Slaughterman, Sydney, Australia

Photograph by Michael O'Brien

"Wouldn't be doing anything else," says Rick Seymour, a slaughterman at the government-owned Homebush Abattoir Corporation in Sydney. He started at age 16, washing out the plant after school. Seymour is among the 57 percent of the nation's work force that holds a union card.

From the National Geographic book National Geographic Image Collection .