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The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Borzoi Books)
by: Steven Greenhouse

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 331.0973
EAN: 9781400044894
ISBN: 1400044898
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: April 15, 2008
Sales Rank: 28159
Studio: Knopf

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

The Big Squeeze takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world’s most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face egregious sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and seventy-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.

The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends—among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street’s demands for ever-higher profits. In short, the post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.

Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic, ready-to-be-implemented suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do to alleviate the squeeze.

A balanced, consistently revealing exploration of a major American crisis.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A Great Read and an Important Book about Workers
I read a lot of books on the economy and workers, and unfortunately too many of them are plodding and overstuffed with statistics. That's why the Big Squeeze was such a pleasant surprise. It's a wonderfully big-hearted book, and it's also a terrific read. It's the best book on American workers that I've read in recent decades (or at least it's a tie with Barbara Ehrenreich's wonderful Nickel and Dimed).

The Big Squeeze is unusual because it tells very moving, very human stories about two dozen individual workers -- the software engineer who has to train the worker from India who was to replace her, the "temp" whose company keeps her as a temp for 10 years, the Air Force veteran who works for three retailers in a row that erase hours from employee time cards to save money. Depressing, but very gripping stuff.

What's also impressive about The Big Squeeze is it sees the trees and the forest. ... Read More

Rating:

- More establishment apologist drivel for more govt.
Selective statistics have a very long history of being fabricated to deceive.

Anyone who calls for MORE regulation and hampering of an already long UNFREE, UNHAMPERED market by govt, reveals their total ignorance and reject the very foundations of liberty we cast OFF KGIII's lesser oppressions to achieve.

Our current problems stem precisely because Govt privileges the few at the little seen disbursement of costs upon the many. In no way is this in line with the General Welfare clause that insists ALL govt spending benefits ALL taxpayers equally, as a battleship would, and bridges to nowhere or midnight B-Ball never will.

One can easily see the praises come primarily from establishment parrot commercial reviewers. The praises from individuals just show how duped the establishment has made them.

See if this sinks in any:

Jean-Baptiste Say
"[The different ... Read More

Rating:

- The future looks mighty grim for the beleagured American worker.
I imagine that many conservative talk show hosts who have heard of or even read "The Big Squeeze" will dismiss out of hand Steven Greenhouse's new book as just more predictable liberal negativity. After all, according to Sean Hannity on one recent afternoon program it is possible for everyone to become rich in America if they are just willing to work hard enough. This is hogwash, Mr. Hannity. Everyone is not cut out to be an enterpreneur or a stockbroker. The reality is that in America today 10% of the population controls nearly 50% of the wealth. The gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us has been increasing at a alarming rate. Good paying jobs are being shipped to other nations and millions of Americans employed in retail or service industries are being forced to work in miserable conditions just to scrape by. "The Big Squeeze" is about the sobering new realities facing an ever increasing number of American ... Read More

Rating:

- Easy read, with Liberal viewpoints
Book is easy to read. Author presents lots of examples of how our American middle class is being squeezed out, and the increasing differential between the poor and the rich, or upper class. His answers are dissapointing unless you are left wing liberal. He places blame on the awful big/greedy companies. Thinks the era of the 50's/60's was our best because we had big Unions to get benefits for workers. His answer now is basically for the government to contol most everything, and to return to the area of big Union representation. Never mind much of our American industry is crippled in the global economy due to the huge legacy costs to workers brought on by the Unions before we had to compete in a global economy. Yes, we have big problems today, but this is not the answer that will solve things.

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