Working: What We Do All Day S01E01: Beautiful Portraits of American Workers – La Lagarde

In a four-part documentary series, an idealistic Barack Obama guides the viewer through a critical sample of working America.

Former President Barack Obama speaking to his fellow American. It looks dusty, but it’s Work: what we do all day everything but. In the four-part series, the politician presents a number of interesting portraits of American workers: from Uber drivers and hotel cleaners to managers. A sort of cross-section of the United States today. The series was made for a reason: Obama wants to show that the level of hourly wages and benefits is certainly bad in the service trades. This does not mean that portraits of lower-class Americans are melancholic exercises. Documentary filmmaker Caroline Suh portrays the interviewees with humility.

For example, you can see how a home health aide keeps her head above water by working really hard and caring for her baby for the time remaining in the day. His (American) dream? A full fridge, no arrears and then lounging in the rocking chair on her porch. With this, Obama seems to be saying in a clever but perhaps a little naive way: these people don’t want much; they want a simple existence. It doesn’t take much to change their situation. At the end of the episode, the former president himself appears on the spot to walk around a supermarket with this woman. The result is a nice conversation in which Obama himself says that he has all his sheep on dry land and that he thinks all Americans should have that.

Work: what we do all day was created from an idealistic disposition and one could say that Obama does the hardest work in this case – he doesn’t mind either; the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burdens. So he tells the bad news by illustrating in voice-over, for example, how much the work of a concierge has changed compared to 1980: they were then permanent employees; now through an outside company. Then they were able to continue to grow and were given four weeks of vacation; now they continue to do the same job, heavily underpaid. In short, something has to change. Work: what we do all day is almost a campaign film in this respect. But well done and extremely fascinating.

Working: What We Do All Day, available on Netflix on Wednesday, May 17, 2023