I share your sentiments webcrawler, but perhaps it takes a MC white woman to present it so other MC folks can hear.
Here's a review of N&D
Servant leadership defiled:
Reflections on Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed
By C. Melissa Snarr
In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join the millions of Americans who work full-time [yet still] and earn poverty-level wages. Ehrenreich, a nationally renowned writer who contributes to The New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, wanted to cover the impact of welfare reform by immersing herself in the world of the working poor in the United States. She and her editor openly wondered how anyone could survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour. He challenged her to find out. So began a yearlong journey, during which Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as an inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce.
Criss-crossing the country from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. As Ehrenreich remarks, she quickly discovered that no job is truly ?unskilled,? that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors. :lol:
Ehrenreich?s book, Nickel and Dimed, offers a fascinating account of one woman?s attempt to live on ?low-skill? wages in different service industries and her daily struggle to survive. Ehrenreich is honest about the constructed reality of her experience. She could always opt out of extreme hardship (medically, physically). She started with a thousand dollars in her pocket and chose cities that had relatively good labor markets. But her book does offer the reader an easy entry into the complex world of the working poor. I hope she will spur readers to think and read more about living wages, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, and the role of unions for the working poor. But for those of us working in various ?servant leadership? enterprises, Ehrenreich?s book should raise these issues and more. We should think carefully about the damage wrought by hypocrisy.
?Servant Leaders??
Ehrenreich?s final job in her immersion experience was at a Minnesota Wal-Mart where she earned seven dollars an hour. ?Barbara? (as her nametag read) worked full time keeping the ladies? clothing department ?shoppable? (picking up after customers and arranging clothes). She worked the 2 to 11pm shift full-time and had to negotiate skillfully her two fifteen-minute breaks, when, ?there?s the question of how to make the best use of a fifteen-minute break when you have three or more urgent, simultaneous needs?to pee, to drink something, to get outside the neon and into the natural light, and most of all, to sit down.?
Ehrenreich?s experience at Wal-Mart was not significantly different from the struggles, friendships, and burdens in her other jobs. What was different for Ehrenreich was the language and culture that enwrapped her Wal-Mart experience. From the time Ehrenreich entered orientation, she was told that ?respect for the individual? was a key value for Wal-Mart. As the trainers noted, some of the best ideas often come from employees, or ?associates,? such as the decision to employ the elderly as ?people greeters? at the entrance of every store. Because their ideas are welcome and valued, ?associates? are told to think of their managers not as bosses but as ?servant leaders,? serving them as well as the customers.
And then Ehrenreich says it wryly: ?Of course, all is not total harmony, in every instance, between associates and their servant leaders.?
For immediately following the trainers? assurance, the ?servant leaders? show the associates a video warning about criminal activity and a video entitled ?You?ve Picked a Great Place to Work,? warning about the sedition of unions. Then comes the lecture on ?time-theft.? Doing anything other than working on company time, including phone calls, bathroom breaks, and talking to other associates, is strictly forbidden. [Work, or prison??] In fact, throughout the chapter, Howard, the assistant manager, becomes a lurking figure who constantly catches associates in ?time theft? as they talk with each other.
The lurking image of Howard could provoke in the reader just a disappointed smile about another manager?s use and abuse of the term ?servant leader.? But there are deeper issues to be seen in Ehrenreich?s work. There is a more thorough challenge to ?servant leadership? intrinsic in organizations that pay low-income or ?poverty? wages.?
Structural Issues Matter
The fact is that most employees in low-paid service jobs cannot afford to support themselves, let alone a family, on seven or eight dollars an hour.
For example, to be deemed affordable, rents usually need to be at 30% of one?s income. But as Ehrenereich notes, housing analysts report that 59% of poor renters, or 4.4 million households, spend more than 50% of their income on housing.
As ?Barbara? quickly found out, without the first month?s rent, it?s extremely difficult to secure a ?legitimate apartment.? Budget hotels become the primary option. Even with two jobs amounting to $320 dollars a week, the $179 budget hotel took 55% of her income. Ehrenreich then turned to aid agencies whose lists, she discovered, are already out of date. The agency finally suggested she move into a shelter until she could save enough money. Ehrenreich writes, ?our bright blue vests bear the statement ?At Wal-Mart, our people make the difference.? Underneath those vests, though, there are real-life charity cases, maybe even shelter dwellers.?
Affordable housing shortages abound in US cities and they actually get tougher in stronger economic times. As former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo notes, the ?cruel irony? of affordable housing shortage is that ?the stronger the economy, the stronger the upward pressure on rents.? This cycle seems particularly cruel. Ehrenreich bemoans, ?The rich and the poor, who are generally thought to live in a state of harmonious interdependence?the one providing cheap labor, the other providing low-wage jobs?can no longer coexist.?
Ehrenreich?s book is rich with anecdotes that illustrate some of the daily-ness of a working poor person. One employee continually comes by to negotiate the seven dollar collared shirt that has a stain on it. (Employees must wear collared shirts). She is finally told that employees do not receive any discounts on sale items. Suddenly the seven-dollar shirt no longer fits into the budget of the seven-dollar-an-hour employee. For students or people unaware of the dynamics of poverty, the book provides memorable moments that illustrate daily struggles.
But Ehrenreich?s final rant should give those studying ?servant leadership? a more thorough pause: ?Someone has to puncture the prevailing fiction that we?re ?family? here, we ?associates? and our ?servant leaders,? held together solely by our commitment to the ?guests.? After all, you?d need a lot stronger word than dysfunctional to describe a family where a few people get to eat at the table while the rest?the ?associates? and all the dark-skinned seamstresses and factory workers worldwide who make the things we sell?lick up the drippings from the floor: psychotic would be closer to the mark.?
Yes ?Barbara,? please puncture the prevailing fiction. And do it pointedly. For servant leadership is about a call to meet the highest priority needs of those in an organization and community, not staving off unionization. Servant leadership is about individuals having caring relationships in the organization, but it is also about the wages and policies of an organization.
In my view, and in Robert Greenleaf?s view, servant leadership is about how individuals and organizations embody healing and generativity in the world. ?Servant leaders? do not have the option to ignore the impact of wages, adequate health care, and affordable housing on individuals and communities. To promote ?servant leadership? without an eye to how love links to dignity and justice is to miss the heart of servant leadership.
Ehrenreich?s work in Nickel and Dimed should remind all readers that structural issues such as living wages, adequate health care, and affordable housing matter. As educators and trainers, we have an obligation to say that they should matter even more to ?servant leaders.?
1 Spears, Larry. ?Tracing the Impact of Servant Leadership,? Insights on Leadership. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998, p3.
2 Dreier, Peter. ?Why America?s Workers Can?t Pay the Rent,? Dissent, Summer 2000, pp38-44.
3 Spears, p3.
There are some good links in another thread here:
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=80#54995The Living Wage Campaign is a good one to support:
http://www.universallivingwage.org/Be sure to check out the ULW Formula:
http://www.universallivingwage.org/