Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker

An explosive exposé of the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America and the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back.

There is a pervasive ideology that claims America is a land of unlimited opportunity, and people get out of the system what they put into it based on talent, attitude, hard work, and character. The Meritocracy Myth: Who Gets Ahead and Why deconstructs this idea by identifying factors that suppress, neutralize, or negate merit-based traits. These include economic inheritance, who you know (social capital) and "fitting in" (cultural capital), being at the right place at the right time, unequal access to educational opportunities, and discrimination based on race, sex, age, sexual orientation, physical disability, religion, and physical appearance. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter encourage you to think critically and develop a deeper understanding of why some people succeed and others fail.

What have jobs really been like for the past 40 years and what do the workers themselves say about them? Roberta Iversen shows that for employees in labor market industries—like manufacturing, construction, printing—as well as those in service-producing jobs, like clerical work, healthcare, food service, retail, and automotive—jobs are often discriminatory, are sometimes dangerous and exploitive, and seldom utilize people's full range of capabilities. Most importantly, they fail to provide any real opportunity for advancement. What Workers Say takes its cue from Studs Terkel's Working, as Iversen interviewed more than 1,200 workers to present stories about their labor market jobs since 1980.

Shedding light on class division, this book offers solutions to class bias in the workplace by analyzing real experiences, social norms, education, wealth, and more. Gross instructs class-migrants—whether college students, recent graduates, or overlooked employees—on how to climb the career lattice and transform themselves from undervalued employees to respected leaders.

A one-stop resource for understanding the full dimensions of income inequality in the United States, including chief socioeconomic drivers of inequality and proposals to reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in America.Carefully researched and scrupulously nonpartisan, this resource examines the history and current state of income inequality in the United States, with a particular focus on key issues, events, and political/economic philosophies relevant to the enduring divide between rich and poor in America. One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it surveys the complex history of income inequality in an easy-to-understand fashion that helps readers identify and assess the ways in which income inequality shapes many aspects of modern American society.

Assesses the possibilities and limitations of reducing poverty among families with children by increasing the work effort of the adults in those families. Following a historical review of family poverty since 1995, the authors present several policy simulations, including increased employment, a higher minimum wage, more generous tax credits, a child allowance, and reduced childcare or medical expenses.

Homestead was first published in 1910, so be aware that the language and content reflect the times. Byington describes daily life in a community that was dominated economically and physically by the giant Homestead Works of the United States Steel Corporation. Homestead, just across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh, developed as a completely separate city -- a true mill town settled by newer immigrants and shaped in its attitudes by the infamous Homestead Strike of 1892.