Assignment New Jersey; "Work, Work, Work"

<v Narrator 1>Darkness was everywhere on Earth. Then God said, let there be light. Then he divided the sky from the waters and called the sky heaven. Then God made dry land appear and called it earth. He created the sun to rule the day. He created man and woman in his image, and he gave them power to rule. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Because on that day he ceased from all work he had set to do. You shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground. Whatever thy can findith to do. Do it withn thy might. Ecclesiastes, if any, would not work. Neither shall he eat. New Testament. <v Narrator 2>Work is the sustenance of noble minds. Seneca.

<v Narrator 1>Work is a form of serving God. Martin Luther. <v Narrator 2>No man loves labor for itself. Samuel Johnson. <v Narrator 1>Work keeps at bay three great evils, boredom, vice and need. Voltaire. <v Narrator 3>Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged. Abraham Lincoln. <v Narrator 1>As a cure for worrying. Work is better than whiskey. Thomas Edison. <v Narrator 2>Free men freely work, whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease. Elizabeth Browning.

<v Narrator 3>The very last thing the ordinary industrial worker wants is to have to think about his work. George Bernard Shaw. Life is work. Henry Ford. <v Narrator 1>Work is not a curse. It is the prerogative of intelligence. The only means to manhood and the measure of civilization. Savages do not work. Calvin Coolidge. <v Singer>[singing] My empty pockets are filled with gold. My tattered clothes don't seem so old. <v Narrator 2>For men must work and women must weep. And there's little to earn and many to keep. Charles Kingsley. There is dignity in work. Only when it is work freely accepted. Albert Camus. <v Narrator 1>I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous. Bertrand Russell.

<v Narrator 2>Work, work, work until the brain, begins to swim. Work, work, work until the eyes are heavy. And then Thomas Hood. <v Narrator 1>Since man first witnessed the sun rising over the earth, he has labored at first simply to survive for another day. But man has survived and so has his daily work. An ancient Scandinavian form of our word work is verkja, which means to feel pain. Man has learned to live with his work and lessen the pain. We'll meet a number of individual workers and explore the meaning of work. For today. <v Speaker A>Well, first of all, you get it before it's light, you wake up with the roosters, I suppose, about 5:30. One of the first things that the women do in the morning is to go to milk the cows. And this is woman's work. We have 12 cattle here. They give about a gallon of milk a day. The women a separate the cream away, make butter out of that. And the rest of it is then made into cheese. We get up in the neighborhood, fifteen minutes after 6:00. And the first thing we have to do is go out and drive the cattle in from the pasture into the barn and then we milk from seven to nine o'clock in the morning. Presently, we have over 200 head of cattle here, 80 of which are male cows and the rest are young stock and heifers. Our cows individually will give twenty two thousand pounds of milk a peice and over 700 pounds of butterfat. It takes a tremendous amount of feed. And this is where all our time is occupied, raising and harvesting. They feed for five months a year. We had had a reduction in milk prices to the farmer. If that trend continues as it is now, our profit margin will drop by 50 percent, which means we've got to produce more, which gets right back to the one thing more work to put out the product.

<v Speaker B>How many more acres do you have to go?

<v Speaker A>I got over a 100 to do so, I'll be gone by noon for the next two or three weeks. depedns on the weather. <v Speaker B>Then you start your corn? <v Speaker A>Yeah, about the middle of September. Anyway, before we'll cut any of that. <v Speaker B>How'd that sale go yesterday? <v Speaker A>For the price of feed as high as it is. The cattle market is dropping off. Cows that were worth four or five thousand are bringing two thousand dollars. <v Speaker A>I suppose breakfast last about half an hour. Then it's to work. <v Micheal Bacon>Lean and strong, moving to the rhythm of a silent song, strength they got flowing through their veins. Living with the sunshine, loving the rain. <v Micheal Bacon>Living with the sunshine, loving the rain [singing] <v "Farmer">This is a dairy plantation and that money that we get from that milk and butter and that cheese that we sell to our neighbors and to the markets as far away as Philadelphia is the thing with which I can purchase more land. Being Quaker's, we try to keep our life as economical and as simple as possible.

<v Speaker C>The farm was bought by my grandfather back in nineteen hundred. My father was here all of his life and he sold the farm to my brother and myself in 1960. <v Micheal Bacon>I guess I should have mowed that field today. God I'd hate to lose that hay, wish the sky didn't look so grayBut I'm so proud, it makes my worries seem worthwhile.Yes I'm so proud. I wouldn't change my life for any other style. The tractor threw a rod today, it was bound to happen any day. The price of fields are rising fast, hope the summer savings last. <v Speaker C>Actually, it looks like an awful lot of work to produce a quarter of milk. But milk is still the most nourishing product and nobody's found a shortcut into producing it.

