Customer Reviews

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you find yourself wondering, "Is this all I'm worth?" when you look at your paycheck, meager benefits (or lack thereof), other poor job opportunities or rising gas, college and home costs, and the increasingly unattainable "American Dream", you are not alone...
This book is an excellent primer for those of us who want to know why American jobs are so much less fruitful than those of our parents or grandparents generations (for 20 or 30 somethings). It is a sociological eye-opener on par with "Fast Food Nation". It emboldens us to get more politically involved, and helps us form opinions on many of todays very relevant pressing issues(health care, illegal immigrants, the minimum wage, dwindling union support, offshoring and job security, education costs and standards, corporate corruption).
The Big Squeeze covers several case studies sprinkled with analysis and history of all parties involved in our mighty economy. Greenhouse makes a very well informed argument for adapting to changing and new economic pressures and in the end of the book lays out his proposals (albeit too idealistic for most administrations) for solving many of the problems he has dissected. I commend him for tackling such a huge subject with so many variables and attempting to pull it all together into a comprehensive book that educates the lay person (who is not an economist) on what is happening in this country. He makes the reader aware that this is truly an epidemic and raises the red flag.
While this book is not "light" reading, it does tell positive tales of employers doing the right thing, and of immigrants who have succeeded and injustices that have been unveiled so as to balance the overwhelming sea of pessimism and hopelessness that these types of books tend to hold between their pages.

The book is both an overview of the deteriorated state of affairs for American workers as well as a few up close and personal looks at some of those so affected. For one brief generation after WWII, American workers empowered through union contracts, achieved a somewhat harmonious status with their employers, which included good wages and benefits and expectations of job security. And the government provided support as well, especially for veterans. But that's not the way things are now.

As the author so well examines, employees are now viewed as mere factors of production and can be subjected to egregious capriciousness. They now can be fired arbitrarily, forced to work off the clock, have their time sheets altered, forced to work as so-called independent contractors or part-time, etc. Employee wages have been flat for over thirty years, despite increasing productivity over those years, while CEO pay has skyrocketed. The labor movement is a mere shell of its former self with private sector union membership being at the same density as one hundred years ago. Advances in computers and telecommunications have facilitated shipping even high tech jobs overseas; trade agreements have enabled establishing production off shore for intra-corporate trade; and immigration is having profound impacts on jobs and wages domestically. Those left behind after downsizing have to redouble their efforts with apparently little appreciation by many employers. The traditional way to advancement, education, is increasingly becoming out of reach for many because of the costs. American workers have truly become an afterthought or invisible.

There really is nothing in this book that has not been discussed repeatedly in the electronic media, books, and newspapers over the last several years. The Wal-Mart model has become pervasive. Occasionally an organization will come along like Costco that demonstrates that workers can be treated well despite the demands of the retail world, but they are an exception.

US corporations are ascendant; they have a great deal of control over media content, they dominate the political process, and they hide behind the mantra of competitiveness to squeeze American workers for higher and higher profits. The author, more hopefully than convincingly, calls for a return to kinder times. But there will be no voluntary relinquishment of power. There has to be a realization on the part of American workers on the realities of excessive corporate power and a willingness to assert political power to transform the process in favor of workers. This book clearly shows that American workers are now being squeezed almost beyond imagination with no end in sight.

I enjoyed reading this book so much. People might think this book would be all about statistics and chastising the American way of life. Well, you can take rest it is not that type of book.

This book is very personal and emotional that tells a very human tale about the American way of living in our lifetime. The author, Steven Greenhouse, gives justice to the ordinary and average American workers who are being mistreated and exploited here in the U.S. The book contains several stories about the personal struggles of individuals who were all just searching for a better treatment at work.

What I gained reading from this book is that this is The United States of America the nation that ended child labor, gave women the right to vote, equality to all, and a bright future for everyone. So, why can't we maintain all of those and strive to better our work environment/salary/life? It is very apparent that our wages are not raising along with the expenses we incur in our livelihood. It is time for the corporation to raise wages and stop messing with our healthcare plans because these are the very things that made the USA the greatest and wealthiest nation around the world from the 1950s onward to the 1990s.

Well, I encourage people especially in Business Ethics courses in college to read this book. Also, I'm looking at you UCF Cornerstone course if you want your students to learn more about how to manage workers in business then this is one of those books students should read about in their classes.

"The Big Squeeze" has lots of great stories, is well written and interesting. For that reason I give it three stars. Unfortunately, I find much of Greenhouse's analysis lacking, and many of his policy recommendations unhelpful.

Greenhouse is right that we need to improve health care. I recommend The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System as the best book on the subject.

