Public Employee Press


Book review
Cut out of the unfair economy

John Hope worked for 14 years at a Detroit area auto parts factory. Though a hard worker, he was laid off with so many others during the Great Recession. He finally exhausted his unemployment benefits and lost his home. Like so many other blue-collar workers, he searched endlessly for work. All of them had to adjust to a new fiercely competitive labor market where full-time living wage jobs were the exception.

But these workers also had to adjust to a white-collar world, to retraining programs and schools, which when they didn't rip them off led them to lengthy job application procedures, and to interviews which they'd never faced before.

Then they were qualified to compete with other unemployed, often younger workers entering the labor force all competing for a limited number of jobs.

They also faced discrimination by age, past union membership, and even their long-term unemployment. Some made it. But they often landed in jobs paying significantly lower wages without health benefits.

Many did not make it. While the economic system was the culprit, they blamed themselves. Tensions at home increased, and many victims lost their spouses and children. All faced the ordeal alone, not as part of a movement demanding justice.

Victor Tan Chen's recent book Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy traces the agony of John Hope and over 70 unemployed and underemployed autoworkers.

Their plight reflects how an improving unemployment rate hides the underemployed, who involuntarily work part-time, and discouraged workers, who are no longer looking for work. The official unemployment rate also ignores the unemployment and underemployment for African Americans who have experienced twice the national rate for generations.

Whether the "recovery" will be strong enough to reach these worker - many of whom, though hard-working, have difficulty adapting to white-collar job skills - is still an open question.

As Chen notes, what we need is a muscular policy of taxation of the rich, regulation and job creation, as well as infrastructure development, subsides for job training, expanded health care for all, and a revived labor movement to make work pay for these and too many other workers in similar circumstances.

After over 50 years, we still await Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a poor people's campaign to fight poverty in this brave new world of work.

— Ken Nash
Retired Librarian,
DC 37 Education Fund Library,
Room 211