Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do
Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do
What is it like to do the backbreaking 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 taxis not always successfully as 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 inv
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I am glad I chose an education,
First off full disclosure: I am a Mexican born 1986 Amnesty U.S. citizen.
Growing up in Los Angeles and the interest that was put on our education I could have easily fallen into one of these jobs. From the time I was 15 (I lied about my age) and went to work for a temp agency along side other Mexicans that were here illegal or legal and uneducated. They would send us to the worst jobs, for instance a dog food company that had all the same characteristics of the chicken plant the author described. The one difference was I threw up after each shift because the smell was so nauseating. It was actually this job that made me choose education over sweat.
Happy Chicken (this made me laugh) I applaud you for putting your money where your mouth is. Instead of just saying “Illegals” like the majority of America, you brought light that it is not just illegals that are being taken advantage of. It’s every person citizen or non citizen that walks through the doors of these companies that care only about their shareholders. Please don’t assume that I am anti Capitalism because I love profit as much as the next guy but not at the expense of workers, especially docking them for having to take their kids to the doctor or no sick days.
Read the book get a first hand insight to what really happens at these kinds of jobs.
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|A Real Eye-Opener!,
Working in the Shadows, by Gabriel Thompson, is a riveting read. The author’s fascinating account of working for a year “doing the jobs (most) Americans won’t do,” is both dismaying and educational. Just reading his account of the three positions he worked can leave one feeling exhausted and demoralized.
Being an Arizonan, I found the time Thompson spent in the lettuce fields the most interesting. Lettuce harvesting, it turns out, is back-breaking, grueling work which Anglos don’t seem to be particularly well suited for. No one is, in fact, yet Mexican workers often spend years laboring in the fields, resulting in short life spans. Of all the employers Thompson worked for, however, Dole seemed to be the most “up and up” ethically, although they could have slowed that darn lettuce machine down. Workers were united, however, in friendship and showed compassion for each other, often donating money for someone’s funeral expenses, etc.
By far the worst job Thompson had, in my opinion anyway, was working in the chicken slaughter factory. This particular job employed generally equal numbers of blacks, whites, and immigrants – many from Guatemala. The working conditions were horrific with little opportunity to ever advance in pay. The monotonously repetitive jobs often resulted in permanent disabilities from overuse of hands, wrists, joints, etc., and an overall oppressive work environment defeated most employees. Thompson was fired from this job when his employer discovered he was a journalist.
Finally, working as a delivery person in the restaurant industry in New York was the last of the poorly paid, underappreciated, difficult jobs that the author took on. Anyone, however, who has worked in the restaurant industry at all knows the difficulties of these jobs. Waiting tables, a common job many have while going to college, is one of the most demeaning jobs in the world!
Thompson’s book is extremely well-written and informative, however, his ultimate, inevitable conclusion is disappointing. As one might expect, Thompson is a strong advocate of unions which would prevent many of the abuses that he experienced in these difficult, low paying jobs where people were taken advantage of. No one can disagree with this. We all know what life was like for workers before the advent of unions. However, the high wages that many unions demand for their workers, have driven many jobs and industries out of this country. Unions often protect workers whose asses should be fired for incompetence and poor work habits. Union leaders/officials seem to reap the most benefits from unions, financially speaking.
Overall, this is an excellent read and a real eye-opener into a world which most of us will never otherwise know.
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|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.
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