21st century american economy
A01=Victor Tan Chen
american auto industry
american economy
american history
Author_Victor Tan Chen
auto industry
autoworkers
business
call to action
car industry
Category=JBFC
Category=JHBL
Category=KCF
class inequality
depressed economy
economic concerns
economy
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics
factory work
great recession
historical
income inequality
industrial economic relations
job killing technology
labor
labor policy
laid off workers
middle class
morality
political
politics
sociology
technology
unemployment
work overseas
worker
working class
Product details
- ISBN 9780520283015
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jul 2015
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Years after the Great Recession, the economy is still weak, and an unprecedented number of workers have sunk into long spells of unemployment. Cut Loose provides a vivid and moving account of the experiences of some of these men and women, through the example of a historically important group: autoworkers. Their well-paid jobs on the assembly lines built a strong middle class in the decades after World War II. But today, they find themselves beleaguered in a changed economy of greater inequality and risk, one that favors the well-educated or well-connected. Their declining fortunes in recent decades tell us something about what the white-collar workforce should expect to see in the years ahead, as job-killing technologies and the shipping of work overseas take away even more good jobs. Cut Loose offers a poignant look at how the long-term unemployed struggle in today's unfair economy to support their families, rebuild their lives, and overcome the shame and self-blame they deal with on a daily basis. It is also a call to action a blueprint for a new kind of politics, one that offers a measure of grace in a society of ruthless advancement.
Victor Tan Chen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the founding editor of In the Fray magazine. He is the coauthor, with Katherine S. Newman, of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America.
