Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line [Hardcover]

William M. Adler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2000

Following the flight of one woman's factory job from the United States to Mexico, this compelling work offers a provocative and fresh perspective on the global economy -- at a time when downsizing is unraveling the American Dream for many working families.

"Mollie's Job" is an absorbing and affecting narrative history that traces the postwar migration of one factory job as it passes from the cradle of American industry, Paterson, New Jersey, to rural Mississippi during the turmoil of the civil rights movement to the burgeoning border city of Matamoros, Mexico.

This fascinating account follows the intersecting lives and fates of three women -- Mollie James in Paterson, Dorothy Carter in Mississippi, and Balbina Duque in Matamoros, all of whom work the same job as it winds its way south. "Mollie's Job" is the story of North American labor and capital during the latter half of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first. The story of these women, their company, and their communities provides an ideal prism through which William Adler explores the larger issues at the heart of the book: the decline of unions and the middle class, the growing gap between rich and poor, public policy that rewards companies for transferring U.S. jobs abroad, the ways in which "free trade" undermines stable businesses and communities, and how the global economy exploits workers on both sides of the border.

At once a social and industrial history; a moving, personal narrative; and a powerful indictment of free trade at any cost, "Mollie's Job" puts a human face on the political and market forces shaping the world at the dawn of the new millennium and skillfully frames the currentdebate raging over future trade agreements.

By combining a deft historian's touch with first-rate reporting, "Mollie's Job" is an unprecedented and revealing look at the flesh-and-blood consequences of globalization.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This thoroughly researched study explores the way "free trade"--particularly the transfer of jobs to locales where workers can be paid less--adversely affects individuals, communities and industry. Following the trajectory of a factory manufacturing job from Paterson, N.J., to Simpson County, Miss., and finally to Matamoros, Mexico, Adler reveals that workers in Paterson were paid $8 an hour, while those in Mississippi got 75? less, and employees in Mexico earned merely $4 a day. Bringing together the stories of the three women who held the same job (in each of three locales) with the contemporary history of the labor movement, the effects of the Cold War on union organizing, the Ku Klux Klan's role in Southern factory life, voter registration patterns in the South and even the rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, Adler, who writes for Esquire and Rolling Stone, humanizes national and international economic forces, political events and trends in industrial management while elucidating them with clarity and insight. A keen observer, he gives his story depth and immediacy with precise detail, while his provocative and nuanced insights make for an important chronicle of the economy of industry and human lives.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Economic orthodoxy would have us believe that economic globalization and free trade have no downside. Yet journalist and author Adler (Land of Opportunity) reminds us that these sweeping economic changes do have a human cost. This book recounts the rise and fall of an electrical manufacturing company through the eyes of its founders, workers, and the politicians, union organizers, and corporate raiders who shape its fate. The story follows the transfer of production work from unionized New Jersey, where Mollie works, to union-free rural Mississippi and finally to a low-wage maquiladora plant with a government-controlled union across the U.S.-Mexican border. Adler details the shift from individually owned companies to corporate giants, discusses the impact of union-wage jobs on African American workers in the urban North and rural South, and catalogs the string of unfulfilled promises made by the company each time it moves production to a lower wage area. Mollie's Job is a timely account of individuals swept up by impersonal economic forces. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
-Duncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa City
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (May 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068483779X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684837796
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William M. Adler has written for many national and regional magazines, including Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Texas Observer. In addition to The Man Who Never Died, he has authored two other books of narrative nonfiction: Land of Opportunity (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), an intimate look at the rise and fall of a crack cocaine empire, and Mollie's Job (Scribner, 2000), which follows the flight of a single factory job from the U.S. to Mexico over the course of fifty years. His work explores the intersection of individual lives and the larger forces of their times, and it describes the gap between American ideals and American realities. Adler lives with his wife and son in Colorado.

For more information about Adler and The Man Who Never Died, including tour dates, samples of Joe Hill's songs, and a gallery of archival images, see themanwhoneverdied.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Progress in Practice, October 8, 2000

By 

Wolf Roder (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (Hardcover)

