Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do
By:
Gabriel Thompson
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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5
Description:
What is it like to do the back-breaking work of immigrants? To find out, Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside Latino immigrants, who initially thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent. He stooped over lettuce fields in Arizona, and worked the graveyard shift at a chicken slaughterhouse in rural Alabama. He dodged taxisnot always successfullyas a bicycle delivery boy” for an upscale Manhattan restaurant, and was fired from a flower shop by a boss who, he quickly realized, was nuts. As one coworker explained, These jobs make you old quick.” Back spasms occasionally keep Thompson in bed, where he suffers recurring nightmares involving iceberg lettuce and chicken carcasses. Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcementwhile telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants, and desperate US citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of $8 an hour.
Publisher: Nation Books
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
An Eye Opener - An eye opening experience for me and the author as well. Down to earth daily experiences laid out in simple layman's language on life at its hardest levels. While I am an anti illegal immigration believer, I have great empathy for these desperate workers who pick and process most of the food we eat. It illustrates more than ever the need for a simple guest worker program
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
How the Other Half Lives - In Working in the Shadows, Gabriel Thompson goes undercover to find out what conditions are really like for those at the lowest levels of the American workforce. It's not easy, for several reasons. One is that, as a gringo, he doesn't look like most of the other workers cutting lettuce in the fields. It's hard to be undercover when you don't exactly blend in. Aside from that, the work is hard, physically harder than anything Thompson has done before, and he's no slouch.
It's hard to improve on Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, but Thompson adds another dimension by investigating migrant labor, whereas the jobs Ehrenreich took were "above the table" jobs: waiting tables, clerking at Wal-Mart, being a rent-a-maid. Thompson worked in the fields, in a chicken processing plant, and behind the scenes at a restaurant.
As odd as it was for an Anglo to show up for a job in the fields, no one bothered him much about why he was there. They assumed he couldn't get a job legitimately, perhaps because he was a criminal or an alcoholic. Mainly, the other workers minded their own business and didn't ask him questions. They did offer to share their food with him though, when they saw he brought only a few power bars with him for a long day's work.
Thompson intended to take notes surreptitiously through the day and after work, but found that he was just too tired and sore after work. He couldn't imagine how the others kept at it for months, let alone years, and managed to raise families and have any kind of life at all. But they did.
The book starts with Thompson working in the lettuce fields in Yuma, then he moves on to a chicken processing plant in small town Alabama. This section isn't as powerful as the first, but I had to laugh when the librarian in the tiny strip mall library talks with Thompson for about thirty seconds before figuring out that he is writing a book. So much for his secret identity. She then proceeds to purchase his previous books for the library and help him with his research.
Thompson concludes his cross country workathon in New York, floundering at several part time under-the-table jobs, none of which is as journalistically compelling as the first job in the fields.
In addition to Working in the Shadows and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Katharine Newman's No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City and Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market (Russell Sage Foundation Books at Harvard University Press) also paint graphic images of how the other half lives.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Not bad - About: Thompson works jobs normally held by immigrants. He picks lettuce, works in a poultry plant and delivers food via bike.
Pros: Well written, good premise.
Cons: His "sum-up" at the end and call for more light to be shed on normally ignored workers is a bit skimpy.
Grade: B
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
an insiders view - This is a very informative journal of a part of our lives that most people ignore. It made me appreciate just how hard some of these jobs are and had badly the people who do them are treated. I don't know the answers to these problems but there has to be an answer somehow. The author certainly did his due dilience in his research for this book. I hope all his work will benefit these people who do the jobs most Americans won't.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Great book - I was pleasantly surprised by the book. I thought that it would be very black and white. However, he manages to pull off a nuanced book that held my interest. I think that this is an important book that should be read by everyone in America.
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