Abstract
How can the experience of labor in old age enrich senior citizens’ lives and challenge negative assumptions about aging? At the same time, how can the employment of otherwise-retired men and women help to develop progressive forms of labor-management relations, as well as foster workplaces that are both worker-friendly and profitable? Anthropologist Caitrin Lynch’s fantastic new study of older men and women’s experiences at the Vita Needle Company in suburban Boston presents a detailed and vividly written analysis of how “eldersourcing” brings purpose, fulfillment, and friendship to the lives of its mostly older workforce, as well as how the employment of aging men and women encouraged an industrial management style that is very sensitive and responsive to workers’ life circumstances. This book is essential reading for labor educators, as Lynch presents a rich and engrossing study that will lend itself to discussions of shop floor relations, the needs and experiences of older workers, and new approaches to labor-management issues.
At Vita Needle, the average age of its forty production workers is seventy-four. This family-run company operates out of a nondescript factory space in Needham, Massachusetts, where its workforce of mostly local seniors manufactures and ships bundles of needles for a variety of medical and scientific applications. Drawing on extensive interviews and participant observation (including significant time spent working in the factory), Lynch details the expectations, experiences, relationships, and labors of the men and women at Vita Needle, as well as the practices and philosophies of management. As Lynch shows, the Hartman family that operates the business relies on part-time older men and women (who have Medicare, Social Security, and sometimes private pensions) to reduce labor costs and maximize profits, while these factory workers of advanced ages gain a new sense of purpose, companionship, and a helpful (and validating) paycheck.
Lynch’s analyses of the multiple dividends yielded by work to Vita Needle’s aging workers are the foundations of the book. She cautions observers to avoid the conclusion that Vita Needle managers are cynically creating a low-wage workforce that exploits the old; rather, we have to consider carefully the men and women who work there. “Retirees and older adults,” Lynch writes, “simply want to continue to live and be a part of life, where life itself means community engagement and contribution. Vita Needle is a place of life for people who may otherwise be written off as nonproductive, useless, indivisible, and no longer human” (p. 184). As we see in her probing analysis of shop floor culture, working at the Vita Needle Company yields a substantive feeling of family, fulfillment, and fun that integrates both laborers and managers.
The other key theme in Retirement on the Line is Vita Needle owners’ development of a managerial style that is very accepting of aging workers’ needs and concerns. The Hartmans cast aside familiar industrial demands for efficiency, speed, and relentless cost cutting, and instead built a business model that accommodates older men and women’s varying physical abilities and employs a delicate human touch. Management and workers view the situation as a “win-win”: the deployment of part-time older laborers maximizes Vita Needle’s earning potential and helps to ensure the longevity of an American manufacturing enterprise; at the same time, aging men and women further their own longevity as a result of “belonging and caring and having a sense of purpose” (pp. 106, 95).
While the Vita Needle case highlights ways for managers and workers to defy ageism, enhance the lives of older people, and develop worker-friendly workplaces, Lynch says too little about how the promise and popularity of “eldersourcing” quietly overshadows the equally important issue of how to employ and enrich the work lives of younger men and women, whether in manufacturing or elsewhere. However, labor educators will find that issue to be fertile ground for debate in their classes and discussion groups, rather than a fault of what is truly an excellent book.