Abstract
Gabriel Thompson represents the voice of a new generation of labor journalists in the best tradition of George Orwell, Rheta Childe Dorr, Studs Terkel, and Barbara Ehrenriech. In this book, Thompson, a 30-year old New York based writer and community organizer, takes to the road in search of employment in sectors populated mainly by immigrant labor and undocumented workers. His journey takes him to Dole’s lettuce fields in Arizona, a Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Alabama, and the food service and flower markets of New York City. His goal was to work for two full months at each job and to write about his experiences and the lives of those he encountered in the process.
Thompson first takes the reader through the process of applying for jobs in the low-wage sector. In every case, from farm work to poultry processing and food service, Thompson, who is white, is offered positions that are not normally filled by Latinos or African-Americans. He must repeatedly insist upon being assigned to jobs cutting lettuce, deboning chickens, and delivering take-out orders. His experience documents the persistent and wide-spread racial segregation of entry level work. Then, once he is on the job and actually performing low-wage labor, he is able to carefully examine the nature and diversity of work practices generically categorized as low-skill. This combination of participant observation with ethnographic research into the largely Spanish-speaking immigrant and migrant work force reveals some key differences in the structure and practice of low-wage work. For example, in describing the labor process involved in the lettuce harvest in Yuma, Arizona, Thompson breaks down the back-breaking process of cutting lettuce in such detail that he uncovers the complex hand-eye coordination necessary to develop the proper technique to effectively remove the outer leaves while leaving the lettuce head unscathed all the while adjusting technique to different sizes and field conditions. He recounts his constant struggle to keep pace and finds that even, after two months on the job, he is still the least productive member of the crew. Because of the tacit skill and knowledge necessary to perform lettuce cutting there has been no effort to mechanize the process. Thompson also describes the work organization and the system of collective labor whereby workers helped Thompson by doubling or tripling up, moving into his row to harvest the heads that he could not. Workers at Dole are paid an hourly wage of $8.37 and are represented by the Teamsters. While he readily agreed to pay union dues, he notes that, since Arizona is a right-to-work state, the two women in his first-day orientation cohort declined to pay dues.
The next job Thompson takes on is poultry processing. Unlike lettuce cutting, the poultry plant is an industrialized system with a detailed division of labor lifted straight from the Taylorized system of mass production of the early 20th century. Ford engineers got their original idea for the assembly line from the dis-assemby line in meat packing (Hounshell 1984), and modern poultry plants are models of de-skilling. Thompson cites the frequent use of line speed-up, racial segregation of labor on the plant floor, and a campaign of intimidation and fear intended to discipline an increasingly immigrant workforce. He documents the way that Pilgrim’s Pride’s anti-union philosophy is instilled in workers as soon as they go through their new employee orientation. Alabama officials are proud of their state’s status as low-tax and right-to-work. Indeed, for those living in Russellville, Alabama, the two main employers are Pilgrim’s Pride and Wal-Mart. It is not uncommon for workers to bounce back and forth between the two.
Thompson discusses the geographic origins of meatpacking in northern cities with growing union representation. By contrast poultry processing took root with small farmers living along the eastern shore states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia before the Second World War. The locus of production shifted to the Deep South, and production technology turned toward the assembly line in order to meet the growing consumer demand for cheap protein. In doing so the author is careful to weave the current plight of poultry workers into a story of industrialization and mass production that never participated in, and therefore never benefitted from, the legacy of unionization.
Working in the Shadows portrays low-wage workers as thoughtful, moral, and complex. Since Thompson spends months with his co-workers he is able to engage in lengthy conversations both on the job and off. As a result he is able to reveal some of the thought processes taking place in the minds of workers who rejected the UFCW’s campaign to unionize the plant in 2006. For example, he is told that during the campaign management called individual workers off the line to watch a video linking unions with violence and bloodshed. Since a large contingent of the workforce emigrated from Guatemala and El Salvador the message was especially chilling. Immediately after the workers rejected the union the plant management celebrated by speeding up the line. Thompson notes that in 2009 many of those same workers regretted their vote and would side with the union if there was another election. Yet the high turnover at the plant meant that only a small fraction of those around during the 2006 vote were still employed at the plant.
In the final section the author takes us to New York City’s low-wage jobs, first in the flower district and then in the restaurant sector. The flower district is a remnant of New York’s legacy as a wholesale center, a spatial hub in a global distribution chain. Much of the work gets done on the street and sidewalk where floral displays are constructed and plants are displayed for sale. The public performance of low-wage labor does not make it any less rife with labor violations, most notably wage theft. Wage theft occurs when employers refuse to pay minimum wage, require unpaid hours, misclassify workers as independent contractors, or fail to issue a final paycheck for terminated workers (Interfaith Worker Justice 2010). But Thompson also reported another, more unexpected, form of abuse in Manhattan: a constant torrent of emotional assault and verbal bullying. This, he notes, creates a psychologically harmful working environment that is far less easily captured in traditional labor law violations.
The final job Thompson takes on is in the restaurant industry delivering food by bicycle. The income from this and most restaurant jobs is based on tips. The federal minimum wage for restaurant workers is $2.13 per hour; in New York it is $4.65. Thompson describes an industry marked by low pay, long hours, and dangerous conditions, both in the kitchen where cuts and burns are common and on the road where bicycle collisions are frequent. In the restaurant industry discriminatory hiring practices help to segregate the back of the house (food prep and dishwashing) from the front of the house (manager and wait staff).
By physically inserting himself into low-wage labor Gabriel Thompson is able to describe and reflect upon the diversity of low-wage work, the range of skills usually ignored when defining low-wage as low-skill, and the variety of workplaces ranging from multinational corporations to small independent establishments. In addition, he remains committed to telling the stories of workers and their struggle in a way that portrays their dignity in the face of oppression. In the high school and college classroom, this book would make an excellent contribution to courses in introductory economics, labor economics, economic geography, sociology, and labor studies.