Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Maybe, it occurs to me, I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black.

the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do.

family where a few people get to eat at the table while the rest—the “associates” and all the dark-skinned seamstresses and factory workers worldwide who make the things we sell—lick up the drippings from the floor: psychotic would be closer to the mark.

but I suspect that the demeaning effect of testing may also hold some attraction for employers.

traits deemed essential to job readiness: punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, obedience. These are the qualities that welfare-to-work job-training programs often seek to inculcate, though I suspect that most welfare recipients already possess them, or would if their child care and transportation problems were solved.

My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers—the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being “reamed out” by managers—are part of what keeps wages low.

For reasons that have more to do with class—and often racial—prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing.