May 26, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Big Squeeze' Pulls No Punches in Describing Plight of American Workers
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Just over two years ago -- on May 21, 2006 -- I reviewed "The Disposable American" by New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle (link: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/ columns/060521-kinchen-review.html).
Uchitelle described how downsizing, offshoring, outsourcing and other "lean and mean" concepts had devalued the American worker -- considered by most economists to be the hardest working, most productive on the planet. It was a landmark book, because I could relate to the people Uchitelle interviewed, having been displaced myself almost two decades ago from a job I expected to have until I retired.
Now comes Steven Greenhouse, a colleague of Uchitelle, who updates and continues the story in "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker" (Knopf, 384 pages, notes, index, bibliography, $25.95). Greenhouse not only lays on facts and figures about the stagnant economy -- why don't we just call it by that good old 1970s term "stagflation" -- he interviews dozens of American workers who have done their jobs admirably, only to be cast aside, while CEOs are awarded lavish retirement and health care packages.
Greenhouse, who has covered the labor and workplace beat at the New York Times since 1995, traveled from coast to coast, spending a great deal of time in heartland manufacturing centers like Galesburg and Peoria Illinois, to tell the dismal story of blue and white collar worker abuse in the U.S. Greenhouse's book doesn't supplant Uchitelle's; both remain important works in a field that continues to grow as Wall Street driven companies become leaner to the point of nonexistence in many cases -- and certainly a lot meaner -- with a couple of notable exceptions which Greenhouse profiles.
Does anyone need to be reminded that the U.S. is the only industrialized country without a universal health service, that we rank 37th in health care while France ranks No. 1? All this despite the fact that in 2004 we spent $6,102 on health per person, compared with $3,159 in France, $3,043 in Germany and $2,249 in Japan. Some 47 million Americans lack health care, Greenhouse notes, suggesting in the final chapter on recommendations that the nation extend Medicare to all -- an idea I've suggested in a commentary -- or adopt Massachusetts and California style laws that require everybody to have health insurance just as they require motor vehicle insurance.
If you surmise that Wal-Mart, the world's largest employer, will be one of the bad guys in Greenhouse's book, you won't be disappointed. He contrasts Sam Walton's company with discount retailing giant Costco, based in the Seattle, WA area and founded in 1983 by James Sinegal. Costco makes a decent profit, actually performing better on standards set by Wall Street than Sam's Club and its parent Wal-Mart, while paying far better wages and offering much better benefits than the Bentonville, Arkansas giant founded two decades earlier.
Blunt spoken Sinegal, who earns $350,000 a year compared with the millions paid to CEO Lee Scott of Wal-Mart, and who modeled his business on the ground-breaking ideas of Sol Price, founder of Price Club, reasons -- accurately, in the view of most experts -- that employee turnover is expensive and results from low pay and benefits paid to employees. Sinegal, Greenhouse points out, knows that a loyal employee is one that is more productive.
Another offender in Greenhouse's book is that ubiquitous competitor to UPS, FedEx Ground, which classifies its employees as independent contractors, although courts have ruled that they are in fact employees. Independent contractors don't organize unions or get benefits. A FedEx "independent contractor" had to pick up her packages at a designated time, had to buy her own truck and onboard computer and had to wear a FedEx uniform, Greenhouse relates. Sounds like an employee to me!
In Galesburg, IL, birthplace of Carl Sandburg and one-time home to a Maytag refrigerator plant, Greenhouse interviewed workers left behind when the company abandoned the town of 35,000 to build refrigerators in Reynosa, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, TX. Generations of workers -- with no more than a high school education -- earned decent wages at the plant, helping to make Galesburg into a prosperous city. The story is a familiar one to residents of Huntington, WV, East Chicago, IN, and hundreds of towns across the nation.
Every time I think of workers losing their jobs, I'm reminded of a lighted sign that's visible on the New York bound Amtrak train ride just past Philadelphia, in the New Jersey city of Trenton: "Trenton Makes, The World Takes." that was true during World War II and up to the 1960s, but Trenton doesn't make much of anything these days, thanks to the pervasive hollowing out of the nation's manufacturing base.
Outsourcing may be considered inevitable by economists and others who argue that the manufacturing jobs lost -- the nation lost 3.5 million jobs between 2000 and 2007 -- will be replaced by high-tech positions. That hasn't happened in many places and many of the high-tech jobs are being performed in India and China by workers who make a fraction of the wages of displaced Americans. Lawyers, accountants, claims adjusters and other while collar professionals in the U.S. are increasingly supplanted by much lower paid workers in places like India.