Greenhouse is a fan of unions. I'm a union member myself, but I'm not convinced that unions are the road to improving the American workplace. I think unions are fine as far as giving employees a voice in debate, but depending on the power of the strike to improve workplace conditions significantly is silly. Workplace conditions improve when employers need to reduce turnover and workers have skills employers need. Unions can't change the law of supply and demand.

Greenhouse says far too little on the role of immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular in creating the terrible workplace conditions we now have. In my opinion, enforcing the immigration laws and reducing immigration numbers are the single most important step we can take to improve the American workplace.

Greenhouse also misses one of the most important steps in empowering the working poor: birth control. It is no accident that many of Greenhouse's worst stories involve single mothers or families with several children. Children today are a luxury item. When someone with no skills and no savings has a child, it doesn't take a genius to see that making ends meet will be difficult. Desperate people trying to support too many mouths are ripe for exploitation. Greenhouse notes that young people today are having an especially tough time finding good jobs, but misses the implication--this is a classic symptom of overpopulation.

Greenhouse talks a lot about how the poor need higher incomes. I agree that we need to greatly reduce income inequality in the U.S. However, keep in mind that the U.S. poor have high incomes by world standards. Greenhouse says that $17,300 a year in annual retirement income is not much to live on. But why is that? In most places $17,300 annually per person would be more than enough to acquire housing, transportation, health care, and the necessities of life. Greenhouse needs to look more at why housing, transportation, and the like are so expensive in the U.S. We don't need more economic growth--we need efficiency in producing high quality of life from our incomes. For more on this, seeThe Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, The High Cost of Free Parking, and Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development.

I imagine that many conservative talk show hosts who have heard of or even read "The Big Squeeze" will dismiss out of hand Steven Greenhouse's new book as just more predictable liberal negativity. After all, according to Sean Hannity on one recent afternoon program it is possible for everyone to become rich in America if they are just willing to work hard enough. This is hogwash, Mr. Hannity. Everyone is not cut out to be an enterpreneur or a stockbroker. The reality is that in America today 10% of the population controls nearly 50% of the wealth. The gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us has been increasing at a alarming rate. Good paying jobs are being shipped to other nations and millions of Americans employed in retail or service industries are being forced to work in miserable conditions just to scrape by. "The Big Squeeze" is about the sobering new realities facing an ever increasing number of American workers today. And for the most part what Steven Greenhouse has discovered is not a pretty picture.

It would appear that the American worker is under attack from all directions. Over the past two decades the U.S. has been inundated by millions of illegal aliens from places like Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti. The presence of these additional workers helps to depress blue collar wages in this country and places a strain on the public services we all have to pay for like schools and hospitals. Meanwhile, despite that fact that Americans are among the most productive workers in the world U.S. corporations have accelerated the outsourcing of good paying white collar jobs to places like Pakistan and India where workers are happy to work for a fraction of what his American counterpart makes. Greenhouse spotlights a number of instances where American workers were actually forced to suffer the indignity of training their foreign replacements or else risk losing their severance packages. This one hits especially close to home because my wife found herself in just this situation a few years ago.

As the grip of "The Big Squeeze" gets tighter and tighter, increasing numbers of Americans are forced to accept lower paying positions at outfits like Wal-Mart and Family Dollar. Steven Greenhouse hightlights a whole host of appalling working conditions too numerous to mention here that employees at these retailers are forced to endure. To me the most disturbing one was that in many smaller stores Wal-Mart employees working the overnight shift were actually locked in the store with no manager present and with absolutely no ability to get out in case of an emergency! How can they get away with that?? In the course of "The Big Squeeze" Greenhouse does give kudos to both the discount retailer Costco and the accounting firm Ernst and Young. He praises these companies for the value they place on their employees and cites them as models for other companies to follow. Greenhouse also believes that if the challenges facing American workers today are ever to be reversed then labor unions must play a major role, particularly with those doing lower-paying jobs like janitors and nursing home workers.

For most Americans, what Steven Greenhouse has to say in "The Big Squeeze" will really come as no surprise. The problems outlined in this book are myriad and the implications for most workers are quite frightening. Steven Greenhouse argues that America should take a second look at globalization and perhaps make some adjustments along the way. "The Big Squeeze" is a highly readable and informative book. Recommended!

A well-researched, well-written, gripping documentation of the deteriorating status of the American worker at all levels of the economy, by a veteran New York Times reporter who certainly knows the turf. Many readers will relate to the human stories recounted in this book. Those who don't will have their eyes opened and their thinking changed. Kudos to this author, who has done a good deed by telling this story.

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.

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.

The many interviews for this book help to engage the reader's interest, and make the reality that we face more real. but the book isn't just interviews. there's also a lot of good factual data to back up his critique of "what is." Employers have been aggressively screwing workers for the past several decades, and often in ways that are illegal, and this does come out here.

