The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler

Chapter 5: The Daunting Workplace Summary by The Foundation for Community Empowerment. Questions by UAA Faculty Don Rearden.

SUMMARY

Chapter 5, “The Daunting Workplace,” addresses the diverse challenges the workplace holds for those from the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladders. Many working poor have no work experience, no education, a criminal record, a drug addiction, and a lifelong absence of role models. Dysfunctional families in which no one works, or even ventures outside the neighborhood, have provided no support system or role models.

These circumstances lead people to develop a crippling fear of the world beyond their neighborhood— especially a fear of the workplace. Furthermore, anxiety, low self-esteem, a sense of personal incompetence and inadequacy, and anger prohibits many from attaining and maintaining employment.

On the employer’s side, many managers seek “soft skills” (sometimes called “people skills”) and a work ethic that they argue are missing in most welfare recipients, ex-convicts, drug addicts, or the uneducated and inexperienced. Soft skills and work ethic refer to punctuality, diligence, and a “can-do” attitude. Instead, many employers complain that they must deal with tardiness, absenteeism, lack of initiative, physical violence, and high attrition rates. However, Shipler points out that employers may also have prejudices about race and welfare.

Shipler did find some success stories, which often included a worker in need of a job and a compassionate and energetic employer, yet a basic economic and social problem exists that cannot be solved by the private sector.

First, more and more low-skilled jobs are being exported to third-world countries, leaving the poor in the United States with fewer opportunities. Second, as the U.S. economy develops and demands more skilled labor, the less skilled workers suffer. Research has shown that 37% of American adults lack basic math skills and cannot read a bus schedule or write a letter about a credit card error. Which such a lack of basic skills, the situation is dim for poor Americans.

QUESTIONS

1. What role does fear play in the poor finding employment?

2. What are “soft skills” and why don’t people have them?

3. How does feeling “invisible” impede progress for the working poor?

4. How does being a “throwaway society” explain our lack of mechanical ability or even our general education of how things work?

5. What role does education play in the advantages in the workplace?

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