All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work

by Barbara Garson

"Ranks with some of the best work ever done on labor in the United States."â The Village Voice.

Genres: Labor

221 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Barbara Garson is an American playwright, author and social activist, perhaps best known for the play MacBird. Garson attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a B.A. specializing in Classical History in 1964. She was active in the Free Speech Movement, as the editor of The Free Speech Movement Newsletter, which was printed on an offset press that she herself had restored. She was one of 800 arrested on December 2, 1964 at a sit-in at Sproul Hall, Berkeley, following the "Machine Speech" by Mario Savio. In 1968, Garson had a child, Juliet, and in 1969 she went to work at The Shelter Half, an anti-war GI coffee house near Fort Lewis Army base in Tacoma, Washington. In the early 1970s, she moved to Manhattan, publishing short, humorous essays and theater reviews primarily for The Village Voice as well as plays.

Reviews

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book definitely had some serious issues with datedness, despite being an "updated" edition. There is a lot of hippy sociologist lingo being thrown around and a lot of the young people are referred to as "long-hairs." The weirdest thing about reading it though has to be realizing how few Americans are actually directly involved in a production line anymore and how much of the factory work has been outsourced elsewhere by now. In response to this, Garson tries to also talk about the automation of office work and how that effects the workers involved, but it still falls a little flat considering how much technological advancements have rendered a lot of what she describes in that portion obsolete as well.

Also, the current status of the American work force with a dwindling production industry and the serious problems of even the car manufacturer juggernauts undermines some of her political viewpoints on the importance of workers learning to better agitate for decent work conditions. In a global economy, American workers' demands are undercut by the constant bottom line that people in poorer countries will probably be willing to do it for less money and under worse conditions. Which isn't to say that her points about what good working conditions are and a more holistic approach to the value of work don't apply, just that her examinations are limited in a larger, more pragmatic sense of how the economy runs now.

Nevertheless, it was a pretty interesting read at least in a historical sense and it was nice to get some individual accounts of how different people deal with the often monotonous, yet stressful daily grind. My main criticism of the book centers mainly on her own account of her experience as an office worker, which comes off very, very badly. It's at this point in the book your suspicions are confirmed that she is pretty spoiled, bourgeois, and disconnected from the workers she supports. Indeed, she seems like someone who isn't even used to working any real full-time job, much less working in a mechanized office environment.

Anyway, it would be interesting to read a truly updated version, particularly as more and more people seem to work on a freelance or independent contractor basis, instead of being official employees. It would also be interesting to read a thoughtful expose of how service-industry jobs effect the people working in them on an individual level, along the same lines as what she's done with factory workers. It would also be interesting to have more context in terms of where the labor movement is at now, how computers effect things, etc.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1975, Garson writes of the how work is segmented into the smallest of actions, a particle of the whole. In this she foretells increasing automation and mechanization without knowing the future. The chapter on office work is telling - typewriters and correction tape, keypunch operators, academic timesheets annotated by hand. All women's work with the stress of child care, home responsibilities. These show too in other chapters on a fish cannery, ping pong, lipstick factory, car manufacturing lines where more men are featured. In interviews, Garson can hardly contain herself from open advocacy of unions and socialism. She does see these as means of humanizing the workplace and making routine work more routine. I think most wondrous is the dream time, the games to make work bearable.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read. Renews your faith in the human spirit and makes you want to die at the same time.