The Vic Seidler Archive is part of Special Collections & Archives in Goldsmiths Library. It includes a treasure trove of ephemera on topics like gender and labour, including many pamphlets, newsletters, magazines and papers produced by groups advocating for social change. Ainsley Banks, a history student doing a work experience placement in Special Collections, had the chance to look through the collection, and shares his thoughts on one of the items in this guest post.

“Working and not working at the post office”

This is a booklet created in the mid-70s, written by a worker at the Toronto post office. It basically consists of him complaining about work, how work affects his life at home and all of his schemes put in place in order to work as little as possible. I suspect a little bias is present in this piece as the booklet was written for his fellow workers and the author was encouraged by them to publish more copies. Just as everyone likes to complain about their job, it is also true that everyone likes to impress or please their friends and so this may have been exaggerated slightly in order to do this and also to make this job more enjoyable. Overall I found this a very interesting read and would recommend coming down to Special Collections, especially if your course looks at workers or working in general, as the Seidler collection has many journals and documents on this subject.

Ainsley Banks