Times Reporter Speaks Out on Plight of Workers

(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 genre” - 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