by Steven Greenhouse
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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short, the post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face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.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Compelling Account of Capitalism Run Amok!, 2008-07-08
Greenhouse's focus is to ask "Why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations intent on squeezing their workers dry?" Corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly, while pay has languished. Median income for non-elderly households in 2006 was $2,375 lower in real terms than six years prior. Income inequality now more closely resembles a 3rd-world country than an advanced nation - if it was the same as in 1979, the bottom 80% would receive $8,000 more in yearly income.
Almost one-fourth of the workforce earns less than $10/hour, and generally also lack benefits. Health costs now account for 16% of GDP, up from 5% in 1960. Meanwhile, the proportion covered by pensions (especially defined-benefit - eg. IBM) is declining, and large corporations (eg. United, Delta, and U.S. airlines, LTV and Bethlehem Steel) are defaulting on existing obligations.
Corporations flaunt overtime laws (eg. Wal-Mart, Target), and even fail to pay workers for all their time worked (H-P, Wal-Mart). Circuit City has twice replaced its longer-term workers earning higher salaries with new recruits at lower pay scales, while Microsoft, H-P, and others make the term "temporary" workers an oxymoron in a bid to deny benefits to large numbers of long-term employees.
Three decades ago employer-provided health insurance protected 70% of private-sector workers - now it is down to 55%, and their coverage is no longer as extensive. "Independent contractor" status is extensively exploited (saves Social Security, etc. payments) by eg. FedEx, and their use of the tactic is expanding (to FedEx LTL) despite adverse court rulings.
What fuels these actions? Greenhouse answers - takeover threats, deregulation (airlines, trucking), pressure from jobs lost through automation (also used to create an environment of close supervision), outsourcing, streamlining (eg. delayering, eliminating overheads), increasing costs of employer-funded health care (especially vs. non-coverage by Asian firms), and the "Wal-Mart" effect (low employee pay and benefits; forcing suppliers in the same direction).
There are few heroes in "The Big Squeeze." The most obvious is Costco - higher pay, benefits, sales, and profits/employee than Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, while much lower employee turnover and shrinkage. Greenhouse also suggests Las Vegas casinos (courtesy of strong employee unions) and Timberland shoes - however, both are exempt from strong commodity-like or foreign competition and thus not as impressive as Costco's achievements.
Don't economists agree that globalization to the max is good for us? Not all - Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize winner in economics, says: "If you don't believe (offshoring) changes the average wages in America, then you believe in the truth fairy."
Unions used to be a strong offsetting force vs. management. However, just 7.5% of private sectors are now in unions - the lowest rate since 1901. Yet, 53% of non-management, non-union workers say they would like to join. What holds them back? Greenhouse suggests that one reason is the 2,000+ "union-avoidance" consultants 9Only 100 in the 1960s).
Greenhouse also suggests a need to improve organizing tactics, and offers the SEIU's approach to organizing janitors in Houston as a good example. They began by getting elected officials who were pension-fund overseers with large real-estate holdings to urge Houston building owners to press cleaning contractors to cooperate. The SEIU also promised not to begin bargaining until at least 55% of the employees' contractors were organized (no "unfair" disadvantages). Finally, they leveraged their strength by picketing opposing janitorial firms with work in other cities.
Greenhouse's Recommendations: Increased Social Security taxes (to ensure its stability), increased income taxes on those with higher incomes (benefited most from globalization), changing health care to a single-payer system (much less overhead), and working to restrain health care costs.
Reading "The Big Squeeze" sometimes hurts as one sees how people are taken advantage of. My only criticism is that Greenhouse does not lay enough blame at the feet of globalization.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
compelling account of what work life in America has become, 2008-07-01
I first picked up The Big Squeeze after I heard that it had a chapter about the factory closing in Illinois that Barack Obama spoke about in his keynote address to the Democratic convention in 2004. I grew up in the Midwest, and I care a great deal about the future of manufacturing, so that was the first chapter I read in the book. It was terrific. Yes, the chapter was about a factory closing--Maytag closed a 1,600-employee refrigerator factory and moved it to Mexico--but the chapter was far more than that. It was a great read about a devastated community, Galesburg, Illinois, and it was fascinating--it was even literary--because it tied in Carl Sandburg, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Ronald Reagan's Illinois childhood all with David Ricardo and the economics of globalization. The chapter had some very moving descriptions about how globalization affects workers. At one point tears came to my eyes.
Then I turned to the rest of the book, and I found it highly readable and intelligent throughout, whether it was discussing Wal-Mart workers, immigrant workers or contingent workers like freelancers. The book has very good, human stories of individual workers, and analysis that digs much deeper than other treatments of these issues. At a time when everyone is talking about working-class voters, this book really lays out what's happening to America's workers. And the story ain't pretty. Anyone who wants to know what's happening to the nation's 140 million workers should read this book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
eye opening, readable, balanced, 2008-06-28
I've long been concerned about the rough way that many workers are treated and I picked up The Big Squeeze at a friend's recommendation. I was impressed -- and angered -- by The Big Squeeze; it lays out better than anything I've read exactly what's happening to the nation's workers. Sad to say, wages are going nowhere for millions of Americans, pensions are going down the drain and in this age of Blackberries, everyone seems to be working more than ever. The best thing about this book is that it tells the tales of individual workers -- some are written like nimbly told short stories -- to explain the way that many workers are being dragged down by trends like offshoring white-collar jobs to India, factories moving to Mexico and the two-tier wage schemes that are hammering many twentysomethings as they enter the workplace.
