Customer Reviews

White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its Reward in Corporate America

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class", social scientists and journalists have tried to explain the impact of industrialization on workers, managers and executives. In the l950s, C.W. Mills in "White Collar: The New Middle Class", W.H. White in "The Organization Man", and W. Harrington in the "Life in the Chrystal Palace" set the stage for other writers to address the rise and fall of workers in the United States. In this book, Jill Andresky Fraser describes brilliantry the current status of middle class Americans in the new economy. Her book is in sharp contrast to David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" which satirizes the life of the upper middle class. Fraser presents a stark picture of the life of those who constitute the "white collar class" but do not enjoy the high salaries and perks of the Bobos. While family incomes of the middle class barely increased in purchasing power in the last decade, the incomes of the upper middle class and the wealthy more than doubled. At the same time, benefits have declined and in some cases eliminated for white collar workers. Another paradox of the new economy is that digital technology not only eliminates stable traditional jobs but it also increases the hours of work of those who are forced to use it. These and other changes in the workplace have created a climate of insecurity and intensified competition among white-collar workers, while corporations reap the benefits of higher productivity and profits reminiscent of the sweatshops of early twenty century. The book concludes with some interesting suggestions that would eliminate white-collar sweatshops. However, I do not believe that will happen without government legislation and revitalization of labor unions.

The author cannot solve all of the problems which work to reduce white-collar employees [in the United States] to nothing more than modern day "educated" peons, but she does explain the situation in such a way that people in some camps may be inspired to challenge the status quo. That in itself is a major accomplishment! The book is easy, informative reading that is not only worth reading but passing on to those you consider friends.

The author of this book is a professional journalist, with experience covering business for the New York Times, The New York Observer, and Forbes. She's served as an editor for Inc. Magazine and Bloomberg Personal Finance. She knows how to write in a style that grabs and holds a reader's attention. I went straight through cover-to-cover with this book, turning pages and turning down pages.

After several years of research, this book was assembled to tell the story of the nightmare that has been the life of the white collar worker in America in recent decades. Using an enticing mixture of facts and figures and real-life stories collected from people in the trenches, Fraser documents a story that cries for exposure. White collar employees from large companies will recognize-painfully-the picture that's painted, with personal histories and company names and practices illuminating the text. Page after page reveals the details of an embarrassingly destructive period in our country's corporate history. Sadly, the story continues, with complications and far-reaching implications, far beyond what's presented in White Collar Sweatshop.

You'll experience a wide range of emotions as you move through this factual report. Those emotions will range from pity to sympathy, from empathy to rage. Using the internet, Fraser found a wide range of people to open their hearts, share their experiences, and expose the questionable, unfeeling, almost inhumane acts of corporate executives. You'll read about people who invested their lives, at the expense of their families and themselves, to help build companies that later chewed them up and spit them out.

The research for this book was conducted during the late 1990s and into 2000. These were the years of the hot economy where opportunities to change jobs were plentiful. Many of the people who worked for large corporations, where this book is centered, did not leave for greener pastures; they were trapped in a never-ending cycle of working, working, working for companies-emotional and professional handcuffs that held them in a no-alternatives, no-win rut.

Since this book was written, the economy has shifted. During the slowdown of 2000-2002, employers became even more ruthless. With fewer jobs to jump to, workers had their escape routes blocked. The current reality is probably even worse than the deterioration described in Fraser's documentary. As the economy picks up, we'll see some cataclysmic changes in the relationship between employers and employees. The historical period recorded in this book will be a foundation for a major upheaval.

To understand what's coming, read this book to understand what's happened. Special note to senior corporate executives: If you want to attract, inspire, and optimize top talent, read this book to comprehend how your employees feel. Even if you're not the size of the major companies cited in the case histories, know that your future or even current employees-directly or indirectly-are influenced by the experiences described.

This book will be a catalyst for change if corporate leaders apply the knowledge they'll gain to assure that sweatshop practices are terminated.

Extra benefits: strong notes section with a number of valuable book references, as well as a comprehensive index.

How many people working in information technology and financial services (to name just two of the shiny sectors of the new economy) realize that a cruel economic trick has been played on them. There have been many analyses of American economic growth, industrialization, and the changing nature of work done in the past, but WHITE COLLAR SWEATSHOP struck me with one telling statistic: White-collar men earned an average of $19.24 an hour in 1997, barely a nickel more than the previous generation did in 1973. Add to this declining perks, specifically medical and pension benefits along with increasing work hours. The author highlights a trend which she calls "job spill", as a pernicious recent trend in today's white-collar working world. Basically it is the encroachment of work into lunch, vacation, and family time through technology creating a permanent umbilical cord with the workplace.

