08 Jun Question Dear CedWriter,
Question
Dear CedWriter,
This week I only have to post a discussion to the discussion board of this module #4.
Please provide me with the answers to the questions posted bellow. This should be approximately une page and a half to two pages in length.
Professor’s Introduction to Module 4
With the reading for this module, we complete the book by Ehrenreich, and therefore the portion of the course devoted exclusively to the situation of low-wage workers in contemporary America. In the reading, Ehrenreich tries to make sense of her experience, and to analyze what it says about the U.S. today and how it treats its lowest paid workforce. For this module, we also view the video, “Eyes on the Fries,” looking at young workers occupying some of those low-wage jobs.
Ehrenreich makes her case very clearly, and there is not much for me to add extra commentary here. She believes that, for many in low-wage jobs, a job is not a ticket out of poverty; that there definitely is no “free market” at the low end of the job market when labor shortages and stagnant or falling wages coincide; that the world low-wage workers face challenges our claim to be a full fledged democracy; that the U.S. has developed a “culture of extreme inequality,” that government has been engaging in a cowardly retreat from taking responsibility for people caught in this situation, that attempts at self-help such as union organizing drives bring on severe retribution, that the working poor are often “invisible” to wealthier people due to lack of social contact anymore; and finally that the working poor are actually the “major philanthropists” to our society — they are the major “givers” who ensure the material comfort of others while getting next to nothing in return.
Her perspective is a strongly held one, with a great deal of evidence and logical argumentation behind it. As you read her analysis, consider the viewpoint of those who disagree with Ehrenreich. Certainly many politicians would disagree strongly with her; to them, the “free” market is setting everyone’s wages fairly and efficiently; any improvement in the lot of low-wage workers is entirely their own responsibility, they would claim. This debate raises deep questions about what kind of society we desire and what degree of inequality we are comfortable with. Think about these questions as you do the reading.
The “Afterword” and the video begin to look at solutions to the problems Ehrenreich uncovers. Living wage campaigns, unionization, increases in the minimum wage, healthcare for all, affordable child care for all; affordable housing for all; tax policies requiring the rich to pay a greater share of society’s expenses (according to “ability to pay”), public awareness and community and workplace organizing to empower workers, and above all “social movements” that put all the above on the public agenda, are the types of things advocated by both Ehrenreich and those in the video. Again, of course, those on the right of the political spectrum would absolutely oppose all of these things. Think hard about the arguments and evidence for both sides as you do the readings and view the video.
Ehrrenreich’s book has “touched a chord” with millions of people and opened a debate about the treatment of America’s working poor. In this class, I want you to engage in that debate.
The following is a link to a video related to the module:
http://online.fiu.edu/videos/?vivoId=94d69fd8999c45b5a5f7bf9cc2f81c7f
Questions for the discussion board #4:
1. Near the end of the book Ehrenreich states: So if low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace–and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well–you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts in plain terms to a dictatorship. Discuss this statement. Agree or disagree? Why or why not?
2.Ehrenreich also states: There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of inequality. Corporate decision makers . . . occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class–and often racial–prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing. But these things cost money–$20,000 or more a year for a manager, and $100 a pop for a drug test, and so on–and the high cost of repression results in ever more pressure to hold wages down. The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the “social wage,” while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. . . It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves. Discuss this statement. Agree or disagree? Why or why not?
3. Both the “Afterword” to the book and the video “Eyes on the Fries” address potential solutions to the problems for low-wage workers uncovered in Ehrenreich’s book. They all point in the same direction, namely greater government action to protect workers: protect the right to unionize, raise the minimum wage, institute “living wage” policies, organize low-wage communities and workers in various ways aside from unions, government assurance of affordable health care, affordable child care, affordable housing, and the like. Both indicate that a social movement to achieve these things is probably necessary.
Discuss this perspective. Agree or disagree? Why or why not?
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