It was half a century ago that labor radio broadcaster Studs Terkel published Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. The almost-600-page book was anchored in first-person accounts from 150 Americans, who spoke about their working life in just about every sector of the economy, as well as in several civil-service titles.
A mix of labor journalism and anthropology, Working was informed exclusively by the voice of the workers, who demonstrate a disarming intimacy with Terkel (1912–2008), revealing much about each individual but even more about the society they labored in.
Each work/life account is its own universe. There are descriptions of how people came to be in their jobs, as well as what it took to hold onto them. There are names you might know, such as actor Rip Torn and jazz musician Bud Freeman. But mostly, it’s everyday folks that Terkel, who broadcast from WFMT, out of Chicago, brought into the spotlight. Of course, a table of contents in a book published 50 years ago contains no reference to today’s “essential workers,” nor the “gig economy.”
Carmelita Lester was a practical nurse who had migrated from the West Indies. Terkel interviewed her in 1962, when she was working in a nursing home for well-off elderly residents. Lester described her unique bond with one of her charges, who she called “her baby,” and also offered a searing social commentary. “All these people here are not helpless,” Lester volunteered. “But the family get rid of them. There is a lady here, her children took her for a ride one day and pushed her out of the car. Let her walk and wander. She couldn’t find her way home … And they try to take away all that she has. They’re trying to make her sign papers and things like those. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
Lester’s decades-old complaint of insufficient staffing at her nursing home would resonate with the 21st-century congregant care workforce that was savaged by the COVID pandemic.
