compelling account of what work life in America has become | The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American...

Uncovering the Meida Shroud | The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Borzoi Books) | Steven Greenhouse

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	• The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Borzoi Books) Steven Greenhouse Knopf, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

eye opening, readable, balanced

I've long been concerned about the rough way that many workers are treated and I picked up The Big Squeeze at a friend's recommendation. I was impressed -- and angered -- by The Big Squeeze; it lays out better than anything I've read exactly what's happening to the nation's workers. Sad to say, wages are going nowhere for millions of Americans, pensions are going down the drain and in this age of Blackberries, everyone seems to be working more than ever. The best thing about this book is that it tells the tales of individual workers -- some are written like nimbly told short stories -- to explain the way that many workers are being dragged down by trends like offshoring white-collar jobs to India, factories moving to Mexico and the two-tier wage schemes that are hammering many twentysomethings as they enter the workplace.
Books about economics or about work can often be heavy-handed and hard to read, but I was pleasantly surprised at how readable this book was. And Greenhouse tries very hard to be balanced and fair-minded as he treads through some difficult terrain about globalization, labor unions, corporate culture and immigration. It's good that Greenhouse writes about the good and the bad, about Wal-Mart and other corporations that brazenly flout the law in how they treat their workers and about corporations like Costco that do right by their workers, companies that we can all learn from and that more companies should seek to imitate.
The Big Squeeze does a terrific job explaining in a very human, readable way the many painful things happening to the nation's workers. I think it's the best book on American workers since Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.

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compelling account of what work life in America has become

I first picked up The Big Squeeze after I heard that it had a chapter about the factory closing in Illinois that Barack Obama spoke about in his keynote address to the Democratic convention in 2004. I grew up in the Midwest, and I care a great deal about the future of manufacturing, so that was the first chapter I read in the book. It was terrific. Yes, the chapter was about a factory closing--Maytag closed a 1,600-employee refrigerator factory and moved it to Mexico--but the chapter was far more than that. It was a great read about a devastated community, Galesburg, Illinois, and it was fascinating--it was even literary--because it tied in Carl Sandburg, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Ronald Reagan's Illinois childhood all with David Ricardo and the economics of globalization. The chapter had some very moving descriptions about how globalization affects workers. At one point tears came to my eyes.

Then I turned to the rest of the book, and I found it highly readable and intelligent throughout, whether it was discussing Wal-Mart workers, immigrant workers or contingent workers like freelancers. The book has very good, human stories of individual workers, and analysis that digs much deeper than other treatments of these issues. At a time when everyone is talking about working-class voters, this book really lays out what's happening to America's workers. And the story ain't pretty. Anyone who wants to know what's happening to the nation's 140 million workers should read this book.

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Uncovering the Meida Shroud

This book add to the growing number of titles lifting the shroud corporate media have wrapped around the economic realities of our time: ripping out 'labor' from the economic legs of 'land, labor and capital.' Think of it as the Gilded Age 2.0,complete with neo-robber barrons, thanks to laissez-faire corporate globalization.

As Matt Taibi wrote in "The Low Post," "One of the biggest purveyors of this dreck is arch-capitalist spokesmodel Thomas Friedman, who has spent the last ten years trying to talk himself into the position that having to compete with Chinese and Indian industrial slaves is somehow a good thing for America. Nothing makes Friedman happier than being able to appear before a bunch of old ladies in some cobweb-strewn Midwestern library or Jaycees hall and deliver his favorite faux-homespun platitude about the new global economy, a clunky tale about advice he often gives to his daughters. "Girls," his story goes, "when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, 'Tom, finish your dinner. People in China . . . are starving.' My advice to you now: 'Girls, finish your homework, people in China . . . are starving for your jobs.' "

"Well, that makes sense. According to The New York Times, what we need to do to compete with China economically is adopt commensurate "homegrown business practices" that will enhance our performance.

"What do they have in mind? Eliminating the freedom of speech? Outlawing free trade associations? Legalizing child labor? Eliminating all environmental regulations and letting workers roll around in hazardous chemicals for fifteen hours a day for ten cents an hour? Ending all forms of corporate transparency? Come to think of it, we could solve our juvenile delinquency program and our trade competitiveness problem at the same time -- let's just lock up our high school dropouts in toy factories, get those little bas*#!*s making radioactive Lego sets six days a week for a buck a shift. Imagine the profits!"

It's going to be tough breaking through corporate media's stranglehold on information. But there's hope for light on this subject thanks to this book and Aronica and Ramdoo's The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman Wake up America! [...]

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The Big Squeeze takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world?s most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face egregious sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and seventy-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.

The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends?among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect?have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street?s demands for ever-higher profits. In short, the post?World War II social contract that helped build the world?s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.

Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic, ready-to-be-implemented suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do to alleviate the squeeze.

A balanced, consistently revealing exploration of a major American crisis.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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