Introducing The Spinoff’s Work Week, a whole week of content dedicated to unpacking our relationship with the world of work.
All week on The Spinoff we are delving into our relationship with the world of work in Aotearoa. For more Work Week stories, click here.
What do you remember about your very first job? I washed hair for $8 an hour every Saturday morning as a teenager. I will never forget the stomach-turning smell of perm solution, not helped by the big underage Friday nights out on the Vodka Cruisers that routinely preceded my shift. But it was also a really lovely job that taught me a lot about making chit-chat with strangers and how long it takes to dry a sodden cardigan with a hairdryer (90 mins).
Some things have changed since then (the minimum wage is now $21.20) and some things have stayed the same (my current job also features making chit-chat with strangers, just without quite as much dry-retching), and the world of work still remains a massive part of all of our lives. So, in keeping with previous series such as Rent Week, Porn Week and Bleed Week, all this week The Spinoff will be delving into our relationship with work in Aotearoa.
We’re not going to be able to cover it all, but here’s a taster of what’s to come: we’ll attempt to untangle the big ugly knot of ageism, sexism and racism in the workforce, and grill our most prominent politicians about their first jobs. We’re going to look at what it’s like to be a queer person working in the trades, and share some experiences of trying to get a permanent job when you have a disability.
But wait, there’s more! Some of The Spinoff’s newest parents will reflect on occupying both worlds at once, and Toby Morris will take a hard look at why Aotearoa is way at the bottom of the world in terms of paid parental leave for The Side Eye. Also, have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a full-time mother? A sex worker? An oceanographer? A KFC worker? A Twitch streamer? Wonder no more thanks to our daily series ‘What I Do’.
We’re also going to look towards the future of work, but in a way that is not going to make you go to sleep. Duncan Greive will explore how robots like ChatGPT are being deployed to help humans in a range of sectors, Shanti Mathias is going to a meeting in the Metaverse and Tara Ward is going to mercilessly rank all the robots with jobs, from the Dominos robot car to to the weird assistant at Christchurch airport.
Phew, looks like heaps eh. Better get back to work!
– Alex Casey, Senior Writer