From Author, Help for White-Collar Workers (NYT)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14labor.html

From Author, Help for White-Collar Workers

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: September 14, 2006

On a recent book tour, Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of “Nickel and Dimed,” was nearly brought to tears when an information technology marketer told her of growing so desperate after being laid off that she took a job as a janitor.

At another reading, a woman complained of an economy so volatile that she did not think of jobs anymore, but of intermittent income streams from tasks like house-sitting and designing Web sites.

Inspired by such tales, Ms. Ehrenreich has started an organization called United Professionals to help white-collar workers, be they unemployed, uninsured, downsized, stressed out or merely anxious.


David Scull for The New York Times

The writer Barbara Ehrenreich has founded United Professionals.


“I thought, Isn’t there some way that people in this situation can come together, and the model I had in the back of my head was the early women’s movement in the 1970’s,” said Ms. Ehrenreich, whose “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” published in 2001, sold more than one million copies. “Just the fact of coming together and exchanging stories was very empowering, making you feel you’re not alone, and taking you out of that feeling of shame that whatever happened to you must be your fault.”

FULL story at link above.

[bluestateguy]

1. Barbara Ehrenreich voted for Nader IN FLORIDA in 2000

Just a point of information. Do with it what you wish.

[DrZeeLit]

4. Well, let's take her out to the shed and whip her, huh? When... I ask...

are we going to give up that ghost?

Geez.

She is one of the TOP WRITERS IN AMERICA.
She stands directly IN what is uncomfortable and WITNESSES.

What are the rest of us DOING?

NOW... in THIS MOMENT?

(yeah, I finally took the "kerry" bumpersticker off my car and instead am weekly putting up the numbers of dead US, injured US, and dead Iraqis. NOW.)

[havocmom]

2. neocon 'terra terra terra' diversions not distracting from economy

People know what REAL fear and REAL threats to them are.

When the GOP is in power, most Americans loose ground. Americans loosing a LOT of ground this time.

[redqueen]

3. Is it wrong that this upsets me?

What about all the people who've never even had a chance to get into a white-collar field so they could be downsized or outsourced into reality? Are they invisible?

I wonder if she is planning to direct those newly blue-collared individuals toward activism to work for economic justice for all of us...

[Lilith Velkor]

5. That seems to be the plan

But yeah, the never-had-a-chance demographic is invisible to them, because white-collar folks have been socially conditioned to ignore us for fear of, um, bad luck germs or something like that.

I wince when reminded of '70s feminism. We don't need that ugliness piled on top of the ugly shit ongoing.

What we need are more like Bolivarian Circles.

[kineneb]

6. why not just call it a "union"?

Union of United Professionals? Or better: Workers United? Time all us half-employed folks of all varieties got together and did something. Its not like we would lose our jobs, since we don't have them now.