<v Speaker A>The work that we men do varies considerably from the work that the women do. [singing] <v Speaker C>Farming is a family operation. It takes a complete team to make a farm go.My brother has four boys. I have two boys, we would like to pass this opportunity to live in the country and enjoy a real life onto them. We try to break them in with some work so they know what is involved in farming. We do not try to overwork our children, but it's a tremendous background for a boy so if he doesn't go into farming. He'll be qualified to do any type of work that he would like to do. There's too many people that do not want to do physical labor. You can't hire or find a man that will work on a farm and put in the hours. In fact, farm help has always been scarce for the last 10 or 15 years. After we've worked all day, we don't have time to get to a lake. So therefore, with a swimming pool right here on the farm, if we had ten or fifteen minutes, we can run out and jump in the pool.

<v Speaker A>I keep a day book, and every day I write down what I do. And the first thing I write town is what the weather is, because that's the most important thing in our lives.

<v TV>Satellite photograph taken this afternoon shows rain throughout the area. Tomorrow's winds, 10 to 15 miles an hour. They'll be coming down out of the northwest. And so the forecast calls for rain, possibly heavy at times and continuing on into the morning hours. <v Speaker C>Rain again. Tomorrow afternoon and possibly Monday. So I still can't combine before the middle of next week. Usually I'm done this time a year, but the weather's been so bad that we're going to lose quite a few [inaudible] and the price to feed, we can't afford to lose too many. Your income is directly related to your crops and the amount of milk that you can produce from these crops. The weather has a great deal to do with a farmer's income, as well as a lot of hard work as dairy farmers we're putting in 80 hours a week. Now, if you enjoy what you're doing, it really isn't that hard. <v Speaker A>We are Quakers and we feel that work is prayer, that God gave us this paradise to live in. We should be joyful in it. And one of the ways we can express this joy is to use this place wisely and to work hard on it.

<v Speaker C>We're proud of our cattle. We're proud of our land. We have to work hard to keep it that way. <v Speaker A>We'll keep working until the sun goes down. <v Speaker C>And we get done at 8:00 in the evening. <v Narrator 1>A man works from Sun to sun <v Narrator 2>But a woman's work is never done. <v Artist>Housework is stupid. It's just plain stupid. It goes on and it keeps coming back. I was raised to believe, like so many other women in my generation, that the end-all was getting married and raising a family. And it wasn't until I was married for a while and realized the bored boredom of housework. But I decided that there has to be something more to life than this. I was married at 19 and I heard my first child at 20. And so there wasn't too much time devoted to art then at all. I really saw that I had greater goals than just being a housewife. I just kept painting and painting and feeling all the time a terrible frustration of not being able to devote the time because of children in the house. And I guess I kept a lot of it inside. But I certainly was tormented by it. And I really felt I had I just had to go out and work and do this, you know. And I kept telling myself, what if I had nine to five job and was bringing home money, it would be easy. But the fact that I'm here and I'm painting here, people don't realize that, you know, I'm working just as seriously as they are. <v Artist>I'm inspired by what I see in nature. I'm sort of a visual person, I see more than I hear. And if it excites me, I paint it. Sometimes. I probably think about it a long time before I realize I'm I'm studying it. You know, before I realize I want to do a painting of it. Getting ready for a show is a very time consuming thing. And I have very high standards. And I can't just paint a painting and say, there it is. It's fine. It'll do. Frame it and try to sell it. I really want to like it. I have to like it.

<v Artist>Quite often a painting won't work for me. I simply have to cover it up. I can't use it. It doesn't satisfy me in any way. So I'll paint over it. It's awfully nice to start on a nice, clean canvas with nothing distracting you. <v Artist>Getting ready for the show is the long ordeal, and it's very hard on the family. My husband suffers. My children feel neglected. To be perfectly honest with myself, there's a certain amount of guilt in the way I feel about my painting. I feel to be a total artist, you have to be totally selfish, I guess. The kind of life of a lonely, isolated artist excites me because it's something that someday maybe I could do. But I need people. I need my family. I know that I wouldn't last too long without them. I feel I've I've got to find a way, another way of saying it in paint differently. I'm tired of pesky detail. I'm tired of sitting there endlessly working on a painting that I could just smash the paint on and get that same feeling expressed on the canvas so that it satisfies me, my soul, not somebody else's, not suiting somebody else's living room. But there's real work involved in changing because it's very comfortable to sit back and paint a little painting, the way you always did. I'm ready to step off now. [music plays]

<v Assembly line worker>The pace on the [inaudible] is definitely too fast. Just unbelievable. The pace that you have to keep up at 52 cars an hour. You only got to put two screws, pass 52 cars and that is a lot of screws in an hour. And all this has to be done within like 10 or 12 feet. And once you've gotten behind, then it's like next impossible to catch up. Generally, you end up just throwing the parts in the car and letting the repairman catch it at the end.