In one poignant passage, Greenhouse tells the story of Jennifer Miller, a skilled, well-educated "permatemp" at the Hewlett-Packard facility in Boise, ID. "Permatemps" are temporary workers hired through agencies like Manpower Inc., who perform much the same work as regular employees. They're not treated as well as regular employees and aren't recognized for their achievements at corporate parties that laud employees.
In another section, just as heart rending, Greenhouse interviewed Myra Bronstein, a senior quality assurance engineer at a Bellevue, WA high-tech company called WatchMark. One morning Bronstein and 17 other quality assurance engineers were called into a meeting in the boardroom -- always a bad sign -- and told that not only were they being laid off, they had to train technicians from India who would replace them, performing their jobs in India. If they didn't do this, they would lose their severance packages.
"People were trying not to cry," Bronstein told the author. "We felt sucker-punched. It totally knocked the wind out of me. I had bought into all their motivational tactics. I felt if I had helped my company stay afloat, I would ensure my own employment. I believed them."
If that doesn't make you want to run to a window, open it up and in the words of the movie anchorman in the movie "Network", yell out "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" nothing will.
The Big Squeeze affects young people who can't find summer jobs, an important rite of passage and part of the education process. It impacts debt-laden college graduates who can't find affordable apartments and are saddled with historically high student loan debts. It affects older workers, displaced by outsourcing and offshoring and forced to work in fast-foot restaurants or as Wal-Mart greeter ntinue to supplement their inadequate 401 (k) pensions, while CEO's are gifted with lavish defined benefit retirement and health-care packages. My shorthand phrase for this phenomenon is "Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for everyone else."
Greenhouse documents the decline of unions, which helped to create a middle class under a social contract that is now just a historical curiosity. Developed after bitter struggles by union organizers in the 1930s and the creation of Social Security at the same time, this social contract enabled the parents of baby boomers to buy houses at affordable prices and raise families with one income. Loyalty under this social contract was a two-way street.
"The Big Squeeze" is, as I indicated in the beginning, an important, ground-breaking book that should be read by everyone. It was an example of preaching to the choir to me, as I've read many books by people like Uchitelle and Barbara Ehrenreich, but to many others, it will be an education in reality. Even to me, it provided facts and figures that documented the hollowing out of the nation. If you have any money left after filling up the tank and buying groceries, buy a copy.
Publisher's web site: www.aaknopf.com
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BOOK REVIEW: 'The Big Squeeze' Pulls No Punches in Describing Plight of American Workers
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Just over two years ago -- on May 21, 2006 -- I reviewed "The Disposable American" by New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle (link: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/ columns/060521-kinchen-review.html).
Uchitelle described how downsizing, offshoring, outsourcing and other "lean and mean" concepts had devalued the American worker -- considered by most economists to be the hardest working, most productive on the planet. It was a landmark book, because I could relate to the people Uchitelle interviewed, having been displaced myself almost two decades ago from a job I expected to have until I retired.
Now comes Steven Greenhouse, a colleague of Uchitelle, who updates and continues the story in "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker" (Knopf, 384 pages, notes, index, bibliography, $25.95). Greenhouse not only lays on facts and figures about the stagnant economy -- why don't we just call it by that good old 1970s term "stagflation" -- he interviews dozens of American workers who have done their jobs admirably, only to be cast aside, while CEOs are awarded lavish retirement and health care packages.
Greenhouse, who has covered the labor and workplace beat at the New York Times since 1995, traveled from coast to coast, spending a great deal of time in heartland manufacturing centers like Galesburg and Peoria Illinois, to tell the dismal story of blue and white collar worker abuse in the U.S. Greenhouse's book doesn't supplant Uchitelle's; both remain important works in a field that continues to grow as Wall Street driven companies become leaner to the point of nonexistence in many cases -- and certainly a lot meaner -- with a couple of notable exceptions which Greenhouse profiles.
Does anyone need to be reminded that the U.S. is the only industrialized country without a universal health service, that we rank 37th in health care while France ranks No. 1? All this despite the fact that in 2004 we spent $6,102 on health per person, compared with $3,159 in France, $3,043 in Germany and $2,249 in Japan. Some 47 million Americans lack health care, Greenhouse notes, suggesting in the final chapter on recommendations that the nation extend Medicare to all -- an idea I've suggested in a commentary -- or adopt Massachusetts and California style laws that require everybody to have health insurance just as they require motor vehicle insurance.
If you surmise that Wal-Mart, the world's largest employer, will be one of the bad guys in Greenhouse's book, you won't be disappointed. He contrasts Sam Walton's company with discount retailing giant Costco, based in the Seattle, WA area and founded in 1983 by James Sinegal. Costco makes a decent profit, actually performing better on standards set by Wall Street than Sam's Club and its parent Wal-Mart, while paying far better wages and offering much better benefits than the Bentonville, Arkansas giant founded two decades earlier.
