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Author: Andrew Ross
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2009 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIs job insecurity the new norm? With fewer and fewer people working in steady, long-term positions for one employer, has the dream of a secure job with full benefits and a decent salary become just thata dream?In Nice Work If You Can Get It, Andrew Ross surveys the new topography of the global workplace and finds an emerging pattern of labor instability and uneven development on a massive scale. Combining detailed case studies with lucid analysis and graphic prose, he looks at what the new landscape of contingent employment means for workers across national, class, and racial linesfrom the emerging creative class of high-wage professionals to the multitudes of temporary, migrant, or low-wage workers. Developing the idea of precarious livelihoods to describe this new world of work and life, Ross explores what it means in developed nationscomparing the creative industry policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, as well as developing countriesby examining the quickfire transformation of Chinas labor market. He also responds to the challenge of sustainability, assessing the promise of green jobs through restorative alliances between labor advocates and environmentalists.Ross argues that regardless of ones views on labor rights, globalization, and quality of life, this new precarious and indefinite life,& and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany it is likely here to stay and must be addressed in a systematic way. A more equitable kind of knowledge society emerges in these pagesless skewed toward flexploitation and the speculative beneficiaries of intellectual property, and more in tune with ideals and practices that are fair, just, and renewable.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. With admirable timing, this volume examines a global workplace infrastructure thats as shaky as the economy would indicate. Taking a hard line against exploitation of workers in a variety of roles worldwide, Ross looks closely at workers on the verge, and those putting them there. In the chapter Chinas Next Cultural Revolution?, he warns that Beijings rulers have nothing to worry about so long as the creative sector behaves like other industries... They can be groomed and promoted... to absorb foreign investment and foreign ideas, to exploit low production costs.... He tackles the Western world with the same nonplussed tone, as when discussing corporate PR tactics to deny ties to labor abuses by promoting social good, naming names like Nike, Reebok and the Gap. He also hits higher education, where much of the workplace is shaped, noting that its all too easy to conclude that the global university, as it takes shape, will emulate some of the conduct of multinational corporations. Rejecting the widely influential, free marketeer notion of a worldwide playing field, Ross leaves no room for easy answers (or an alternative, and equally snappy, image to answer Thomas Friedmans or Richard Floridas). Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity. From The New YorkerAccording to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on social responsibility public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies. Given the urgency of the subject, its a pity that Ross didnt give more space to European developments, such as the colorful precarity protest movement and the discussion of policies that could extend labor rights to all workers. 2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker
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