The book is a bit limited in what it offers as solutions. He's very much within the political mainstream and does pick up some good reform proposals, such as extending Medicare to cover everyone. Getting rid of the private insurance companies is key to the solution but the author doesn't really lean enough on that point. the main limitation is that he fails to recognize that things aren't going to substantially change unless and until American workers figure out how to engage in large scale organizing and actions to fight back. The "good times" in the decades after World War 2 didn't happen because "enlightened political leaders" saw the light. They happened because of the pitched battles, general strikes, workplace sitdowns and wildcat strikes of the '30s and '40s. The feds and the corporations were forced to make concessions.

The author of this book has some rather misplaced ideas about American unions. He says they need to be more "cooperative" with employers. But the leaders have long preached "cooperation" but the employers have decided they don't want to cooperate. And the old union leader "cooperation" with employers often led to sellouts and the unions getting a black eye in terms of how workers view them. The author proposes all sorts of invasive and paternalistic legislation to micromanage unions by the government -- ignoring the lesson he should have learned from employer domination of the National Labor Relations Board. It would be more relevant to provide info about more grassroots controlled unionism and forms of action and organizing workers can do themselves.

Greenhouse's focus is to ask "Why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations intent on squeezing their workers dry?" Corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly, while pay has languished. Median income for non-elderly households in 2006 was $2,375 lower in real terms than six years prior. Income inequality now more closely resembles a 3rd-world country than an advanced nation - if it was the same as in 1979, the bottom 80% would receive $8,000 more in yearly income.

Almost one-fourth of the workforce earns less than $10/hour, and generally also lack benefits. Health costs now account for 16% of GDP, up from 5% in 1960. Meanwhile, the proportion covered by pensions (especially defined-benefit - eg. IBM) is declining, and large corporations (eg. United, Delta, and U.S. airlines, LTV and Bethlehem Steel) are defaulting on existing obligations.

Corporations flaunt overtime laws (eg. Wal-Mart, Target), and even fail to pay workers for all their time worked (H-P, Wal-Mart). Circuit City has twice replaced its longer-term workers earning higher salaries with new recruits at lower pay scales, while Microsoft, H-P, and others make the term "temporary" workers an oxymoron in a bid to deny benefits to large numbers of long-term employees.

Three decades ago employer-provided health insurance protected 70% of private-sector workers - now it is down to 55%, and their coverage is no longer as extensive. "Independent contractor" status is extensively exploited (saves Social Security, etc. payments) by eg. FedEx, and their use of the tactic is expanding (to FedEx LTL) despite adverse court rulings.

What fuels these actions? Greenhouse answers - takeover threats, deregulation (airlines, trucking), pressure from jobs lost through automation (also used to create an environment of close supervision), outsourcing, streamlining (eg. delayering, eliminating overheads), increasing costs of employer-funded health care (especially vs. non-coverage by Asian firms), and the "Wal-Mart" effect (low employee pay and benefits; forcing suppliers in the same direction).

There are few heroes in "The Big Squeeze." The most obvious is Costco - higher pay, benefits, sales, and profits/employee than Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, while much lower employee turnover and shrinkage. Greenhouse also suggests Las Vegas casinos (courtesy of strong employee unions) and Timberland shoes - however, both are exempt from strong commodity-like or foreign competition and thus not as impressive as Costco's achievements.

Don't economists agree that globalization to the max is good for us? Not all - Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize winner in economics, says: "If you don't believe (offshoring) changes the average wages in America, then you believe in the truth fairy."

Unions used to be a strong offsetting force vs. management. However, just 7.5% of private sectors are now in unions - the lowest rate since 1901. Yet, 53% of non-management, non-union workers say they would like to join. What holds them back? Greenhouse suggests that one reason is the 2,000+ "union-avoidance" consultants 9Only 100 in the 1960s).

Greenhouse also suggests a need to improve organizing tactics, and offers the SEIU's approach to organizing janitors in Houston as a good example. They began by getting elected officials who were pension-fund overseers with large real-estate holdings to urge Houston building owners to press cleaning contractors to cooperate. The SEIU also promised not to begin bargaining until at least 55% of the employees' contractors were organized (no "unfair" disadvantages). Finally, they leveraged their strength by picketing opposing janitorial firms with work in other cities.

Greenhouse's Recommendations: Increased Social Security taxes (to ensure its stability), increased income taxes on those with higher incomes (benefited most from globalization), changing health care to a single-payer system (much less overhead), and working to restrain health care costs.

Reading "The Big Squeeze" sometimes hurts as one sees how people are taken advantage of. My only criticism is that Greenhouse does not lay enough blame at the feet of globalization.