<v Assembly line worker B>Any production we constantly do the same job is going to be somewhat dehumanizing. It's a tedious job. <v Assembly line worker>After a while, you stop thinking about you're just doing it automatically. <v Assembly line worker B>Because anybody can do it. It doesn't require a whole lot of intelligence or a lot of smarts. You swear they could blindfold 90 percent of men, and they can still do the job. It is constantly it is here, it is there. There is a joke. They often refer to the same thing, they say they get monkeys to do it. They would do it, but they we're eating too many bananas. So they had to cancel the idea. <v Assembly line worker>Average car, I think, takes somewhere around six and a half to seven hours to travel a full line. Once it's moving, you can stop the line. But if that line stopped, the foreman is going to be there and he's going to be asking you, why is that line stopped? You're holding up production. Unless you have a very good reason, you know, there's no way that you should stop that line according to them. <v Assembly line worker B>Right away. You've got a dislike for the foreman.

<v Assembly line worker>Because there is so much pressure on a foreman from the higher ups like his supervisors and the superintendent of this area. There's a lot more pressure to get things done. And as a result, he's putting the pressure on his men. <v Assembly line worker B>Got to have so many jobs come off your production line. <v Assembly line worker>So every once in a while, you slack off or let a car go buy, So speak. You say the hell with it. Somebody else get it. <v Assembly line worker B>Something off here or something off there and get, you know get back at them. They can't start the truck. They can't move off the end of the line, you stop production. I worked seventy two days straight. Took three days off for Memorial Day weekend. Then when they wanted to give me time off for excessive absenteeism. <v Assembly line worker>I felt the union being so large that neither one cares about the individual, the individual was just lost. I don't think that most people work on an assembly line really can find the work rewarding. <v Assembly line worker B>Your salary is your only reward. If you want to call it a reward, By the time you get to figure it out on Friday, you get your check in the morning. By noon, you figure out take your twenty dollars more in debt than you were the week before. When you're in an assembly line, you got to be there. I mean, every minute there's no walking away and sitting outside and have a 2o minute smoke break when you just feel like it. You go when they tell you you can go. <v Assembly line worker>I come home at night and I just you can't go to bed right away because your body is. You've got to slow it down. And like a lot of times I sit up 'till 2:00, 2:30 before I finally have slowed down enough for it, I couldn't go to sleep without any problems.

<v Assembly line worker B>They say the average man does no longer feel it, he works hard for 30 years, he won't have money to sit back and retire and enjoy life. He's lucky to be alive by an old shack twenty miles from Miami Beach and have enough social security to feed himself. But the average man realized that he isn't going to get anywhere working. It's absolutely nothing beyond that line, being on the line is a little bit less than being dead. <v "Executive">Well, I've always wanted to be in fashion. I could have worked for a designer magazine, but since I got the looks, I said, well, I'd love to do it for a few years because it's glamorous and it is a good deal of money. And if you've got the looks, then you may as well take advantage of the opportunity. Modeling always had been a dream for me because in the little tiny town in Germany where I was brought up, models didn't really exist. They were just images and beautiful women that were on the pages of magazines. But it took me six months to convince my father to pay for my modeling school. And things sort of happened overnight because I was in a period of months. I was, I think, considered to be the hottest thing going in Chicago. And then, of course, I had to conquer New York. Literally, I couldn't wait to get up in the morning and go to work. Now I have another goal, and that's to be the best agent in business. And that keeps me busy 24 hours a day. So I don't think that I need modeling at this point. I don't see myself as an executive because I do everything that everyone does in the agency. And yet at the same time, I do see myself as an executive because the executive always has to carry the brunt of everything, right. And hold on and I'll call you right back, OK. <v "Executive">I'll tell you what I'd like to do though, since I have a couple of people waiting on the phone. Why doesn't she come back on Monday and talk to you, because she has a very intersting look.And then we'll check you over. OK. All right. That's it.

