In the last three decades much of the work that we did as human beings that involved us producing and making things was shipped out to countries where labour costs were lower and employment right virtually none existent. This has a number of knock on effects, firstly it has removed a lot of useful skills that people had who were employed in manufacturing work, these skills would have contributed to the larger pool of skills available to local communities, and secondly it is has opened the door to some of the most inhuman and mind numbingly tedious activities that pass as ‘work’ possibly imaginable, data entry, answer phone calls all day long, emptying and filling up trucks in huge sprawling warehouse complexes, sticking labels on things and putting them in boxes, the list of modern day work activities that have a dehumanising effect is endless. Our failure to collectively deal with the negative aspects of employment such as low pay, long hours and little in the way of work place protection has led to the situation we have now where work has become something an abstract activity in relation its links to community and locality in the past. 
Looking at work differently
Quite early on in my work life it appeared to me that work wasn’t something to get too het up about, my perception of work as the primary human activity wasn’t one where you were treated like crap, you were paid poorly, and you spent five days out of seven, and sometimes more engaging in work when you could have been doing much more satisfying and interesting things. For me the idea of the right to work was a right to slavery, don’t get me wrong I get up early every morning and go about my business gardening, cutting firewood up, making beer, writing, watering the polytunnel, baking bread, and to me this is what I perceive as work, I am providing a lot of my own resource base locally, and slowly but surely am removing myself away from jobs and employment into a situation where I am not locked into the prevailing economic model of debt and slavery. For those interested in reading up on different perspectives of work and the idea of reclaiming it it would certainly be work reading Tom Hodgkinson’s amusing and informative work ‘How to be Free‘ or either of Mark Boyle’s works ‘Moneyless man’ and ‘moneyless manifesto’ and Chris Carlson’s ‘Nowtopia‘
How to work differently
If you want to generate your own resources and skills base that are able to move you away from the locked in effect of employment, the process can be accelerated ten fold by doing it with other people in your local area, within communities and groups of people in a given area there will be a mixture of skills that people, all of these skills are useful to the group as tools to generate their own community resources, the old maxim applies ‘everybody is good at something’ People are the greatest resource that we have, and sharing our gifts and skills help us and others to have lives that are more meaningful, fulfilling and tailored to our well being. When friends and neighbours sit down together and list all of things that are able to make, produce, fix and repair, we have everything we need in that room to help us redefine what work is, and to provide for all of our needs. 
Steve