm not sure how typical their experience in that job is.

Biggs is a journalist, not a sociologist, so you can't expect her to have chosen her subjects to be representative or to try to draw rigorous broader conclusions about society from their experiences. Indeed, she often digresses from her interviews into literature, politics, or just plain opinion. But at their best, her conversations do answer her central question: "I've tried to capture what work...feels like seven years into a financial crisis. When our work is less reliable, less remunerative even, how do we feel about it?" (p. 15) (Note that the book was published in 2015, so definitely no comment on the nature of work during or post-pandemic.)

[Lucia]

This might be a bit cruel considering the amount of work that must have gone into this book (into any book for that matter) but I found it unrepresentative and at the same time trying to be 'different'. On one hand it represents the current Britain at work so it should consist of all the common and expected jobs and people you would most expect in them, or on the other it represents the changing dynamics of the modern workplace in Britain.

I have to say, it failed my expectations on both fronts- it had male scientist, female home maker, female Eastern European prostitute...but! non-white female business woman. Why not female scientist and male prostitute/gigolo instead? Just throwing it in...

The literature overview throughout was interesting- as an illustration what you might not have read yet, but then it should have kept to one approach or the other and not mix it with the most expected exemption. Honest opinion here.

[Alexander Van Leadam]

The subject and the portraits of various professions and jobs would have made a fascinating series of short radio or TV programmes. In a book they seem rather superficial and at times boring. We get a lot of conventional wisdom about work, money society and the rest, as well as a few insights onto things not widely or well known, plus a convincing mixture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The author offers a basic classification of labour types but at the end there is little that even turns the book into a true kaleidoscope of Britain at work.

[Ruth]

c2015: Ookaaay. Not the book to read when you have worries about job retention. In fact, it turned out to be a really scary book with some really interesting stats. A good range of jobs were portrayed and some chapters were very insightful indeed. Well written in an easy and fluid style. "Up to 81%of off-street sex workers in London come from elsewhere, and a quarter are from Eastern Europe."

[Yellowoasis]

By turns depressing and inspiring about what people do 'at work'. Work is such a conundrum: it's necessary (usually) to earn money; it gives shape to our days and gives us dignity (sometimes); it's mundane and boring and nobody wants to do it.

[Catherine Walker]

Knowing the topic is quite dry, I still found the book a bit of a slog to read through but ultimately found it interesting and provided plenty of food for thought

[Nancy Chiok]

The book is interesting as it shares what work is like in the UK.
As an individual who has only been to the UK in the nineties, it is like an update in my view.
Somehow the financial crisis has affected UK and most people in the book described their daily lives as well as their dreams.
For someone living outside of the UK, it is interesting and is a general knowledge to understand about how unemployment benefits are given out and so on.
To me, it is also refreshing to gain a good knowledge about everyday lives that most of us tend to assume or it is what it is.