<v Guest>Thank you very much. <v "Executive">Quiz. How tall are you? <v Quiz>I'm 5'5 and a half. <v "Executive">Oh, boy. I love your face. I love the way you look. But unfortunately, you're much too short for the business. Next week, we're going to cut your hair, if you don't mind, we're gonna have to do it. All right. Look, I think you look very, very good with just straight across banks and very nice little, you know, above the shoulder in between the chin length hair. You look like 16 years old again. OK, OK. Let me bleach your eyebrows first. OK. <v "Executive">Being a woman is actually an asset in our business. First of all, I work with women and I understand the hang ups. Second, the fact, I was a model. So I do understand what the pitfalls with the difficulties are and what kind of trauma they go through every day. <v Becky>When you're 18 and modeling, you've got enough problems, school parents and work. So who needs frizzies to. Well before protein twenty one shampoo. I had them, know that magnified film of a split hair. I didn't believe it. What could I lose?

<v "Executive">You don't have to read the first line because you know it. Say to the camera your first few words because that initial contact is very important. <v "Executive">Okay Becky now, one other thing that will help you on this, this is a hair commercial and you got a great head of hair. So take out your band and give it a good toss. <v "Executive">Modeling is not just being pretty. It definitely is work. It's very hard physically, psychologically, very hard. <v "Executive">Think about what you're going to do. Give it to the camera. OK. And twinkle. <v Becky>Twinkle ok. Protein 21 helps you beat the frizzies. <v "Executive">That's much better. That's very and don't you dare let Willie cut your hair. <v "Executive">She's doing half pivot, can you show the girls how to do a full pivot? Now, girls watch the feet. It doesn't look as now from your point of view, but once you stand up there, you get very woobly. So what do you have to do is be very careful of where to place your feet and how you get your equilibrium. Come up and see if you can copy a full pivot or even a half pivot, whatever Kari does. Now Would you see you were going to lose- Right. You might just fall all over the place, what you should do at the beginning- <v "Executive">You can never relax whether you at the top model or you're just on your way up. There is no way that you can sit back saying, hey, I just did it because that may last one day. You always have to be better than you were yesterday. And that's pretty hard to do. And this is where your concentration has to be that you can never be satisfied with a good job you did yesterday. You've got to be satisfied with a fabulous job you're going to do today.

<v "Executive">Practice is what makes you good. Okay, girls, now let's all do one after the other. The pivot that's most comfortable to you. OK. <v "Executive">The only advice that I'd like to give to a young girl is to say, if you want something bad enough, then you've got to do something for it in order to get it. There's no way that anybody's ever going to give you anything and throw it into your lap. <v Guest>Good afternoon, Wilhemina. <v Guest>Wilhemina, Good afternoon. <v "Executive">Now, our whole life is actually 24 hours a day, seven days a week, surrounded by models and people of our industry. On Sundays, we do give quite a few pool parties to be able to get together with our models and and spend a few hours of relaxation and fun and as well as with our clients, in a way, it helps our business to have these parties, but it also helps our relationship with the models of becoming a bit closer. Well, I enjoy just as much sitting out at the swimming pool, you know, for the next three months doing nothing. But I feel that the only thing that keeps you young and keeps you stimulated is what you're doing in your you know, you have to have something that you really feel is creative and that you're doing something for. And at the same time, I have to be a mother and a housewife and then go back to work again on Monday morning. But actually, our fun is work. When you apply make up trying to be very, very gentle when you put it on and around the eyes. You don't rub up too much. You just pat. Okay. There are times where you look in the mirror and you see that you're not looking as good as you used to and that there are wrinkles setting in that you didn't used to have. But very honestly, that doesn't make any difference, because if you have reached your goal, if if you fulfilled the things that you've set out to fulfill during that particular lifespan, then you don't have those anxieties. I think that only happens with people who never succeeded in what they had set out to be. <v "Trashman">I'm a trash truck driver. I mean, it don't sound like a very good job, but my situation is that I don't care about making a lot of money. That's one of the things that put me in the hospital. I was working long hours for a lot of money and I was push, push, push. I wasn't eating right. I go home, jump in bed and sleep and jump up and go to work. And next day I couldn't even enjoy the money that I had. This job here, I'm my own bros. I go out and do the job the way I want to do it. About a thousand steps to do a week, three different routes, like I have a guy on the back, that picks up the trash, sometimes two guys. Some days we got about 430 or 440 stops to do. Well, when you sit in a truck and you see this guy in the back doing all the work, it kind of makes you feel. I mean, the guy starts looking at me [laughing]. So I got to get out of the truck and help him out and more I help him to earlier we get done. Because if I just sit in the truck and rest on my butt, we'd be out there for a couple more hours a day.

