The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker
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Why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations squeezing their employees dry? In this fresh, carefully researched book, New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse explores the economic, political, and social trends that are transforming America's workplaces, including the decline of the social contract that created the world's largest middle class and guaranteed job security and good pensions. We meet all kinds of workers—white-collar and blue-collar, high-tech and low-tech, middle-class and low-income—as we see shocking examples of injustice, including employees who are locked in during a hurricane or fired after suffering debilitating, on-the-job injuries. With pragmatic recommendations on what government, business and labor should do to alleviate the economic crunch, The Big Squeeze is a balanced, consistently revealing look at a major American crisis. The Barnes & Noble Review Today, the term "muckraking" conjures up the image of a strident, self-serving gadfly with a megaphone and a movie camera who can't clap his trap and who wishes to intrude upon the right of all good citizens to amuse themselves to death. But this semantic shift is a great disservice to the assiduous journalists of the early 20th century who saw their painstaking efforts denounced by Theodore Roosevelt. The early muckrakers were committed to serving the public interest and even managed to change a few things. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to the passage of numerous food inspection acts. Ida Tarbell's tireless investigations into Standard Oil helped kick start a famous 1911 Supreme Court ruling that busted trusts as intensely as the 26th president.
Preface to the Anchor Books Edition xiIntroduction xvChapter One Worked Over and Overworked 3Chapter Two Workplace Hell 15Chapter Three The Vise Tightens 35Chapter Four Downright Dickensian 49Chapter Five The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract 71Chapter Six Leaner and Meaner 98Chapter Seven Here Today, Gone Tomorrow 117Chapter Eight Wal-Mart, the Low-Wage Colossus 135Chapter Nine Taking the High Road 158Chapter Ten Overstressed and Overstretched 184Chapter Eleven Outsourced and Out of Luck 199Chapter Twelve The Lowest Rung 221Chapter Thirteen The State of the Unions 241Chapter Fourteen Starting Out Means a Steeper Climb 263Chapter Fifteen The Not-So-Golden Years 276Chapter Sixteen Lifting All Boats 289Acknowledgments 305Notes 307Index 347
