What Workers Say

What have jobs really been like for the past 40 years and what do the workers themselves say about them? In What Workers Say, Roberta Iversen shows that for employees in labor market industrieslike manufacturing, construction, printingas well as those in service-producing jobs, like clerical work, healthcare, food service, retail, and automotivejobs are often discriminatory, are sometimes dangerous and exploitive, and seldom utilize peoples full range of capabilities. Most importantly, they fail to provide any real opportunity for advancement. What Workers Say takes its cue from Studs Terkels Working, as Iversen interviewed more than 1,200 workers to present stories about their labor market jobs since 1980. She puts a human face on the experiences of a broad range of workers indicating what their jobs were and are truly like. Iversen reveals how transformations in the political economy of waged work have shrunk or eliminated opportunity for workers, families, communities, and productivity. What Workers Say also offers an innovative proposal for compensated civil labor that could enable workers, their communities, labor market organizations, and the national infrastructure to actually flourish.