<v "Trashman">I quit school. I guess I don't know, I got tired of school and at that time I went to work when I was about 14 years old in an ice company, worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week for 75 cents an hour.Yeah, I'm sorry I left school. I mean, if I had education, a lot of better jobs I could get. A few years ago, I used to I used to think that trash truck drivers or anybody connected with the trash bins were a bunch of whino's, alcoholics that couldn't keep a job. I've seen a lot of guys around that have been doing this for years and they're not alcoholics. They're not whino's They're not poor. They're not bums. You know, they make a good living. You ride around in a trash truck for about a week and you see how wasteful people are. People are very wasteful, very wasteful, very wasteful, wasteful, wasteful, wasteful, wasteful people are very wasteful.

<v "Trashman">Well, when you work for the public you got to take a lot of crap from them. You always made some people that think they're better than anybody else. So they kind of look down their nose at me. And I hate for people to treat me that way. But after I leave I done forget all about it. Because I met, so many people on the route. You know, they wave at you, say hi. Some days people decide to clean out their attic or garage. We have a couple streets and we laugh and joke about. We say that people are having a contest to see who can put out the most trash. And I say, where the hell they get all this trash? They must have went out and bought it just to win this contest that they're having. I'd rather I'd rather have another job and I'd like to have a job laying down on the beach, watching the girls, things like that and get paid the same. If I had the education, I would like to have a sales job. But a lot of companies won't hire me with my education. So my boy, he just graduated from high school and I'm trying to talk him into going to college. I don't I don't wanna him to take this kind of job. I want him to have a good education and get a comfortable and easy job, a good paying job, with his education. You have to do do what you like. You know, if I didn't really like it, I would just quit and find a job that I like. It's just a job. It's got to be done and somebody has got to do it. If the trash wasn't picked up, you would see so much stuff out here piled up in about five days time that it would be unsanitary, you know.

<v "Trashman">I feel like people they don't realize it, they're lucky that they have a place to get rid of their trash because if these dumps closed up around here. They wouldn't they wouldn't know what to do with the trash. It would just pile up. Each year, the trash goes up. There's more and more, people have more trash. They're just going to run out of ground. They're going to run out of room. I'm not pushing to make [inaudible] I've been married a long time, I've done raised my family and I'm not worried about making a lot of money. I'm happy with what I got, at my age. I think a little late to worry about getting a high school education. Forty four years old. I should have done it long time ago. Now it's just like I tell my boy. Don't wait 20 years from now and say, I wish I had done it, because that's what I say a lot of times I wish I had done something years ago. Now it's a little too late.

<v Ivan Alton>I'm Ivan Alton, and I'm a lobster fisherman.

<v Ivan Alton>Well, I guess when I was a kid, I had two choices. My father was a stone cutter. I got [inaudible] and gone to work or going fishing. And I didn't feel like much, much like cutting stone. <v Micheal Bacon>I make my living from the sea, It's life enough for me. <v Micheal Bacon>My hands are old and tired, but my mind is young and free. <v Micheal Bacon>I'll never be rich, but i'll never be poor and I'll be sailing this boat forevermore that's the way it must be. <v Micheal Bacon>That's the way it must be, when you make your living from the sea. <v Ivan Alton>Someday you'll think I'm going to get rich another day, you think you're going to starve to death but you won't do either one.

<v Micheal Bacon>I've got to make my way, lobsters are my prey. <v Micheal Bacon>My boat sails with the sun, it don't set 'till I am done. <v Micheal Bacon>A dog in a chair, a pipe in a hole, a comfortable fire to keep me warm, That's the way it must be. <v Micheal Bacon>Yes, that's the way it must be when you make your living from the sea. <v Ivan Alton>If you make a living on water, you earn every damn cent of it. It's hard work. <v Ivan Alton>You look at any fisherman's hand and see that they're all torn to pieces and ?twisted up? And but they still wouldn't change you for nothing. <v Micheal Bacon>I make my living from the sea, oh, it's live enough for me for me.

<v Speaker A>These hands are old are tired, but my mind is young and free, No i'll never be rich, but I'll never be poor. <v Micheal Bacon>And I'll be sailing this boat forevermore, that's the way it must be, that's the way it must be,when you make a living from the sea <v Ivan Alton>I know I wouldn't want to work in a factory somewhere. You are your own boss and you can come and go as you please. I guess it's just about what most of us like about it. I do- I don't plan on quitting when I'm 65. No. I think if I'm able, I don't think I'll even bother with Social Security. I think I will just keep on fishing. I just wanna stay out and work because I would sit around doing nothing. As long as I'm able, I'll try to make my own way. <v Speaker D>Yeah, it gets boring, because we're facing a wall right? You can't really see anything.

