No Luxury to Quit
In his book Working in the Shadows, Gabriel Thompson describes and analyzes the year he spent working undercover alongside Guatemalans, Mexicans, and others at a variety of extremely low paying jobs. He quickly determined that the jobs, some of which were very dangerous, failed to provide enough income to survive at even the lowest standard of living. Gabriel was generally successful at lasting 2 months at each job except two: (1) his subterfuge is discovered at a chicken plant and he is fired and (2) he hangs up his delivery bike after seven weeks of risking his life in New York City traffic. According to reviewer Frances Romero (Time Magazine, 8 Feb 2010, p. 16) “Therein lies perhaps the only blemish on the book’s premise: Thompson has the luxury to quit.”
A different spin on a similar issue is provided by the new reality television show: Undercover Boss. On the first show of the series, placed just after the Super Bowl, Larry O’Donnell, president and COO of Waste Management, goes undercover at his company, picking up litter, cleaning toilets, etc. Some of things he discovers horrify, humble, and shock him. He vows to change things. The show at times is moving, but it’s also overtly manipulative. While a few of the workers that made it on TV were given raises and rewards, there is no reason to be optimistic that the corporate culture will change.
But hopely the show will have one positive benefit: it will dramatize the plight of the workers at the lowest end of the pay scale. It will hopely cause lower- and middle-level managers to think long and hard about working conditions, levels of pay, and benefits. While the show represents a very narrow top-down management approach to the problems which plague American workers, hopefully it will inspire more bottom-up solutions to the conditions of the working poor.
Lisa Dodson in her book The Moral Underground highlights several individuals who have worked out solutions to issues related to the working poor. While several of the solutions are illegal, or borderline illegal, they do represent a very personal form of civil disobedience, a way of dealing with injustice. Particularly important in an era where CEOs earn millions, and their company’s lowest paid employees aren’t paid even enough to survive on.
Tags: Books, Television