?”Working: What We Do All Day,” is a new Netflix series from former President Barack Obama’s production company, Higher Ground Productions, in partnership with Concordia Studio.
It was inspired by Studs Terkel’s book, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (Pantheon Books, 1974). Terkel was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author; broadcast journalist renowned for his oral histories; and, like Obama, a fellow Chicagoan.
During a May 25 LinkedIn interview with journalist Ira Glass, Obama said he wanted the docuseries to shine a spotlight on work, the inherent dignity of work and “that sense that everybody counts.”
“We’ve seen globalization and automation and unions being battered, and offshoring, and now AI,” he said. “People are concerned about their work, and yet it’s not a topic that you see a lot on TV. When I was growing up, there were still a lot of depictions of working-class life. Working people were on TV all the time, and somewhere around the ’80s or ’90s the only people on television were doctors or lawyers or bankers.”
Obama also voiced his support for the Writer’s Guild of America strike that began May 2 after talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down. Among the issues are compensation; residuals from streaming media, with union members claiming AMPTP’s share has cut much of the writers’ average incomes compared to a decade ago; and provisions that artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT will not be used as a way to replace writers.
“What we’ve seen throughout American history is that unions and worker organizations have had to make demands on their employers … to make sure they’re treated fairly,” Obama said. He added that “in this time of big technological change,” the AMPTP should “keep in mind the creative people who are actively making the products that consumers appreciate and get exported all around the world.”
He hoped, he said, “they will be compensated and the importance of what they do will be reflected in whatever settlement is arrived at. I’m very supportive of the writers and the strike and [that] they get a fair share.”
‘Firsthand Look’
Obama narrates and hosts the program and appears on screen talking with people from three different industries—home care, tech and hospitality. In one episode, a home care aide strolls down the aisle of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store with Obama as he pushes a grocery cart with the worker’s daughter perched inside.
Twelve people share their stories in the four episodes. They include:
- A home care aide At Home Care Mississippi; as well as a supervisor there; a former state senator and lobbyist for At Home Care; and the company founder and CEO.
- A housekeeper at New York City’s luxury Pierre Hotel; a switchboard operator who has worked at the hotel for 21 years; the hotel’s general manager; and the chairman of the Tata Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that owns the hotel.
- An Uber driver for Uber Eats in Pittsburgh; a data manager for self-driving vehicle company Aurora Innovation; a senior robotics engineer; and the co-founder and CEO of Aurora Innovation.
Netflix says the program gives “a firsthand look at the varying degrees of job satisfaction for service employees; middle-class workers struggling to afford the rising costs of living; managers and knowledge workers who have the luxury of earning enough to explore other, more ‘meaningful’ work; and company heads, whose decisions can affect millions of lives.”
The show also looks at the disparity of work experience across generations and “the stark differences between skilled labor and creative work.”
“A job isn’t inherently a good job or a bad job,” said the show’s director Caroline Suh in a news statement about the series. “Pay is No. 1, and it’s kind of undeniable,” and in addition to fair pay, stability is also key. “People really want to be able to depend on a job, and to be able to invest in it,” she said. “And respect is a huge thing—how much you feel the respect of the people around you.”
Obama noted that 40 to 50 years ago, a person working as a janitor at a large organization was part of that company.
“You had the same benefits as that engineer. Now you don’t even work for that company; [the job] is contracted out. That sense of the bonds that hold us together, those values that are extraneous to the bottom line or the quarterly earnings report, a lot of that’s been lost and I think a part of the reason why even when the economy is growing—or even when unemployment is relatively low—there’s still that anxiety” workers feel.
He pointed to workers at the Pierre Hotel, which is a union shop and employer to many longtime workers.
“You see the stories of these folks—housekeepers, custodial staff, telephone operators—supporting themselves in middle-class lives. There’s extraordinary continuity, this great sense of family; they stay in those ranks and they rise up through the ranks in those jobs, and they’re so committed to that place’s success,” he said.
“A place where they know each other and they’re committed to each other and they’re invested in their customers because they feel a sense of ownership in what it is they do,” he said, is what he thinks people long for.
“We all have—regardless of station and wealth and status—we all have this inherent dignity that has to be realized,” Obama said. “That, I think, is part of the spirit Studs brought to his book. It’s what we wanted to communicate in this project and part of what I think has to be reflected in our economic arrangements and our workplaces: that sense that everybody counts.”