<v Speaker D>I look around, you know, and then when people come over here, I talk so, you know, I usually, I do a lot of talking to the girl next to me and we laugh you know, so i don't really pay it no mind because I know it well, I know it where I don't have to keep watching the pies go down the line. I work to make money for one reason, I work because I have to work, there's things we need. Now, in order to have it, I have to work, you know? I mean not really have to work, but in order to live, you know, and get nice things and have nice things, I havr to work. <v Speaker D>I first started working because we had brought a house and we figured, well, with both of us going to work, we'd be able to get us like nice furniture. And we like nice clothes. You know, I definitely do. All right. Now, what is really important is like growing up with my children and seeing it. We enjoy life together and we do things together, you know? And I figure it's my responsibility to take care of 'em. <v Speaker D>There is sometimes the pies just run constantly. It's all right. But then, like, I'm more tired because I'm sitting here and I'm hunched over and then I have to stand up and I have to sit down. I have to move my shoulders and I get pains in my shoulders and pains in my neck. But I prefer working constantly, this way we get done, we punch out and go home.

<v Speaker D>Most time is thinking about going home and getting a nice hot bath and watching TV. Sometimes I just sit down, look out the window and daydream, you know, like I think about the kids at by the pies, you know. I can sit there and I feel that I'm big because I can pick out the bad ones and throw them away. And I get to pick out the good pies. <v Speaker D>I get to pack the good pies, you know, because I think about the kids buying them. And I wouldn't want them to pick up a bad pie or empty pie and say, well, my goodness, who's packing these pies, you know? So, like, we're very proud of our work. <v Speaker D>I grew up in a in a large family. There was eight of us, right? And my mother worked and she taught us wrong from right. Even though she said we were poor, we'd always hold our head up, you know. That one day, you know, you would have things. I think she's right. <v Speaker D>A nurse. This is what I always had wanted to be, was become a nurse. Right? Then I started losing interest because, like, my kids were small. And I went to work and I said, well, I'm gonna go to school. Every year, I was going to school. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go get me a little piece of paper. But it's really not important. Now, you know, it's not as important as it used to be. Like I tell my kids, I would prefer them going to school and then go ahead and go to college and then go in a. factory if they want to, but no going to no factory, not unless you really have to.

<v Speaker D>If you sit around and do nothing, you're not going to never have nothing. If you work hard and really work at it. You're going to have what you want. No matter if you kill yourself doing it, you still going to have what you want. <v Speaker D>So I think the harder you work, the more you're going to achieve. Like my job pays good money. But like if you want to be somebody, and if you got some kind of profession, you are somebody. <v Speaker D>You see a nurse, you say she's doing something meaningful because she's helping people, you know, [inaudible] Although It's important, you know, you couldn't do without factory workers or a factory, and you couldn't do without the pies, because a lot of kids buy pies,. A lot of people eat pies. Maybe in a way I am doing something good. You know, I'm producing I'm putting out the production. I'm making sure it gets out. <v Adam Neumeister>My name is Adam Neumeister. I was born in Hungary in 1923. I went to school until sixth grade when I was twelve years old. I was on my own. I started my trade on brick laying and then I had to go in the service, the German Army. I spent three years in Russian prison, I came to the United States in 50.

<v Adam Neumeister>And Frank was born a month after we came over here. You start one thing in the morning and you do it the whole day along. <v Adam Neumeister>Really, you don't get bored, It's just the matter of we always say, pick them and lay them down. That goes all day. It's the same music, so pick them up and lay them down. <v Micheal Bacon>I pick 'em up and lay 'em down, back up on the round and round, stack 'em high, lay 'em straight.

<v Micheal Bacon>Get it done don't be late. <v Micheal Bacon>It is the same old song, day fater day, it is the same old song, when you pick 'em up and lay 'em, pick 'em up and lay 'em down, <v Adam Neumeister>I didn't want my son to be a bricklayer. We wanted him to go to college. So he went two years to community college. <v Frank Neumeister>I knew lawyers, engineers, these people were coming out of college and they just couldn't get any jobs at all. So I wasn't really interested in going to college anymore either. <v Adam Neumeister>So I let him be a bricklayer. <v Frank Neumeister>My father's done very well, in the last 24 years. He came here with nothing and has been fairly successful. I hope I can become as good a bricklayer as my father. <v Micheal Bacon>Pick 'em up and lay 'em down, nothing to it I have found. Build a wall on the land, the bricks feel good in my hand, It is the same old song, day after dayIt is the same old song when you pick 'em up and lay 'em, pick 'em up and lay 'em down. <v Frank Neumeister>I thought when I started that my age would give me an edge, perhaps, you know, in the work and everything, but there's a lot of old men working with me that could just run me into the ground any time they want to. My father could do that very easily.

