Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1289162
O C T O B E R | N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 21 dysfunction of the current system and that this book will increase your awareness and comprehension of the problem. —Lucia Hwang On the Clock: What low-wage work did to me and how it drives America insane By Emily Guendelsberger; Little, Brown Nurses will appreciate the main themes of this terrific book by Emily Guendels- berger, in which she details her experiences working decent chunks of time in three types of low-wage jobs that are predicted to be plentiful in the 21st century service economy: Amazon ware- house worker, call center service rep, and fast food worker. It's clear from her reporting and research that her corporate employers are all after one thing: to maxi- mize profit by squeezing as much work as humanly possible (or not humanly pos- sible given the arguably inhumane treatment she and her coworkers suffer daily) out of them via technological control, understaffing and work speedup, workplace rules, and unjust scheduling that always favors the company over the employee. Yes, the situations and people Guendelsberger describes in On the Clock are all too familiar to nurses because they are the same exact conditions that we face in our own workplaces—except in health care, lives are at stake. Guendelsberger notes how close corporations are coming to elim- inating any need for a human in a great number of jobs, and how for all the remaining jobs that actually do still need a human, companies are both structuring the work in preparation for automation and also expecting people currently doing the work to act as if they were not human. "My thorough research totally failed to prepare me for how dehumanizing the job felt… We're at a strange point in the history of work. Automation of most jobs is only a decade or two away, and human workers increasingly have to compete with computers, algo- rithms, and robots that never get tired, or sick, or depressed, or need a day off… And so many employers demand a workforce that can think, talk, feel, and pick stuff up like humans—but with as few needs outside of work as robots. They insist their workers amputate the messy human bits of themselves—family, hunger, thirst, emotions, the need to make rent, sickness, fatigue, boredom, depression, traf- fic—or at least keep them completely at bay." Because Guendelsberger actually takes on these jobs, she gives us an inside perspective on the work setting, what the work is like, what her coworkers are like and their own experiences, and even the physical and mental toll these jobs have on her body and mind. We learn that being an Amazon "picker," the people who walk endless miles in a giant warehouse to fetch those new wireless headphones or the toilet plunger you bought online, is so physically demanding on employees that the company places vending machines stocked with a huge variety of over-the-counter pain medication right near the break rooms. We learn that the managers at Convergys, the giant call center company she works at handling customer service calls for a mobile carrier, will go into the electronic time card system to change the punch-in times to exactly match when employees log in to take calls because they refuse to pay for even one second of "unproductive" work. We learn that even when McDonald's cus- tomers assault the workers (in Guendelsberger's case, a woman threw a honey mustard sauce packet and hit her on the chest), they are supposed to grin and bear it. It's all degrading and exploitative. Capital's obsession with productivity is deeply connected to maximizing profit, and Guendelsberger provides valuable back- ground in her book on how Henry Ford's assembly line and Taylorism, the supposedly scientific management of work named after its creator, Frederick Winslow Taylor, transformed modern work in the 20th century. The point of both was to benefit the employer by squeezing as much work out of each employee as math- ematically possible and fragmenting and deskilling the work such that employees could be made interchangeable and expendable— just an inanimate cog in the overall machine of the work process. This type of low-wage, monotonous, relentless, and overly con- trolled work, however, is bad for humans, argues Guendelsberger. Not only does it make us suffer in the way we live our lives, by making it dif- ficult for us earn a sustainable livelihood and control our schedules to balance work and home obligations, but this type of work is so stressful that it can cause PTSD and a whole host of other mental health issues like depression and paranoia. This was not always the way it was, argues Guendelsberger. Contrary to many people's assumptions that life in pre-civilization times was harsh and depriving, research shows that humans during the nomadic hunter-gatherer era worked less (collect- ing or hunting enough food), slept more, and had more leisure time. All of this information is relayed through Guendelsberger's excel- lent storytelling, accessible writing style, and salty language. She's both accurate and hilarious, such as this title she gives to one chap- ter detailing her training at the Convergys call center: "Orientation: A Play in One Act." Some of the most poignant stories she shares in the book are of her coworkers with families to support and complicated schedules and commutes to juggle—often ever-changing schedules and inefficient commutes because their low incomes can't provide security and sta- bility. While Guendelsberger needs income, she is working these jobs as a journalism project, her husband is back "home," and she has no children to support or care for. It's a stark contrast from the life of a Convergys coworker couple, Jess and Anthone, who befriend her and let her rent a room in their house. Because they only have one car and depend on Jess' parents to care for their daughter McKenna, they spend an inordinate amount of time driving and work schedules that don't let them spend much time together as a family. "There's a lot of talk about the decline of the American family in certain circles, and I don't think it's unfounded… After my experiences in the low-wage sector, I have no doubt whatsoever: the way we work in America is what's crippling family life." Later, Anthone also develops an abscessed tooth infection that, because they have no dental insurance, she and Jess self treat with a straightened safety pin and Fish Mox, fish antibiotics that they bought from an aquarium supply store. Registered nurses should absolutely read this book. While nurs- ing is a highly educated and highly skilled profession that requires tremendous judgment, experience, and knowledge, the same exact forces that gave rise to the jobs Guendelsberger worked are now aggressively undermining nursing as we know it. If our corporate employers had their way, they would also change our jobs to elimi- nate the need for nurses and replace us with low-wage, low-skilled workers to handle everything the robots and software programs couldn't. Guendelsberger challenges us to fight back by imagining a different world of work and a different way of life. This is the same project that nurses have already undertaken: to build a society cen- tered on caring for humans, not creating profits. —Lucia Hwang