Times Reporter Speaks Out on Plight of Workers
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
"Something is wrong out there," said Steven Greenhouse, "Corporate profits
have doubled, productivity has increased, but wages are up barely 1%."
Greenhouse, labor reporter for The New York Times, spoke about his new book "The
Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker" Tuesday at the Center for American Progress (CAP)
before a standing-room-only crowd. The book explores what Greenhouse termed "the
broken compact between employee and employer" - which once fueled decades of
rising prosperity and the American middle class - through the stories of workers
like the Iraq War veteran who works 120 hours a week at a Family Dollar and
whose wife can only see him if she shows up at closing time to help clean the
bathrooms and mop the floors. "At least that way we had time to talk," she tells
Greenhouse. Workers are not just paying an economic price in low wages, slashed
benefits and loss of dignity at work, argues Greenhouse, but a toll in less
tangible ways like "job creep" where workers are required to work off the clock
or put in extra, unpaid hours on the job. Joining Greenhouse were panelists Gene
Sperling of CAP -who praised the book's "compelling stories"- Gerald Seib of the
Wall Street Journal - who called it "a fabulous book that brings attention to
the often-ignored working poor" -- Ruy Teixeira of CAP and the Century
Foundation - who called it "Superb, detailed, vivid and the easiest to read of
this genreā - and Stewart Acuff, Organizing Director for the AFL-CIO, who
declared "The Big Squeeze" "required reading for everyone running for Federal
elected office this year, as well as for those of us who will vote" in
November.
- report by Chris Garlock