Insightful and illuminating with some interesting proposals for remedying the white-collar working environment. This book made quite an impression on me as I had just recently read Barbara Ehrenreich's NICKEL AND DIMED. That book showed up the grimness of blue-collar work. Now with this book add the millions of white-collar workers and we see a situation where - although gainfully employed and all would agree, pleased with the opportunity to be working - there is nevertheless a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the work environment. There is an awareness of a large and growing base of a pyramid with only a few at the top really benefiting. As one reviewer has already mentioned BOBOS IN PARADISE is what to read for a satirical view from the top.

Jill Andresky Fraser's "White Collar Sweatshop" is an effective and empowering mixture of research, case histories and analysis on the subject of declining workplace conditions in the corporate world. The author's bottom-up analysis offers a vivid description of corporate self-destruction at work, and suggests why mega-mergers in certain industries (such as banking) have failed to meet expectations.

The book suggests that much of the heralded productivity gains of the 1990s were due not to the wonders of technology but to the kind of old-fashioned sweatshop labor practices that Karl Marx might have recognized in an earlier era: unpaid and compulsory overtime, cuts in pension and health benefits, homework, speed-up, etc. Fraser cites numerous sources and statistics to show that the era of the paternalistic corporation that thrived from the 1950s to the 1970s has given way to today's unsentimental corporation that values only the bottom line and regularly uses fear as a motivating factor.

However, Fraser challenges the idea that fear is a good motivator and that management failures should always be corrected by squeezing the rank and file. She cites figures showing that most companies that have suffered massive layoffs do NOT enjoy better stock market performances than other firms. Her oftentimes moving correspondence with the human casualties of this corporate callousness suggests that this is because the surviving employees become demoralized. They have learned that the rewards for their hard work may never materialize. Their teamwork suffers when workers are taught to become self-reliant but protective "free agents" of their own careers, and the tendency to self-identify with the success of the company has practically been destroyed.

Fraser also highlights the blatant and unconscionable lack of consistency in the executive suites to the call for shared pain among the workers. "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop, Jack Welch and Michael Eisner are a few of the CEOs who are criticized for accepting lavish pay-outs when their respective corporations were supposedly enduring hard times.

Fraser concludes the book with some optimism and proposes a number of suggestions that could help end sweatshop conditions, such as: caps on CEO pay, limits on the use of contingent labor, increased use of employee stock ownership plans, better benefits, and so on. Unfortunately, many of Fraser's ideas depend on their support from enlightened executives and consequently may be of little use. But with the wave of corporate scandals that have roiled America since the book's publication in early 2001, it is possible that change may be legislated anyway to help curb the public's disgust and investor mistrust of corporate America.

In the end, Fraser has succeeded in focusing our attention to the fact that the fate of business depends on the well-being of its workers. I believe that "White Collar Sweatshop" should be read by CEOs, legislators and disaffected workers alike if we are to avoid doing further damage to our lives and our economy. Highly recommended.

Depending on what you are looking for your will either love this book or you will hate it. I suppose that's true for all books, really, but it seemed especially true with this one. If you seek validation or some form of group-hug catharsis in knowing that you are not alone in hating your job and it's diminishing rewards then this book is for you. If, on the other hand, you know that work [isn't good] and want some kind of strategy for making it better then you will probably be disappointed. Unfortunately, for me, my reaction to was more hate than love.

I say "unfortunately" because technically it really is a good book. It is well-written and well-researched and the author really has captured a good deal of what's wrong with the workplace these days, so it's not that it was executed poorly. In fact it was often too on target. I found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable reading some of the accounts of corporate sadism. Like a rape victim who reads another woman's account of her ordeal or a veteran who reads about another soldier's experience in a desperate firefight these accounts can be very exhausting to get through at times.

The problem I had was that despite really nailing the problem the author has little to offer in the way of solutions (or hope) other than what seemed to me to be wish-upon-a-star platitudes. Now, it's really not fair to expect that one person should have the answer to over 30 years of corporate greed and profit-addicted short sightedness. Still, I felt many times that reading this book was a waste of my time since I already knew how messed up things were; I was looking for relief not a chance to relive the horror.

