Start a Reading Group in Your Area

Start a book club, or at least start out as a book club. This idea comes from Seattle, and is based on the fact that book clubs are now a familiar way of getting together. Of course, they can also include story and skill-sharing. In addition to my own books – Bait and Switch and possibly Nickel and Dimed-- you should consider Jill Andresky Fraser’s excellent White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America and G.J. Meyer’s Executive Blues: Down and Out in Corporate America. In addition, NY Times reporter Louis Uchitelle’s Disposable Americans will be out in March. Bill Holland, a Chicago organizer for this project, is also writing a book on layoffs (more info soon).

For a very thoughtful, somewhat more academic book on the subject, consider sociologist Richard Sennett’s The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. And please suggest other books you may be able to think of.

One thing we might be able to do to enhance interest in the books is to have the authors available to chat with the clubs by speaker phone or perhaps a more sophisticated technology. More on that soon...

Barbara

Check back here regularly for updated information.