Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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'.

Mollie's Job is an extensively researched and gripping story of one of the most important cultural and economic stories of our times. Adler traces one woman's job in New Jersey as it is moved first to the southern United States, and finally to Mexico. Adler is exhaustive in his research, but writes a narrative that is both accessible and moving. While I knew something about the subject of the relocation of work and outsourcing, Mollie's Job gave me both a deeper knowledge of this critical issue and a powerful picture of what the phenomenon means in real people's lives. Highly recommended.

excellently written, the author has done much research, I was involved with this company for twenty five years, I worked for and knew Archie Sergy personally.

Book arrived in perfect condition, perfect packaging and it also arrived fast. Not even near the date it said it would. I would buy from them again

The book has lots of good material. However, the author skips around a lot; so much that it makes it difficult to keep up with where they are going from time to time. I often had to go back to remember who was who and what was going on where, because the information was so spaced apart. The chapters were extremely wordy, which was distracting and a turn off. The authors sometimes will say in three paragraphs some things that can be said in two sentences. Aside from the overcompensation of words, the overall message was powerful.

I have to read this book for class, and thus am certainly biased a bit from that perspective, but the main problem with this book is that it's about 100 pages too long. Anecdotes establishing that the south was racist (we know this), that rich men will do rich things that look insensitive when their employees can't feed their kids (we know this, and that last statement is at least 3 page section of the book), that corporations and unions don't like each other (we know this), and a variety of other things that we either knew or could be said in half the time.

The format of the book is as follows: An introduction sets up the main narrative. Then a cycle begins - the author spends 30-50 pages talking about something that seems at best tangentially related before tying it into the main narrative. As soon as he does so, he switches to another topic and waits for 30-50 pages before explaining its relevance to the narrative. This continues for 360 pages.

Now, as the other reviews will tell you, this book has its upside. There is plenty of information here, lots of stories, and an exceedingly thorough account of the history of a company that seems to be a good case study for the evolution of american business - or at least american manufacturing.

I'll tell you one thing, though. If I weren't being constantly graded and quizzed on my knowledge of this book, I wouldn't read it.