Bait and Switch

Over the weekend, I read Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent book, "Bait and Switch," in which Ehrenreich details the seven or so months she spent as an "undercover" unemployed middle-class professional looking for a job. Frankly, had I read this book when I was an unemployed middle-class professional looking for a job, I would have slit my throat. It's bleak. She correctly identifies that most people reaching out to folks looking for a white-collar job do so with their hands open, hoping to clutch some cash.

Of course, it's not as bleak as she lets on. I found, when I was looking for work, plenty of people willing to help, be they in the church employment system, the state level or even the "networking" contacts I made.

What surprises me about her book is its incompleteness. She obviously has no clue how unemployment compensation works. Here in Idaho, it can take weeks for unemployment benefits to kick in, and they badger yo uto take the first job that comes up, even if it's filpping burgers, to get you off the rolls. That part of the system doesn't care if the job you're offered pays less than a quarter of what you were making before you lost your job.

Also, Ehrenreich's book is a bait and switch in itself. She admits all along that she never succumbs to the despair she saw in her fellow unemployed drones because she knew what she was doing was fakery. She also took at least two breaks from looking for work so she could continue her fruitful and beneficial work as a writer. She may have experienced the tip of the iceberg in feeling the despair, but she never got into the caves of doom that await people looking, for months and years, for proper employment.

I also don't buy her notion that the white-collar unemployed can do as she did, working and living off savings to make job-searching a full-time job. She encountered many working in temporary jobs to help pay bills, while still looking for work. That is a misery she does not explore but only in passing, so she's missed it. I was surprised at how shallowly she approached the subject.

I've been part of this unemployed, underemployed demographic -- to which she issues an odd rallying cry of "Brothers, unite! Shake off your chains and band together to fight for your rights to better unemployment, et cetera, et cetera." It's a failing of America that workers are looked at as commodities, things to get rid of in order to increase company profits.