Bernie’s
Books
Book reviews devoted to your spiritual
journey. Try a new book on spirituality and discover the wonder of God’s
love.
Nickel and Dimed
Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan
Books; ISBN: 0805063889
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich
has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with
intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed
into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good
old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive
on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is
considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she
looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make
ends meet.
As a
waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to
"girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire
to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as
both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill
out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some
people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she
works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose
job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse,
or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.
So, do the
poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did
Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of
the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare
reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages
of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to
work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter.
As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage,
the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket,
but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay
that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those
trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With
her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich
brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world
they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails
to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley
Reed
Next
Month: To Stand In Love, Untangling the Webs We Weave by Paddy S. Welles, Ph.D.
