Legal Commentary

The Big Squeeze is a tour the force exploration of the American labor market, employment relations, and the realities of American workers. Steven Greenhouse does an extraordinary job mapping a broad range of industries, companies, and jobs. Greenhouse describes the shocking and the mundane, the ?downright Dickensian? and the out of luck programmers, ?workplace hell? and the overstretched supervisors, the huge squeezes and the little squeezes. Greenhouse is correct in many of his connections. The way we conceptualize and order work relations in any industry and context represents our collective values and principles, our priorities and social norms. At the same time, we need to be cautious about overstating what the big squeeze is about and what can and should be done with regard to various ?squeezes?.

In the Big squeeze we are introduced to high skilled white collar workers and to low-skilled blue collar workers. For example, in chapter 10, Greenhouse tells us about lawyers in law firms being overstressed and overstretched:

?Not just young lawyers seeking to make partner but even many law firm partners in their forties and fifties are toiling seventy hours a week, staying in the office until two a.m. to finish drafting a contract or writing a brief. Middle managers, investment bankers, and many accountants and attorneys complain of being called on their cell phones while on vacation, having to jump to attention to answer the boss?s demands.?

Then, in the immediate next paragraph, Greenhouse shifts our attention to a different type of worker:

?At the other end of the economic ladder, low-end workers face a different version of on-the-job stress. Some hotels have ordered housekeepers to clean sixteen rooms each eight-hour shift, up from fourteen rooms, pressuring many to work through their lunch breaks and coffee breaks??

I am hesitant to accept too quickly the parallels drawn between the plights of these two kinds of workers.

It may be true that lawyers and accountants and investment bankers work too much. But it is not clear that this should be alarming to us as a society, perhaps putting aside questions about gender equality [and I realize that this is a big thing to put aside, but I would like to nonetheless for the purpose of questioning the scale of plights and squeezes]. I worry that depicting everyone as overworked and vulnerable to job pressures, mistreatment by their bosses, and layoffs overshadows the vast differences between the weakest sectors and those at the top of the ladders, and also everyone in between. The regulatory implications for making distinctions are significant. While corporate America would like to call everyone ?supervisors,? distinctions between those who are economically vulnerable and those who are well equipped to manage their careers and make choices about their dedication to the job even during downturns in the economy are highly important for interpreting and enforcing much of the existing protective labor legislation. In a subsequent post, I will say more about the policy reforms that may follow from Greenhouse?s expose and the current state of the economy.