On Labor History Today: In 2005 the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal, West London closed after seven decades of production. Tim Strangleman spent the last six months of the Brewery’s life working with a photographer to record in words and picture the site before it closed. Subsequent research revealed an incredibly rich story of corporate cultural change and the transformation of work and the workplace. Drawing on material from his 2019 book, Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, Strangleman, Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, reflects on what that story tells us about work meaning, identity and organizational life in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Our show – which originally aired on October 24, 2021 -- is excerpted from Strangleman’s Zoom presentation at the October 5, 2021 edition of Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives, the lecture series sponsored by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program and the Labor Education Program at Michigan State University. To get on the ODW/ODL email list email John Beck at mailto:beckj@msu.edu
Click here for photos of the Park Royal Guinness Brewery.

And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1940; that was the day that the federally mandated 40-hour work week went into effect for U.S. workers.

Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.

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