“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Work has changed in the 40 years since Studs Terkel wrote his classic book “Working”. Roberta Iversen told us that working life has gotten significantly worse for low-income workers. Roberta is a professor at the School for Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the wife of former Rotarian Gudmund Iversen. She explained that her new book “What Workers Say” picks up where Studs Terkel’s book stopped in 1980. She let some of the over 1,000 interviewees tell their own story in her book.
Roberta briefly outlined some of the ways that work for low-income workers has gotten worse in the last 40 years. She claimed that wage growth for most workers has been slow while that for the top 1% on the wage scale has increased tremendously. She said 44% of U.S. workers make less than $18,000 a year while the average pay of the heads of the 300 largest companies in the U.S. is $19 million. Manufacturing jobs have decreased because of factors such as moving factories overseas. Employers have stopped doing on-the-job training. She mourned a general demise in the social contract that used to exist between employers and employees. Roberta explained that while enough jobs are available to have almost full employment, most of these jobs are low-wage and unstable work in the service sector. Most of her interviewees worked in three areas: clerical, healthcare, and retail. Currently workers in these areas are less likely to be unionized compared to manufacturing workers in 1980.
Roberta believes the U.S. government should promote a manufacturing and construction practice of using more labor and less machines. She used as an example a Mexican road that was built with thousands of workers but no machines. Discussing the pros and cons of this suggestion would make for an interesting talk.