Books in brief -- Barbara Ehrenreich part 2

Bait and Switch
by Barbara Ehrenreich (Henry Holt, 2005)
available in paperback at Amazon

Following the success of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich undertook a similar undercover mission in 2003. She attempted to obtain a professional, white collar position in the corporate world. Whereas for Nickel and Dimed she downplayed her employment background and pretended to be a newly divorced homemaker looking to enter the workforce, for Bait and Switch she claimed a long experience in public relations and event planning. By the end of the story, she has failed to land a position and receives only an offer to become an independent insurance salesperson.

Unfortunately, Bait and Switch is not nearly as effective as Nickel and Dimed. The earlier book carefully described the work done by waitresses, Wal-Mart associates and domestic cleaners. Most of her readers likely had very little experience in these roles, perhaps except for temporary summer employment, and most readers likely learned for the first time about the awful difficulties faced by those trying to live in the United States on a wage of seven dollars per hour or less.

The problem with Bait and Switch is that Ehrenreich does not adequately explore the world of corporate (un)employment. She investigates some of the phenomena related to white-collar unemployment, such as career coaching, job fairs, networking events and long, tedious internet job searches. Some of the results, which reflect Ehrenreich's obvious suspicion about the corporate world, are quite biting, and there is no doubt that many of the motivational speakers and fashion co-ordinators, among many others, exploit the dread and anxiety of the educated unemployment and have no extraordinary knowledge about hiring. However, Ehrenreich is limited to discussing only the people she meets during her search. As someone looking for public relations work in Charlottesville, Virginia, one would have expected Ehrenreich to contact, among other people, the public relations societies in Virginia and neighbouring states. Her networking, however, is mainly limited to fellow unemployed people, very few of whom have anything to do with her chosen field. There are numerous descriptions of sessions spent listening to lectures give by motivational speakers and job coaches, but any unemployed person would likely keep these activities to a minimum. While she is reasonably sceptical of all those in the unemployment industry who encourage an almost obsessive focus on cheerfulness and likeability, at no time does she actually speak with anyone in a hiring role about what sorts of people are hired.

While Ehrenreich's adventures through job searching are often entertaining enough on their own, she unfortunately has attempted to use them in order to prove a larger point about the corporate world. She believes that professional workers have been sold a bad bill of goods -- that today's workers are encouraged to devote their entire energies to their jobs, only to be laid off without significant benefits and without a clear path of return to full-time employment. There is very little economic information presented, however, and one is never convinced of the existence of a large group of deceived and bitter professionals. While there is no doubt that corporate employment is less stable than it was in past decades, Ehrenreich does not sufficiently explain what has happened in recent decades nor how any legislative changes would help.

There is a Slate discussion about Bait and Switch between Tyler Cowen (an economist of Marginal Revolution fame) and Alan Wolfe here. Both disliked the book intensely, although Wolfe is more sympathetic to Ehrenreich's political aims.