<v Adam Neumeister>My son, Frank. He might make a better bricklayer than I am right now because he seems to show pride in his work. <v Frank Neumeister>You have like an end product that you can say, well, I worked on this. I built this. <v Micheal Bacon>It is same old song day after day, it is the same old song when you pick 'em up and lay 'em, when you pick 'em up and lay 'em down <v Micheal Bacon>You pick 'em up and lay 'em, you pick 'em up and lay 'em down. <v Adam Neumeister>I would rather would be building the houses. That's nice work. That's a little more fancy, the house building business is not very good right now. It's mostly all apartments. <v Frank Neumeister>And our jobs will always be fairly secure because as the population grows, they have to keep building buildings. <v Adam Neumeister>Everywhere you go, you see new buildings going up all over.

<v Adam Neumeister>There's always going to be some brick work around. <v Frank Neumeister>We'll just have to see. I suppose. <v Adam Neumeister>I got to go to the end of my retirement, as a brick layer. I don't want to pick nothing else up anymore. <v Camera Reapair man>Because when you're 65 and they kick you out. What do you do? You die. So now here I am reparing a camera. And I know this isn't what life's all about. There's gotta be something better to do. I do not find many rewards in working. I'm not gung ho on work, but you have to work to eat and survive in this society. I know many people that try to make their job more important than it is. I do think most people are happy in their work, but I don't think they would admit it. <v Teacher>I like my work. It's really rewarding working with children. <v Construction worker>I like construction work done by the best paying job in the city. It's construction, right?

<v Secretary>I like being a secretary. <v Carpenter>I enjoy carpentry work. Yes. <v Barber>I like my job very much. <v Guest>I like the job very much. <v Guest>I like plasting, It is the only thing I know. <v Nurse>I find geriatric nursing very rewarding. <v Guest>Work is something that I do all week long. So I get paid every wednesday night if I get paid on a wednesday without doing the work. I'd keep away from it. <v Guest>Well, I like this job, so I enjoy my work. So it makes my job pleasant. <v Guest>I love my job, I love treework. <v Iron worker>I'm very proud of being an iron worker. <v Guest>I like working the livestock, and sheep particularly. <v Fireman>Very few jobs probably have as much satisfaction as being a fireman. <v Steeplejack>I like steeplejack work and I learned it off my father, years and years ago I wish there was a lot more of it, so I can do more of it, It is too far in between. If I get this one done, I've got to get back to good old [inaudible] <v Guest>I don't love working, but you have to work to make a living. so I like what I'm doing, I like it very much. Sometimes get carried away when I don't like what's going on at work. I get very mad. So I feel, you know, you really can't do that much if they say you have to do this. Well, you have to, or else, you know, find another job.

<v Speaker E>[inaudible] put it on the test equipment, and see what happens, so I see myself as being stuck in a situation that I don't like, but I'm going to make the best of it. Like Evel Knievel. Right. How many people went to see him jump that canyon. You don't have to accept. The only alternative I have is to get a college degree to get into a higher position for the money. But I'd like to make enough money that I don't have to sweat. I don't want to be president, vice president of any company. There's too many ulcers in that, in that thing. You know, I'm just looking to make a comfortable living so that when I go home on the weekend, I can enjoy myself. Because once people have their own bread, their own income, they're not that horribly dependent. <v Speaker E>You do it for the money. But what can it give you? Nothing. You go out with your wife and kids and have fun and share things together. That's that's I think is life more than- what kind of what can a job do except put food on the table, which is you have to eat. But I think the family's much more important.

<v Secretary>I have to be out working in the workforce. I feel it's very important. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment that you're in touch with the world, that you're not just surrounded by a house and children and the stove and the washing machine. <v Construction worker>[inaudible] Oh, yes, sometimes you get bored. Carrying carry stuff in and out, carrying planks and up and down ladders, you get tired. It's hard work. Very hard work. <v Guest>[inaudible] relief, I guess. But that's all I can do. And that's all I wanted to do. <v Guest>This is what happens when you don't go to school, right. You'll end up down here with us.

