Cross-posted from Blog at Work:
Stressed. Exhausted. Exploited. Abandoned. In a new book, Tom Juravich exposes and examines the degradation of work in the United States today. At the Altar of the Bottom Line, based on in-depth interviews with workers, lifts up the experiences of working people from diverse sectors of our economy.
Juravich, a writer, researcher, and professor at the University of Massachusetts Labor Center, spent six years interviewing workers in four different occupations:
- Workers at a Verizon call center faced degradingly rigid work days, forced to raise their hands to go to the bathroom, work mandatory overtime, and push sales over real customer service.
- Undocumented Guatemalan workers at the fish houses in New Bedford experienced shocking work conditions and exploitation—even before a massive raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) undermined workers rights and human dignity.
- Operating room nurses at Boston Medical Center worked nonstop, with inadequate staffing levels driving them to exhaustion and jeopardizing their health.
- Workers who made machinery for the paper industry at the Jones Beloit plant in Dalton, Massachusetts found their plant abruptly closed after years of dedicated work.
Work in American is deteriorating very quickly, Juravich says. “The interviews were so compelling,” he recalls, “in some ways the hardest thing I had to do is call it quits.”
Juravich is also an accomplished singer and songwriter: an album inspired by the interviews he conducted is included with the book.
» Listen to Tom Juravich on Public Radio’s “Here and Now”
» Buy the book
Tags: immigrant workers, jobs that suck, meatpacking, music, nurses, Verizon, working conditions, workplace safety
Add to that the American truck driver, of the over 3 million, only 1 out of 10 is a union member. 90% are not covered by FLSA laws. In this century, can you believe it? When your employer’s paycheck bounces, who do you turn to if you can’t go to the Labor Board? I’ve worked for companies that were as crooked as a horseshoe, where they stole my earnings and kept it for themselves. All the while cracking the whip to get me to get their freight somewhere on time.
Without exception, trucking companies use intimidation, blackballing, and coercion to control drivers. Home time is meted out grudgingly at best. I’ve been forced to stay away from home for months at a time. Sleep patterns are chronically disrupted, setting the driver up for a myriad of health problems. And yet, the driver is over-regulated by the D.O.T. when it should be the companies being regulated.
I am home now, because I was forced out of my job, due to high blood pressure. It came from sleep deprivation and abuse of my sleep/rest patterns. It came from pressure to perform that which is unsafe and/or illegal. It came from too little balance in my life, which limited my time to exercise or eat anything but fast food (like there’s anything else available to drivers). And it came from general abuse by the company. Stress.
The company doesn’t want to pay worker’s comp, because they say it’s just “part of the job.”
I say, No one should be forced to sacrifice their health for a job. No job is worth your health!