Books about economics or about work can often be heavy-handed and hard to read, but I was pleasantly surprised at how readable this book was. And Greenhouse tries very hard to be balanced and fair-minded as he treads through some difficult terrain about globalization, labor unions, corporate culture and immigration. It's good that Greenhouse writes about the good and the bad, about Wal-Mart and other corporations that brazenly flout the law in how they treat their workers and about corporations like Costco that do right by their workers, companies that we can all learn from and that more companies should seek to imitate.
The Big Squeeze does a terrific job explaining in a very human, readable way the many painful things happening to the nation's workers. I think it's the best book on American workers since Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 When an author longs for the Carter era, you know their book is in trouble, 2008-06-28
I read a review of Steven Greenhouse's new book, "The Big Squeeze" in "Business Week," and looked forward to reading what insight he had into the corrupt and eggregious self-serving behavior of America's corporations. Not until reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" did I realize how oppressive corporations could be to their workers. Modern-day corporations like those depicted in "The Jungle," like Walmart, make my blood boil. So, I want to make it clear that I went into reading this book with a clear dislike of America's greedy corporations. To the end that Greenhouse focuses on the corrupt and evil nature of these businesses, his book is a success. However, it's when he veers off into the "root causes" of the plight of America's workers, that he alienates and at times infuriates his readers. Let me save you time--according to Greenhouse, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan are responsible for every single unjustice and unfairness that occurs today in the American workforce. When he relates an anecdote of a Walmart worker, let's call her "Sue," making paltry wages, having her overtime cut, and being unable to afford health insurance, he places EXCLUSIVE blame on Bush, Reagan, and Walmart. Were Greenhouse intellectually honest, he would admit that odds are that Sue got pregnant in high school, subsequently dropped out, had four children with four different men, two of whom are in prison, didn't go to college, smokes five packs of cigarettes a day (funny how Americans can always afford cigarettes, but can never pay their mortgage), and is on government assistance. Studies are irrefutable...those who go to college and earn even an associates degree, make two, three, and even four hundred thousands dollars more in a lifetime than those who don't. Ultimately, there is no room for personal responsibility in Greenhouse's diatribe against Republicans and "evil" corporations. His argument falls apart completely on page 43, when--attempting to demonstrate how Reagan obliterated the Roosevelt's "social safety net"--he lists statistics, attempting to convince us that we were far better off economically as a nation before Reagan became president. I was six years old when Carter was elected president, and I can still recall hearing my parents fight about high food prices. I can still recall waiting in mile-long gas lines, while my parents were sweating because the car was overheating in the line. I still remember watching the famous Carter "malaise" speech on the nightly news. Try as he might, Greenhouse will never be able to convince anyone...ANYONE...that Americans were better off financially before Reagan became president. Before Reagan, my family had to rely on my grandmother to survive, and that was in a run-down duplex at best. After Reagan, my family was elevated into the upper-middle class, and I have never looked back.
Finally, when Greenhouse isn't blasting Reagan and Bush, he's criticizing our educational institutions for not educating more of the "disadvantaged" among us. He must be kidding. I am a college English professor. I can state unequivocally that nothing...nothing can prevent any American, regardless of age, from obtaining a college education. Nothing. If the disadvantaged aren't attending college, that is THEIR choice. When you consider all the grants, scholarships, and, even as a last resort, the government student loan program, funding is available for anyone who wants an education. Like anything else in life, an education takes hard work and strong will--two things that those on the welfare rolls are notorious for not willing to give, since being on the dole has programmed them to such a degree that they know the meaning of neither. Yes, it's true that high-income students are more likely to graduate from college than low-income students. How, exactly, is that the blame of our educational institutions? I am politically right of center. However, I still do believe that government can and should serve a purpose in our lives. Government can be an influence for good for those in need. I'm not saying that we should turn our backs on those in need. What I'm saying is that instead of providing the lower-class a litany of scapegoats, why don't we find a way to empower them to recognize the benefits of an education and hard work? Quite simply, government cannot be, is not, and never will be able to do anything for those who aren't willing to do it for themselves. So, blame Bush and Reagan all you want, Greenhouse, but by limiting your criticism to Republicans and big business, and excluding all other logical and viable factors for the plight of the US worker, you alienated a huge percentage of people, like me, who are just as fed up with the Walmarts of the world as you are.
In the end, what Greenhouse does by his unabashed liberal bias is alienate someone who was originally an eagar listening ear. I'm amazed that Greenhouse fails to practice what I long ago learned in English 101--if you want to persuade your audience, provide both sides of issue and let the reader decide. Greenhouse, like so many on the journalistic left, are innately incapable of being intellectually fair and honest.
1 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Yes the squeeze is real but, 2008-06-26
this is still the biggest economy in the world. With globalization, outsourcing, downsizing in manufacturing jobs, the unemployment rate (UR) should be 10 percent or more. Government UR showed only 5%.
The underground economy is thriving. Mexicans and illegal aliens are working in construction, cleaning, restaurant, nannies, casino, etc.
With the population 310 million (25-30 million illegal aliens), and everyone is working in the underground jobs, therefore the real UR is probably 3 percent. In the European Union, UR is 10 percent.
China, even with all the exporting and foreign direct investment, the average person makes only $5000 USD per year! Indians make $3000 USD per year. Americans are making $40,000 per year.
Why does every book give you the complaint? Number one, it sells the book, a good marketing strategy.
Americans spent too much. Every kid has a cell phone, PDA, and eats super burgers. Parents continued to drive SUVs, hummers, etc. People lived in the McMansions, and saved no money. People making $100,000 per year, but has no money left. It all has to do with education and self-discipline.
The pessimist like the Greenhouse talked about these issues that existed for 20 years. There is nothing new in this book.
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