Among the various beliefs which make up the American civil religion surely the dogma of Free Enterprise is dominant. Business and enterprise have made us the best, richest, freest, and most just country in the world. Almost any action can be explained and excused as an economic necessity; whether downsizing, i.e. firing your workers, or moving the plant or polluting the environment. The company must remain competitive, and the firm profitable. Free Enterprise is good for you, ever and always. As Ivan Boesky put it, six months before he went to prison for three years: "Greed is alright. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." (P. 241) This story deals with the effects of American industrial progress over the past fifty years, not in abstract terms and numbers, but in the history of what happened to Mollie James' Job as it went south to more liberal climes, where wages are low, unions weak, environmental laws unenforced, and workplace safety nonexistent. The book reads very well, almost like a novel, but it deals with real people, names, and places. In fact, it is a good idea to keep a map handy to follow the action from Paterson, New Jersey, to Mendenhall and Gallman, Mississippi, to Blytheville, Arkansas, and Matamoros, Mexico. The action begins at the end of the War with an immigrant, go-getter, entrepreneur who builds an electrical components company from nothing. A classical, paternalistic workplace in which the boss works alongside his employees and knows everyone by name. He even welcomes organized labor for electricians will not install his product unless it bears a union label. Yet, neither he nor his workers can rid themselves of a crooked and corrupt teamster local. In the early sixties the company expands into rural Mississippi, a county without equal rights, without NAACP, much less CORE or SNCC. It is a place where the whites celebrated the assassination of President Kennedy. Yet, it is the company which in many ways escorted the region into the late twentieth century. In control of the only work and wages and backed by federal law the company could defy the Klan, the Sheriff, and the white newspapers, by insisting on an integrated workforce. Which, incidentally, helped to hold down wages as well. The founder's death in 1968 marked the passing of an era of management by men who thought as industrial manufacturers. While he venerated the bottom line as much as any capitalist, he achieved success by "a steely-eyed focus on high quality and customer service"(p. 220). The company was sold to a multi-branched electrical products company, which soon after was swallowed whole by another conglomerate. It thus fell into the hands of people who had no idea of the realities of production, nor did they have any interest in the nuts and bolts of the operation. In fact, the company, now a mere subsidiary, changed hands several times in the financial go-go years of the eighties. By now the personal relationships and life long job security of the early days were well forgotten. A cavalier attitude infected all aspects of the company. A director of human resources fired many of the old line leaders and executives. The company used their new maquiladora plant in Mexico to hold a loaded gun to the union local's negotiation committee. Reduce hourly pay or we close the plant. None the less, the reprieve was brief. Workers in Mexico earned as much in day as Americans in an hour, and by 1997 all manufacturing operations in the U.S. were shut down. Wages in Mexico were insufficient to raise a family. Workplace conditions are described as stiflingly hot, with air unbreathable from polluting chemicals, and without break, cafeteria, or adequate toilets. Living conditions were not one whit better. Yet, young women workers continued to stream in from the rural areas. At the end, ironically we may all "Thank God for NAFTA" the title of the epilogue.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE TRUE COSTS OF GLOBALIZATION...., December 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (Hardcover)

Since about the time NAFTA passed Congress, we have heard endless paeans of praise for free trade, the mobility of capital, and the new competitive global economy. We have heard less about the costs of globalization. This book takes the free trade issue and brings it down to earth by showing how jobs that originated in Paterson, New Jersey were sent to Mississippi, and later on Mexico, by corporate conglomerates searching for higher profits and a pliable, docile (and above all cheaper) workforce. The book focusses in on one firm, Universal, which specializes in making electrical fixtures. At first, the firm offers good jobs at good wages to all comers in New Jersey. However, as the founder of the company sells his interest out to a large railroad conglomerate, the firm heads south for cheaper labor....and then south again into Mexico. The story of how these jobs migrate is also the story of how institutions that are supposed to protect the American worker fail that worker in the end. Labor unions become complacent and somnolent, spending more resources on jurisdictional disputes and factional feuding than on organizing the workers. And when they aren't lazy, they are corrupt, doing deals with the Mafia for added perks. Federal agencies pull back from their duties as the nation drifts to the right. Read the segment in this book on how the U.S. Commerce Department (funded in great part from employee taxes) cheered on American businesses relocating to Mexico and your blood will boil. Read the segment on the so-called transitional assistance offered to displaced American workers (pamphlets given to people in their 40s and 50s on how to join the army) and you will get apoplexy. The book ends on an especially bitter note, as the conglomerate prepares to move to an even more depressed area of Mexico, with a woman worker wailing "must I chase my job all over the world?" Indeed.

In a larger, balance sheet sense, globalization may be beneficial. But ultimately, as Mr. Adler makes it clear with this well-written, thoroughly documented book, somebody is footing the bill with a lost job, a defaulted mortgage, missing benefits, and dread of the future.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roots of globalization: cheap labor, March 2, 2004

By 

Professor Joseph L. McCauley "Joseph L. McCauley" (Austria+Texas) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (Paperback)

The book starts painfully slowly and drags on for several chapters, but don't give up. It eventually takes us through decades of American history seen from the eyes of workers, factory owners and, finally, globalizing financiers. One learns how the racist governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, inadvertently contributed to integration by attracting northern factories to his state in the Johnson era. We learn that the Mexicans started attracting US factories in the same era, the 1960s. And we get a picture of the rise and fall of the US labor movement, as well as examples of the crimes of the Teamsters. The transition from emphasis on product-quality to 'profits at any cost', the heart and soul of the philosophy of globalization via deregulation, in the age of leveraged buyouts and junk bonds is accurately and concisely described.

Lyndon Johnson gave us the Vietnam War, a terrible mistake in US foreign policy. But for those of us who grew up in the south or border states and can tell you what life was like under segregation, Lyndon was a real hero when it came to civil rights enforcement. In my Ky. town in the fifties, before the civil rights Act was passed, the only thing that was integrated was little league baseball. I still remember listening to the daily news from Alabama and Mississippi in the early sixties, beatings, murders, acts that were consistent with a fascist state government, but not a democratic one. Southern states like Mississippi used the same excuse for brutality against blacks, union organizers, and civil rights workers that Hitler and the Nazis used against the Jews and socialists: right wing violence and killing 'protected' society from 'the communist threat'.