Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich
Tags: #Political Economy, #White collar workers, #Communism & Socialism, #Labor & Industrial Relations, #Government, #Displaced workers, #Labor, #United States, #Job Hunting, #Economic Conditions, #Business & Economics, #Political Science, #General, #Free Enterprise, #Political Ideologies, #Careers
sixty or more hours a week. They also have, in many cases, skills unavailable to the blue-collar unemployed: administrative and
computer-related experience, as well, presumably, as the ability to work out a plan or strategy and implement it.
And, as living representatives of middle-class decline, they surely have the motivation. If anyone can testify credibly to the disappearance of the American dream, it is the white-collar unemployed—the people who "played by the rules," "did everything right," and still ended up in ruin.
Yes, it will take a change in attitude, a psychological trans-
formation, to make the leap from solitary desperation to col-
lective action. But this is not the kind of transformation the career coaches envision. What the unemployed and anxiously employed need is not "likability" but the real ability to reach out to others and enlist them in a common project, ideally including very different others, like the chronically stressed lower-level workers. What they need, too, is not a "winning attitude" but a deeper and more ancient quality, one that I never once heard mentioned in my search, and that is courage: the courage to come together and work for change, even in the face of
I thank Diane Alexander, Leah Gray, and Kelley Walker for their in-
valuable research assistance. Diane Alexander, Shakoor Aljuwani, Rosa Brooks, Ben Ehrenreich, and Frances Fox Piven read early drafts and offered extremely useful comments. Jared Bernstein, Heather Boushey, Corinne Coen, John Ehrenreich, Doug Henwood, Ken Hudson, Robert Jackall, and Jerry M. Newman answered as-
sorted questions along the way. Arlie Hochschild and Kris Dahl, who is my agent, took time for long conversations on issues raised by my research. And I'm grateful to the team at Metropolitan Books, in-
cluding John Sterling for his careful reading, Riva Hocherman for her excellent suggestions, and especially my brilliant editor, Sara Bershtel.
about the author
BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of thirteen books, including the
New York Times
bestsellers
Nickel and Dimed
and
The Worst Years of
Our Lives,
as well as
Blood Rites
and
Fear of Falling,
which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. A frequent contributor to
Harper's
Magazine
and a columnist for
The Progressive,
she has been a columnist at the
New York Times
and
Time.