If you want an accurate, often excruciating, blow-by-blow account of why work [is no good] and why no matter how hard you work you will earn less and less and still get laid off then this book may be for you. If you pretty much know why you're getting shafted at work but want to find a way to avoid the pain then you probably should pass this one by.

Jill Fraser sympathizes: Cubes suck. Hours are long. Disruptions all through the day. Stupid teamwork seminars. Coworkers remain annoying. Raise is tiny and stock is small although you can read of the millions more your CEO got this year than last, even though your company's performance worsened. Welcome to modern corporate America.

If you've been on an island, this book will be an excellent way for you to catch up on what's going on. It is thorough and readable. It is also largely superfluous if you haven't been on that island.

Fraser's arguments that the sweatshop tactics aren't effective are not that compelling (although I agree with her). There does seem to be a frenzy brought on by sales type executives who want to see everyone revved up. But that's just my opinion. Fraser's opinion has more to it but not enough to wow me.

She devotes less than 3 pages to the final section "Is Improvement In Sight?" I'd wished she'd spent 3 opening pages on how everything sucked at work and then the remaining 226 pages to "Is Improvment In Sight?". Even if she found little or even nothing, I'd have appreciated her sense of where it was useful to spend her time.

Ms. Fraser chronicles many real-life Dilbertesque stories of overbearing employer demands based on the insecurity of white collar employees.

The book does not say much about the reasons for this profound change in American society.

Traditional American freedoms rested on a bedrock of economic independence: family farms and businesses, economic growth that makes employers eager to attract and reward good performers, and low entry barriers for individuals to many businesses. As these protections have eroded, American employees are increasingly hostage to unlimited demands of overwork and conformity because of the uncertainty that they can find alternative employment on equal or better terms.

I found this book to be very insightful but also very disturbing as I'll soon be graduating from college and will surely encounter some of the topics Fraser discusses in her book. I think the biggest lesson I've gotten out of this book and all the other "business" books is to minimize your expenses and save whenever possible because you never know what is going to happen amidst your 40+ year working career.

Specific to this book, I connected most with chapter 8's discussion on downsizing and layoffs from mergers etc. As a kid I watched my father nearly drive himself insane with stress from three mergers Public Service of Colorado, New Century Engergies and Xcel Energy engaged in. I remember it being a frightening time as a kid, but can only imagine what it felt like from the perspective of having to provide for a family.

Overall, great book but quite depressing we live in such a society.

Thanks for writing the book.

LC
Colorado

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of "White-Collar Sweatshop" is that it comes as a surprise to the knowledge workers of America's Fortune 500 that corporations are willing to treat them so abysmally. Most of the conditions of the 19th century sweatshops are present in these corporations: speedup and exorbitant workloads, excessive and not fully compensated work hours, interpenetration of non-work lives by the corporation especially via new electronic technologies, rule by intimidation and arbitrary decisions, and powerlessness - all of which produce a great deal of stress, anxiety, and other health problems.

I find it to be a major failing of the book that the author did not explore the ignorance of U.S. labor history exhibited by the various knowledge workers that she interviewed. Though the author did acknowledge that the ascendancy of the labor movement in the few decades after WWII positively impacted white collar working conditions, it was hardly noted the period was an aberration in the long history of generally hostile labor-management relations.

The blissfully ignorant organization man of the fifties has had the rug pulled out from under him by the rise of Wall St, investment bankers, globalization - the entire neo-liberal project. The short term rise of stock prices aided considerably by squeezing and eliminating workers has become the focus of corporate managements. The paternalistic organizations of the fifties were only too happy to increase salaries, benefits, and pensions when they ruled the post WWII world. Now the lament of reduced financial rewards is certification that today's knowledge workers have no idea of just how little standing they have in large corporations. Company spokespersons channel any discussions of negative repercussions to workers from management decisions as necessitated by competitive pressures.

The author's suggestions for improvement of the situation are quite hollow. The first suggestion for individuals to stand up to the corporate giant is surely a course of self-sacrifice. She accepts that white-collar workers don't like unions without addressing the issue of employee power. Legislated European-style works councils are not mentioned. The political behavior of knowledge workers is not mentioned at all. Is there a connection to supporting the Repubs and workplace conditions? The author feels the pain of workers subjected to sweatshop conditions, but for a veteran of business affairs that is clearly insufficient. I expected far more.