always specialised in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity and verve.With some 12 million women being pushed into the labour 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 six to seven USD 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 USD 675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaner 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 behaviour 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 people who brought us welfare reform?" No, 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 ends up in a shelter.As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humour and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are cheap in comparison to 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
Advantages: Raises low pay issue in an accessible way Disadvantages: Made me angry and sad
...Paperback 240 pages (25 July, 2002)
Publisher: Granta Books; ISBN: 1862075212
cover price £8.99 - Amazon offer it at £7.19
I heard about this book from email friends in the US and was astonished that a book on low pay had gained so much attention. I'm very glad it did and I hope it inspires some of its readers to joining in the pursuit of change.
A US journalist and writer, with a good income and comfortable standard of living, BarbaraEhrenreich became a low paid worker in 3 sectors in different US cities, taking the jobs and trying to make ends meet on the wages, with the intention of writing about her experiences.
One of the dangers of a book like this is that it can appear patronising. And how can someone who's only sampling life as a poor person really know what it's like in the long term? One of the things I liked about...
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helpful 16.12.2003
(04.06.2004)
Always with us? Review ofNickle and Dimed - BarbaraEhrenreichby
Silverback
Advantages: Readable human stories, told with genuine empathy Disadvantages: Depressing conclusions, few real answers
...This book had been on my must-read list ever since I saw it reviewed on this very site. When I finally got round to it, I almost fell at the first hurdle. British journalist Polly Toynbee's introduction paints a bleak picture of the low-wage world. I asked myself: did I really need to remind myself of the struggles of the poor?
Well, yes I did. And it probably wouldn't harm anyone in our relatively well-off welfare state to find out what may be only a government or two away from many of us.
To write Nickel and Dimed, journalist BarbaraEhrenreich, between 1998 and 2000, took three separate month-long sojourns in low-paid jobs in three different US states. She freely admits these weren't genuine attempts to replicate the lives of workers at the bottom of the heap.
Instead, she set herself a relatively simple goal. That was to see...
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Advantages: Well written and interesting Disadvantages: The conclusions just support what you suspected all along
...Amazon has a lot to answer for, namely for making me buy more books. Now and then I’ll log in, find a book I’ve bought in the past and enjoyed and scroll down to the part where it says “Customers who bought this also bought….” to see if there are any books on the list that look like fun. That’s how I got sent to a book called “Hard Work, Low Pay”, about live in low pay Britain, and from there, after reading and enjoying that book, I made the jump myself to this one – along the same lines but set in the USA.
BarbaraEhrenreich is an American journalist with a distinguished career behind her. The sort of person who can command her own fees, work as and when she feels like it and live in a nice house eating nice food and taking nice holidays. But for this book she turns her back on that comfortable life, and sets out across America...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 12.12.2003
(20.01.2004)
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