Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehreneich

1 Star

I joined a new book club that is closer to my home and this was the first book.  Interesting title, I do have a degree in Sociology, hmmm.  Looked up the author – oh no.  Wikipedia says, [she] “is an American Feminist, democratic socialist, and political activist who describes herself as “a myth buster by trade”’.  “Where is your open mind?” I ask myself.  I’m a liberal conservative by my own definition.  I live conservatively but don’t feel I have the right to push my ideals on others.  Everyone says that, right?  So I decided that I was going to read the book and I was going to go to the book club and see what I was missing.  I am open to the fact I may be wrong and by living the life I do (I’m not hungry, am employed, own my own home, and have medical insurance) that I may be biased. 

I grab a glass of wine, my favorite reading blanket (doesn’t everyone own one?) and settle down to see what Ms Ehreneich can teach me.  Her writing flows and is easy to read.  She tells a good story, if it were a story.  Ms Ehreneich starts with explaining her experiment and the rules.  She is to go out to US cities and see if she can make enough money to survive based on minimum wage, more or less.  She explains that though she is doing this there are limits.  She will have a car, being homeless is not an option, etc.  Ok, I’m fine with that. 

She looks for jobs and housing and becomes a waitress and begins telling the stories of her coworkers. I like her coworkers.  They are portrayed as hardworking people just trying to get by.  Then Ms Ehreneich begins to describe management.  Their portrayals are not nearly as likeable.   I keep reading.  I keep disagreeing.  The author is a PhD, right?  This stuff is scary to me.  Below are the statements from the book that made me decide that perhaps this book club was not for me and that though I respect Ms Ehreneich’s right to voice her opinion I disagree with her wholeheartedly.  Let me be clear, I do agree that there is a group of workers that are living below the poverty level and have full-time jobs.  This is what the story is supposed to be about, but isn’t.  It is a story about the struggle between the elitist and the proletariats. The struggle can be summarized simply but it is not a simple struggle.  I do not agree with Ms Ehreneich’s statements below.

·         Page 99, “True, I don’t look so good by the end of the day and probably smell like eau de toilet and sweat, but it’s the brilliant green-and yellow uniform that gives me away, like prison clothes on a fugitive.  Maybe, it occurs to me, I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black.”

·         Page 120, “But warnings about the heat and the allergies put me off, not to mention my worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do.”

·         Page 184, this statement is in reference to Wal-Mart and its worker who are called “associates”. “After all, you’d need  a lot stronger word than dysfunctional to describe a family where a few people get to eat at the table while the rest—the “associates” and all the dark-skinned seamstresses and factory workers worldwide who make the things we sell—lick up the drippings from the floor:  psychotic would be closer to the mark.”

·         Page 190, “Probably in part because of advertising by roughly $2 billion drug-testing industry, but I suspect that the demeaning effect of testing may also hold some attraction for employers.”

·         Page 195, ...”traits deemed essential to job readiness:  punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, obedience.  These are the qualities that welfare-to-work job-training programs often seek to inculcate, though I suspect that most welfare recipients already possess them, or would if their child care and transportation problems were solved.”

·         Page 211, “My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers—the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being “reamed out” by managers—are part of what keeps wages low.”

·         Page 212, “For reasons that have more to do with class—and often racial—prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers.  Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing.”

I didn’t like the book; if you are on the far-left I think you will like it.