Nickel And Dimed

by Barbara Ehrenreich      

Barbara Ehrenreich, noted journalist and author, accepted the challenge of writing about the wages available to the unskilled. In particular, she was concerned about the millions of women soon to enter the labor market as a result of welfare reform. She set about investigating the lifestyle of the poor by taking low wage jobs. Over the next two years, she worked as a waitress in Florida, as a home cleaner in Maine and as a sales clerk at Wal-Mart in Minnesota. During this period, she took the task of not relying on her skills and work experience to soften her situation. She decided she would accept the best-paid job available, continue working at it as long as possible and to take whatever housing she could afford on her wages. Housing was the toughest problem. Even poor housing turned out to be expensive. The result was her book Nickel and Dimed to Death - an extraordinary success that made the New York Times bestseller list.

Nickel and Dimed to Death is an extraordinary achievement. Though the subject is depressing, Ehrenreich produced one of the most moving and significant political books ever written. The lives of her fellow workers are certainly miserable but she writes about them in an intriguing and sometimes eventful manner. Will she survive the night in her seedy motel? Will she confront Ted, her odious boss at the Maids? And what will her colleagues think when they realize who she is? She writes with cleverness and sympathy for the underclass in modern America.

She discovered the conditions of suspicion and surveillance under which the low wage earners work. These include the invasive drug and personality tests. Then there are the detailed rules of dress, speech and behavior. And the tendency to extend the work time as much as possible while paying for as little active time as possible. The work as well as the need to constantly find the cheapest goods and services made ordinary living a constant battle for survival.

Ehrenreich’s past life experience and current status was no barrier to finding such work. She was simply another middle-aged woman trying to make ends meet. Her age was not a limitation. The work required little education or training. Turnover in the low-wage world is high. People work to the limits of their physical health and are then let go. Few of the poor will have health insurance or pensions. Prospects for retirement are limited.

Her initial job was at the Hearthside restaurant in Key West, with a basic wage of $2.43 an hour. One of her fellow employees lived in a van parked behind a shopping center and bathed in the motel room rented by another waitress. Ehrenreich eventually moves to another restaurant where she hopes to get more tips and where her basic pay is $2.15 an hour. At this place, she works with a Czech dishwasher who shares an apartment so crowded that he cannot sleep until some roommate goes to work on another shift, leaving a vacant bed. Her finances are so limited that she moves to a trailer park, close to town which requires an almost impossible to achieve first months rent and deposit of $1,100. Her research shows the desperate nature of housing for the poor and illustrates how fine the line is between the working poor and homelessness.

Affordable living accommodations were the worst in her third experiment in Minneapolis. The curtains in her room were so thin she could only get dressed and undressed in the dark. There was no way to lock the door. Minneapolis has very little available low-cost housing. Her room cost $245 a week while her earning at Wal-Mart were only $7 an hour.

In Maine, she worked for The Maids, a national cleaning franchise. The cleaning process was described in extreme detail. The pace is difficult. At times the maids dare not even stop for a drink of water or a brief rest. Often lunch is hurriedly eaten in the car while driving to the next house. And the workers lived in fear of offending their boss, Ted, who was ready to fire them for the smallest infraction.

Ehrenreich’s message is not a happy one. She is aware the distribution of income becomes greater every year. She might hope for a resurgence of unions in the country, but she foresees no immediate change to the plight of the poor. Neither of the two political parties is interested in making major change. The poor don’t vote because the issues being addressed politically are not relevant to their lives.

Her experiences are common ones to tens of millions of people living in modern urban America. With no sense of community present, every one is measured solely by how they contribute in an economic world. Relationships are mostly economic and therefore exploitive. The poor remain in their ghettos while the rich continue striving for an ever larger part of the economic pie.

One wonders if the conditions that foster this exploitation could exist in a small local community. Obviously the owners of Wal-Mart cannot meet their employees on the street. Nor hear in ordinary conversation about their difficulties. In a small town, with small owner owned and operated businesses - rather than the franchised operations of a huge corporation - the relationship between owner and worker is direct. The owner will know the waitress, the sales clerk and the maid. They will probably meet socially. Their children may play together. If the owner exploits a worker, the whole community knows about it.

Ehrenreich’s book, like Putnam’s Bowling Alone, illustrates the results of many decades of urbanization and mechanization. As the spirit of community declines, the spirit of materialization arises. And as the material spirit arises, the tendency for exploitation increases.  Fortunately for exploiters, the anonymity of the large cities makes this exploitation invisible both to themselves and their own personal community.