Retooling the Class Factory: Response 2 From Monochrome to Technicolour: Adding the Lens of Unpaid Labour

Abstract

Elizabeth Faue has presented United States labour history with a dilemma. After many years of researching, writing and teaching labour history, Faue believes that the stories and life experiences of her working class parents, which she describes in her article, and those of many others such as labour journalist Eva McDonald Valesh, do not really 'fit in' with traditional labour history. Faue believes that the various theories and models used in labour history, such as Marxism, neo-industrialism and postmodernism, never really touch on, or adequately explain the 'subjective experiences' of ordinary working class people like Valesh and her parents. Nor do these theories explain the ways in which people 'straddled class boundaries and identities' throughout their lives. One way around this problem, Faue explains, is to 're-tool the class factory' and re-tool how labour historians 'think about class'. She continues that 'to get at the subjective dimension', we, as labour historians have to view the past through an expanded set of indices or a different pair of lenses. The schism as outlined by Faue which has developed in United States labour history between the traditionalists and those who wish to 'modernize' labour history through gender, race, and cultural analysis, appears to be greater there than in Australia. Australian labour history survived a period of reflection in the 1990s when a series of articles and a book edited by Terry Irving considered and confronted the challenges of labour history.1 From those debates emerged a reinvigorated labour history genre which has embraced change and encouraged diversity. In many ways it appears that labour history in Australia today is more flexible and more inclusive than its United States' cousin. Australian labour history has been willing to experiment with different ideas and practices concerning the nature of work and how it has shifted and changed through the twentieth century. If, as Faue suggests, we need to focus on 'what is real to ordinary people' through an exploration of 'kinship, education, work, community, leisure', then the inclusion of unpaid work/ volunteer work should be acknowledged and included as well. Whilst Faue does