Blunt spoken Sinegal, who earns $350,000 a year compared with the millions paid to CEO Lee Scott of Wal-Mart, and who modeled his business on the ground-breaking ideas of Sol Price, founder of Price Club, reasons -- accurately, in the view of most experts -- that employee turnover is expensive and results from low pay and benefits paid to employees. Sinegal, Greenhouse points out, knows that a loyal employee is one that is more productive.
Another offender in Greenhouse's book is that ubiquitous competitor to UPS, FedEx Ground, which classifies its employees as independent contractors, although courts have ruled that they are in fact employees. Independent contractors don't organize unions or get benefits. A FedEx "independent contractor" had to pick up her packages at a designated time, had to buy her own truck and onboard computer and had to wear a FedEx uniform, Greenhouse relates. Sounds like an employee to me!
In Galesburg, IL, birthplace of Carl Sandburg and one-time home to a Maytag refrigerator plant, Greenhouse interviewed workers left behind when the company abandoned the town of 35,000 to build refrigerators in Reynosa, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, TX. Generations of workers -- with no more than a high school education -- earned decent wages at the plant, helping to make Galesburg into a prosperous city. The story is a familiar one to residents of Huntington, WV, East Chicago, IN, and hundreds of towns across the nation.
Every time I think of workers losing their jobs, I'm reminded of a lighted sign that's visible on the New York bound Amtrak train ride just past Philadelphia, in the New Jersey city of Trenton: "Trenton Makes, The World Takes." that was true during World War II and up to the 1960s, but Trenton doesn't make much of anything these days, thanks to the pervasive hollowing out of the nation's manufacturing base.
Outsourcing may be considered inevitable by economists and others who argue that the manufacturing jobs lost -- the nation lost 3.5 million jobs between 2000 and 2007 -- will be replaced by high-tech positions. That hasn't happened in many places and many of the high-tech jobs are being performed in India and China by workers who make a fraction of the wages of displaced Americans. Lawyers, accountants, claims adjusters and other while collar professionals in the U.S. are increasingly supplanted by much lower paid workers in places like India.
In one poignant passage, Greenhouse tells the story of Jennifer Miller, a skilled, well-educated "permatemp" at the Hewlett-Packard facility in Boise, ID. "Permatemps" are temporary workers hired through agencies like Manpower Inc., who perform much the same work as regular employees. They're not treated as well as regular employees and aren't recognized for their achievements at corporate parties that laud employees.
In another section, just as heart rending, Greenhouse interviewed Myra Bronstein, a senior quality assurance engineer at a Bellevue, WA high-tech company called WatchMark. One morning Bronstein and 17 other quality assurance engineers were called into a meeting in the boardroom -- always a bad sign -- and told that not only were they being laid off, they had to train technicians from India who would replace them, performing their jobs in India. If they didn't do this, they would lose their severance packages.
"People were trying not to cry," Bronstein told the author. "We felt sucker-punched. It totally knocked the wind out of me. I had bought into all their motivational tactics. I felt if I had helped my company stay afloat, I would ensure my own employment. I believed them."
If that doesn't make you want to run to a window, open it up and in the words of the movie anchorman in the movie "Network", yell out "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" nothing will.
The Big Squeeze affects young people who can't find summer jobs, an important rite of passage and part of the education process. It impacts debt-laden college graduates who can't find affordable apartments and are saddled with historically high student loan debts. It affects older workers, displaced by outsourcing and offshoring and forced to work in fast-foot restaurants or as Wal-Mart greeter ntinue to supplement their inadequate 401 (k) pensions, while CEO's are gifted with lavish defined benefit retirement and health-care packages. My shorthand phrase for this phenomenon is "Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for everyone else."
Greenhouse documents the decline of unions, which helped to create a middle class under a social contract that is now just a historical curiosity. Developed after bitter struggles by union organizers in the 1930s and the creation of Social Security at the same time, this social contract enabled the parents of baby boomers to buy houses at affordable prices and raise families with one income. Loyalty under this social contract was a two-way street.
"The Big Squeeze" is, as I indicated in the beginning, an important, ground-breaking book that should be read by everyone. It was an example of preaching to the choir to me, as I've read many books by people like Uchitelle and Barbara Ehrenreich, but to many others, it will be an education in reality. Even to me, it provided facts and figures that documented the hollowing out of the nation. If you have any money left after filling up the tank and buying groceries, buy a copy.
Publisher's web site: www.aaknopf.com
E-mail HNN Yahoo Google
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
