Working For The Man
Robinson, Tracy
Tracy Robinson Working For The Man ROBERT B. REICH'S THE FUTURE OF SUCCESS JILL ANDRESKY FRASER'S WHITE-COLLAR SWEATSHOP: THE DETERIORATION OF WORK AND ITS REWARDS IN CORPORATE AMERICA In the...
...This is an old, tired story, and Reich tells it with relish...
...to the lack of career stability ("The very notion of long-term job security now seems hopelessly antiquated...
...But being overworked by the government is not something good liberals worry about...
...Here are all the familiar Dilbert comic-strip gripes, from increasing hours spent on the job ("[E]xpecta-tions about just how much time people should spend at the office each day...have become so extreme that a twelve-hour workday can seem positively lightweight...
...The employee would then move up the corporate ladder in a predictable manner: steady pay increases until retirement age, then a generous company-proing information-based economy has some advantages, such as lower prices and lightning-fast product delivery...
...That's why they call it work and not fun...
...But for all his fussing, at least Reich acknowledges that the boomries that basically illustrate Reich's theories...
...But while reading their sob stories, one question lingers: Why continue in jobs that are so torturous...
...surely there must be more to it than that...
...After reading the same explanation over and over, one wants to reply in one's best parental tone: Yes, dear...
...Of course, such Scandinavian-like entitlements would require more tax revenue, which would end up making workers toil even longer for someone other than themselves and their families...
...Reich more thoroughly discounts the idea that workers can do much on their own to solve the problem...
...In the end, Fraser wanly suggests that workers try saying no to unreasonable employers or look for less-stressful jobs, though she seems more hopeful that the problem can be solved by putting pressure on corporations through boycotts of products and unionization...
...So when workers fail to complain to management about their supposedly unjust working conditions, Fraser blames management: "workloads are so heavy that they [employees] effectively have no choice" but to comply...
...It's only money That's all I care about—the money...
...Fraser even quotes a sociologist as saying, "People are working longer hours, and it's not because they want to...
...Reich: Knopf, 289 pages, $26 Fraser:W.W...
...Tracy Robinson Working For The Man ROBERT B. REICH'S THE FUTURE OF SUCCESS JILL ANDRESKY FRASER'S WHITE-COLLAR SWEATSHOP: THE DETERIORATION OF WORK AND ITS REWARDS IN CORPORATE AMERICA In the good old days, according to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, one went to college with the aim of landing a steady, long-term job at a large, prestigious company...
...Instead, sticking to what he knows best, he includes a chapter on "Public Choices"—i.e., steps the government needs to take—to help burned-out workers...
...This has landed us in what Reich calls an era of "post-employment," in which employees must toil harder and longer, for measly compensation, and with little job security...
...Despite piddling nods to capitalism's benefits—Reich recounts his amazement in learning that he could use the Internet to order the specially tailored suits his four-foot-ten-inch frame requires—Reich is at heart an old-style liberal: "Increasingly, people are being paid whatever they're 'worth' on the market," he writes disapprovingly...
...Jill Andresky Fraser's White-Collar Sweatshop is even more exhausting...
...I don't feel any loyalty...
...and Bloomberg Personal Finance, interviewed dozens of people from a variety of industries to come up with page upon page of whiny stoAt some level you can't help but feel sorry for Fraser's interview subjects...
...vided retirement package along with a nice gold watch...
...The New Economy, says Reich, demands leaner and meaner companies...
...to the indignity of cubicles (" [C] ubicles foster all kinds of negative feelings...
...As one interviewee succinctly put it, "I don't feel any attachment...
...Indeed, the interviews in White-Collar Sweatshop would quicken the pulse of Reich's bleeding heart...
...Even the technological advancements that have increased efficiency and vastly improved business communications—computers, pagers, cell phones, and the like— have served Fraser's ungrateful interviewees with nothing but eye strain, wrist strain, back strain, and "stress-related headaches...
...But while reading their sob stories, one question lingers: Why continue in jobs that are so torturous...
...94 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 At some level, you can't help but feel sorry for Fraser's interview subjects, such as the woman who was "forced" to work the night before her wedding or the banker who had to review hundreds of financial documents while at the beach during his honeymoon...
...Despite her best efforts, Fraser demonstrates that overworked Americans do have reasons for their behavior: they do it for the money Indeed, Fraser's pseudonymous workers explain themselves quite clearly...
...Reich recommends an extensive public safety net in the form of "earnings insurance," a higher minimum wage, universal health insurance, stricter trade laws, and even "community insurance" to bail out localities that have driven business away for one regulatory reason or another...
...But the corporate climate has gone frigid...
...But love of money does not satisfy Fraser's sense of social justice...
...Norton, 278 pages, $26.95...
...What's more, "The rich and the middle classes are now living in parallel universes, and the poor are almost invisible to both...
...Fraser, an editor for Inc...
Vol. 34 • April 2001 • No. 3
