After reading Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and watching the documentary Roger and Me, it’s easy to compare the desperation the people seem to have in both of these circumstances. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed to demonstrate the desperation of the jobs that an unskilled worker has. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? Erenbeich decided to find out by actually living the life that people would have under these circumstances. She traveled to three different cities in which to work. The first was Florida, the second Maine and the last Minnesota. To make everything realistic she spent only money from her wages and nothing from her savings. While there, she lived in the cheapest housing and accepted work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She also found out that even the humblest livelihoods require strenuous mental and physical effort.. In a capitalistic society, where "unskilled workers" struggle to make ends meet, big companies continue to exploit their labor. The idea of reification also plays well into this story, where the amount of money received in wages is not an equal representation of the worth produced by the laborer, and the laborers act as if they can't change the system. Since reading Nickel and Dimed, it is evident that hard work, contrary to popular belief, doesn't always lead to success and advancement in today's society. The old motto of if you’re willing to work hard you can always find a job is not always true. Our society seems to have moved from an industrial society to one geared toward knowledge. Blue collar workers are having their jobs replaced by companies looking overseas for cheaper labor . Many times blue collar workers aren’t able to support their selves from the jobs offered. The same is true for the GM plant, the workforce , some after spending many years at the factory were forced to find another career. For most of those people that was the only career in which that they had worked and they had no college education, thus making it very hard or impossible to find an equal paying job or even one to support a family on. During all of this, as Moore’s film progresses, Flint's crime rate skyrockets, with shootouts and murders becoming all too common. Crime becomes so prevalent, that when the ABC News program Nightline tries to do a live story on the plant closings, someone steals the network's van (along with the cables), abruptly stopping the broadcast. Living in Flint becomes so desperate, that Money magazine names the town as the worst place to live in America. The residents react with outrage and stage a rally where issues of the magazine are burned. In another act of desperation Flint tries to counteract the closing of GM by the building of a Hilton hotel. It was very hard to attract visitors to a hotel in a town that had nothing to offer its visitors because the town was already desolate, without anything to attract tourism, the idea failed and the hotel filed bankruptcy.
Ehrenreich ended up working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage. She quickly found out that the only way to survive was to work two jobs, which is not exactly the American dream. It just goes to show you that you can work hard all your life and never have a decent life style. We have evolved in what I think, is a corporate world and many times this translates into a very greedy mind set, in which maximum profits are the sole concern of corporations. On a personal level I have experienced corporate greed. I can sympathize with blue collar workers and their anger toward large corporations. My Father and I started a a large swine confinement operation, which through vertical integration was contracted to Maschoff Pork Inc. Through a series of dis agreements they decided to pull the contract and not pay. Much like the GM workers, we were left setting with nothing. I had managed the operation and was left without pay and little college. Eventually they did decide to honor their contract through a series of negotiations. I, thus decided maybe it’s better to obtain a formal education. In Moore’s movie GM seemed to be a powerful and stable company, being one of the most successful automobile suppliers in America, however, on the inside there was considerable economic turmoil. As a capitalistic corporation, General Motors has to remain accountable to its shareholders which translate to maximum profits. The plan was to close down eleven of GM's plants, (one of which was located in the center of Flint), build sufficiently cheaper plants in South America, build the company's monetary status up again, and eventually reopen localized plants in America. While this plan seemed promising, it would leave many workers unemployed, resulting in an unstable economy within Flint, Michigan's community. Virtually all of Flint's economic stability was due to GM's existence as a major company within the city. This sort of dependency of a small town on an enormously affluent firm leads to a jointly unsteady condition. Wal-Mart is one of America’s most wealthy companies and it’s treatment to workers has had a very shady past. Ehrenreich unveils the fallout of corporate greed much as Michael Moore did in Roger and Me and she examines how corporations often strip employees of their dignity. Random locker searches and drug testing occur despite what she routinely