<v Guest>I consider myself a hard worker. I put out for the company, but to see if it gets me where I think I should be. It remains to be seen. <v Guest>Okay, well, let's go. <v Worker>There is freedom up there because you're doing something that too many other people can do. And that's what gives you another, you know, a great sense of feeling. Well, I wouldn't want my kids to follow my trade. I'd like them to have a much better job. But I'm going to be retiring soon. You know, because not that I don't like the work, but my my bones don't want to do what my mind wants to do. You know, I've been working for 50 years now and I'm getting a little tired. <v Howard B. Radest>People work for money. Sometimes they work for satisfaction. Clearly, they work as a matter of status. Often they work because they simply expect to. That's the thing to do and to fill time. The work ethic, I think, can be stated relatively simply and directly. It is that if you measure the value of a human being, you measure it by what he does at work. And that work is measured in large measure by its economic value. And in our country, that, of course, means the wage scale, the dollar produced and so on. Because one of the work ethic really distained work, it's sneered at work as such. Work really didn't have a value in itself, it was a token or a symbol. But by itself, it didn't make any difference what you were doing. It was only that you were doing. Not to work as somehow to be a sinner, and it is not unusual to find people asking, what did I do wrong that I've lost my job? What is my evil? What is my sin?

<v Guest>I lost my job about a month ago and when I had my job, I felt like there was a purpose in my life and I felt like something and I felt like I was needed. And when I was laid off, it was just a very empty feeling and I felt like I was just existing in the world.

<v Howard B. Radest>If our culture wants to survive, it's going to have to decide if it can transform work from this deadly, decaying, demoralizing thing we've got into something that truly uses human capacities or lets people use themselves well, that's the issue of work. <v Guest>I feel like even smaller the piece of sand, really. You know, if you're not tommorow, you know you can be replaced, so there's no big deal. <v Howard B. Radest>When you redesign an assembly line. So at the beginning, middle and end are visible to a worker, you change the nature of that assembly line much more deeply than just a physical change. <v Howard B. Radest>So then instead of being the left hand turn or of a screw by three turns, you are building, let's say, the front end of an automobile. <v Guest>Well the priorities of the country as a whole have been kind of miscued for a long time, it has got to go down to the individual person, more about the problems of the everyday man. It's got to change. It's got to, if not, we need a revolution.

<v Howard B. Radest>A housewife pretty much in an earlier day was locked into being a housewife. That's no longer true. What's happening is as the kids grow up, very many women leave home and in effect, build another life for themselves and in effect, change what they are. And many young people today think very little of working a while, getting what they want from the work, usually money and dropping away from it. <v Guest>If you had enough money to live for a week, you shouldn't work the next week because there are just other things, really important things you ought to be thinking about. I mean, maybe that's just to sit under a tree and nothing happened so you can put your finger on it. I feel really strongly about that. <v Howard B. Radest>It isn't necessary for anyone to work. If by work you mean working for dollars or money. Nine to five. Punching a clock. No, everybody doesn't have to work. Everybody shouldn't. In fact, nobody should have to do that kind of work. But if you mean being productive, if you mean seeing something come alive under your fingers or before your eyes that you had something to do with. If that's what you mean by work done right, everybody has to work. That's a piece of what it means to be human. Well, I think the real issue for our society, for us is how can we make something that is really work valuable to human beings?

<v Narrator 4>Today's workers seek more than economic survival. Bored and often disillusioned, they want to humanize the workplace. They want recognition and a voice in what they do. With this growing demand for change, industrial democracy is being born. Offering hope for the future. Across the nation, there are beginnings of change. Factory workers are allowed to create a more personal surrounding for themselves as other workers rotate and exchange jobs in order to reduce monotony. Flexible hours offer a choice of starting times as the worker is achieving greater individuality. Management is sharing more of the profits with their employees. The results of these and other changes have often been rewarding. Workers have more pride in their job. Productivity has increased, absentee rates are down, and workers are happier and better adjusted in other areas of their life. <v Narrator 4>And yet with all these changes, many jobs will not be dramatically altered. There is still a long way to go. And for those people whose duty calls them to labor from sunup to sundown, it will remain their destiny to work, work, work.

<v Micheal Bacon>In the beginning, we were free. No one to care about but you and me Were the things we did too off to forgive?Did we deserve this life of toil with no time to live.Now. My back is tired. My hands are sore. Seems I never see you anymore, anymore Work work, pulling my load, food on the table, the car on the road and work, work, I'd be so blue, sitting at home with nothing to do but work.