Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-316) and index.
Contents
Preface -- Introduction: At the edge of poverty -- Money and its opposite -- Work doesn't work -- Importing the Third World -- Harvest of shame -- The daunting workplace -- Sins of the fathers -- Kinship -- Body and mind -- Dreams -- Work works -- Skill and will -- Epilogue.
Summary
"David Shipler ... journeys deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm laborers and sweatshop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry wages. They are known as the working poor ... Braced by hard fact and personal testimony, he unravels the forces that confine people in the quagmire of low wages. And unlike most works on poverty, this book also offers compelling portraits of employers struggling against razor-thin profits and competition from abroad. With pointed recommendations for change that challenge Republicans and Democrats alike, The Working Poor stands to make a difference"--Page 4 of cover.