observes to be honest, hardworking co-workers. Forced "mandatory gentility" leads to robotic, inauthentic behavior. As one employee laments, "They talk about having spirit, but they don't give us any reason to have any spirit. "The system is made to not let one class be able to succeed, or even live reasonably. A comparison of Moore's and Ehrenriech's work that they have in common, in which I I don’t agree with is, one of religion. I would make the case that Christianity is authentically American. As a believing Christian I found some of the remarks from Ehrenreich and Moore offensive. I know , obviously that in America we don’t all have the same beliefs and in my opinion some Christians go overboard in expressing theirs and at times are obnoxious. I however, think it’s popular culture to be anti-Christian and I think it was a strategy in both Ehrenreich and Moore to receive popularity by adding that in their work. Regarding the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) patrons Ehrenreich serves during her Key West server stint, she writes: they "look at us disapprovingly no matter what we do (and they don't tip) as if they were confusing waitressing with Mary Magdalene's original profession." Another poke at hypocrisy comes when Ehrenreich describes how ennui moves her to investigate a Saturday night "tent revival." This passage plunges into a commentary about Jesus being "out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole" thereby stifling his message of Christian charity. In Flint the mayor brings in Robert Schuler in to preach to the towns unemployed and through that pokes fun at evangelical Christians by showing maybe they don’t have the answer and are pathetic at their attempt to help although, the message from both Schuler and Boone seem to be a message of grin and bear it. Also the interview that Moore had with Pat Boone seemed to be a complete catastrophe. Boone states that Roger Smith is, a can do sort of guy, when in fact Smith did nothing to help the auto workers in Flint that lost their jobs.
Moore doesn't spare his humor with the religious sector, in fact Miss Michigan receives the same attention in an interview after the parade. It seems as though she is disconnected and is much more concerned about her own advancement in becoming Miss America, when she mentions please vote for me. When asked about , what she think about Flint's job, she states I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and changes the subject. When Moore mentions it's a great day for a parade, immediate conversation is created. I think one of the main points that both Moore and Eherenreich makes is that blue collar workers may have limited options. When there are limited options people become distressed. Ehrenreich describes her mounting feelings of hostility. When a short coworker criticizes her for placing shirts in the wrong spots, Ehrenreich begins to imagine the woman falling from the stepladder she must use to access most items. When Ehrenreich spots a wheelchair-bound employee looking gloomy, she thinks: “At least you get to sit down. "Sometimes as Ehrenreich seems to state, a feeling of being in a dead end job makes you become bitter. These large corporations can have an indefinite impact on communities and individuals. The adage that you can work hard all your life and never have anything can be very true. The workers that are portrayed are an example of that. Can you place all of the blame on large corporations? I don't think so, but at least some responsibility goes to a corporation that starts in a town and dominates the work force. Granted, if you decide to work as a blue collar worker instead of acquiring more education you take on some inherent risks. However, GM having been essentially the sole employer in Flint takes on the responsibility of looking out for the towns economic welfare . If nothing else, the corporation could have done more to help for an public relation effort. It also seems obvious that America, or more specific the shareholders of GM, in general, doesn't prioritize decisive efforts to support dislocated workers. In one of the last scenes in the movie Moore is stating that over half of Flint is on welfare, while Roger Moore gave himself a two million dollar raise. Although Wal-Mart isn't to blame for the employees economic condition it does do a very good job at manipulating it's employees. The interviewing process at Wal-Mart is very exhaustive . It involves filling out a questionnaire and a then a drug screening and finally an eight hour orientation. It seems Wal-Mart has a way of manipulating it's employees. After all, would you want to turn down the employment after the time it consumed? Is it the employees job to insist on fairness or is the corporations job to implement without being asked to or required by employees? In the Moore's film , the attempt to look for Roger Smith is in vain. He searches Flint and finds a deputy sheriff evicting unemployed GM workers. Moore finds a "Flint Pride" parade which is marching alongside stores with boarded up windows. An indoor amusement park is visited where exhibitions are on display of what Flint was once like. Ehrenbeich demonstrates it's impossible to make a living working on minimum wage and realizes how frustrating working a seemingly meaningless job can be. I can sympathize with the workers and wonder where capitalism is taking Americans.