Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed"

Résumé du document

As a response to both Bill Clinton's introduction of the “Welfare Reform” putting an end to what he called “Welfare as we know it” and to the journalistic tendency of writing articles on the people far from the ground, Barbara Ehrenreich – of course a bit forced by her editor – decides to look for poverty and live it in everyday life assuming for that purpose to work as a low wage worker for a couple of months, i.e. trying to make ends meet with $6 or $7 per hour.

Barbara Ehrenreich, is a political essayist, who although is specialized in Chemistry and Physics (she owns a PhD), wrote a couple of essays dealing with societal and cultural issues. She can also be regarded as a journalist, she has already written for many well-known magazines and newspapers like The Nation, the New Republic, Time, and the New York Times Magazine.

At the beginning of her book, she specifies that she doubted herself of having the right profile for the job but with time the reader notes that she is discovering realities she couldn't have imagined before and seems always more motivated about her inquiry.

Extraits

[...] My personal impression after having read this book is that Barbara Ehrenreich's purpose gave me a quite authentic and strong insight of what is the everyday life of millions of American low wage workers. I consider that it was a great challenge for a person of her age and social status to do this inquiry. Yet, her experience was to some extent very ambiguous and I would have wished from her more commitment and solidarity towards her colleagues that she could have sometimes helped financially or morally but perhaps did she? [...]

[...] All in all I appreciated a lot her testimony, probably because of the feelings she achieved to put in it. But did enough people did hear her signal ? [...]

[...] Moreover, one job is not always enough for you to survive. In effect, a lot of low wage workers, are obliged to take a second job or a third job to have enough money to live, unless they are not alone (companion, relatives, children). As an indicator of this misery, we see in the book that each time Barbara has two jobs, she give it up after a while because it is too hard. All this seems to be a latent destruction of the workers, who are supposed to live in such long term situations at minimal conditions. [...]

[...] Their responsibility is to make a hell out of their lives, because ‘LWW' have to be productive and profitable. The management staff is usually constituted by males, who are often machos, and exert a strong psychological influence on the workers. Miss Ehrenreich sees in this behaviour a touch of “dictatorship”. The fact is, that the chief of the low wage worker, isn't generally paid much more than the average workers, but as intermediate between the poor worker and the corporate delegates, it gets the objectives and orders often in a very neglecting way. [...]

[...] Barb', divorced homemaker” with 3 years of college, was therefore ready to throw herself into the low wage jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich's adventure led her from Key West, Florida to the Minneapolis, Minnesota through Portland, Maine. She spend approximately one month in each location, spending overwhelmingly her time ooking for jobs and accommodation and often, writing her experience down. She works successively as a waitress for an hour and as an housekeeper for an hour, then as a dietary aide and a maid for about an hour and finally as a seller at Wal-Mart for an hour. [...]