News > December 14, 2006

White-Collar Workers Unite

Barbara Ehrenreich received a grant from SEIU (Service Employees International Union) to start United Professionals (UP), whose mission is to “protect and preserve the American middle class…”

By Adam Doster

Journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the driving forces behind United Professionals.

Many art students would kill for Ilene Schuckett’s resume. After graduating from art school, she has been steadily employed by various New York advertising agencies for almost 40 years. Eight years ago, Schuckett took a pharmaceutical ad job, hoping to use her skills in a new capacity. Although everything seemed to be going well, Schuckett noticed a disturbing pattern. “Over the last two or three years, the company began letting people over 40 go with the excuse that they had ‘lost business,’” she says.

On May 17, Schuckett faced the same fate. Even though she held one of the most senior and highly paid creative positions in the firm, her boss dismissed her and 25 others for virtually no reason. Now 60, Schuckett is without a job for the first time since college. “I was a freelancer and the [pharmaceutical company] begged me to go on staff,” she says. “I worked hard and got raises and promotions until I promoted myself right out the door.”

Enter Barbara Ehrenreich. While writing her recent expose, Bait and Switch: the (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, the veteran journalist and activist learned first-hand the pitfalls of keeping work in corporate America. “I met with career counselors, I read self-help books, I used the Internet and job boards,” Ehrenreich says. Realizing that many victims of job instability had nowhere to turn for help, Ehrenreich secured a $10,000 grant from the Service Employees International Union and collected e-mail addresses from unsatisfied workers on a subsequent book tour. In a matter of months, United Professionals (UP) was born.

UP’s mission is simple: “to protect and preserve the American middle class, now under attack from so many directions.” Specifically, the group is organizing two related yet disparate types of workers: recent college graduates and middle-aged workforce veterans. “It is important to align the two groups [of workers],” says Tamara Draut, a UP Advisory Board member and the author of Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead. “Pitting the generations against each other like we often do isn’t an effective way to organize, given that many things would benefit both groups.”

It is not surprising that UP would target these sectors of the workforce. Both face overwhelming obstacles in their quest for financial security. According to the Center for American Progress, more than 60 percent of college graduates carry excessive debt, averaging almost $19,000 per student. For the majority of grads, this debt lingers because many available jobs do not provide adequate salaries or benefits to cover both the rising cost of living and the leftover college expenses. The Center for Economic and Policy Research recently reported that “only 25.2 percent of American workers have jobs that pay at least $16 per hour and provide health insurance and a pension.”

Meanwhile, middle-aged workers face different but equally devastating challenges. In a corporate culture focused on keeping costs low, people in their late 40s and older are often viewed as too old to be valuable. “At some point in the late ’80s and early ’90s, a whole bunch of corporate executives’ attitudes changed toward white-collar workers,” says Ehrenreich. “Blue-collar workers were always thought to be disposable, but now they started looking at white-collar workers as just expenses to eliminate.” Thus, veterans of the job market are frequently laid off with little warning and must work benefitless contract gigs to stay afloat.

To start, UP will provide a variety of services for workers, including legal resources, job placement assistance and, ultimately, insurance support. Yet its primary goal will be legislative advocacy. Modeled loosely after the AARP, members have expressed interest in lobbying Congress on urgent issues like universal health insurance, unemployment insurance and college loan reform. “People are feeling like their concerns have not been on top of the national agenda for a long time, and they want to change that,” says Draut.

Equally important, UP hopes to provide a forum where members can share stories with people in similar predicaments and build awareness of the structural causes behind their personal struggles. Schuckett thinks it is important for the jobless to see that they are not employment anomalies, especially those who internalize the shame attached to “failing” despite following the prescribed formula for American success. “The confluence of similar stories is very important,” she says. “I’ve found that I’m not alone, and that’s a powerful feeling.”

To achieve its goals, UP must expand its membership. Over the past seven weeks, almost 300 people have volunteered to head local chapters. And with dues of a dime a day—$36.50 a year—the cost isn’t an impediment.

“[UP] brings the average middle class American citizen to the debates in Washington and advocates on their behalf,” says Draut. “It’s a model whose time has come.”

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• Reader Comments

  this is so black and white - you can have a movement for equality while respecting and trying to empower minorities/identities.

  Look at health care in Canada - there is still racism but the fact is that all people have health care. This gives more resources to work with for those minorities, it helps them fight for there rights. 

  Basically economic equality should be the main goal, but we should also work to support other movements as well.  As a poor, black, gay man what he wants most, he might tell you health care.

  Posted by ryaninfo on Dec 15, 2006 at 4:53 AM

  wrong article sorry

  Posted by ryaninfo on Dec 15, 2006 at 4:53 AM

  Barbara Ehrenreich is a person whose opinions and actions deserve the highest respect. Her book, “Nickel and Dimed,” brought attention to the plight of the working poor. She didn’t just interview them, she joined them in their overworked and underpaid world at some of the least appreciated jobs available in this country.

  I’m glad to see she is now tackling the plight of the white collar displaced persons.

  The examples in this article are very familiar to me. I have written to every major economic publication, the AFL/CIO, the NRA, local, state and national officeholders 1993 (NAFTA) with little or no sympathy expressed and NO action.

  The shedding of the older and the more expensive workers has happened to over fifty individuals I know personally (and I quit counting five years ago). Some were “incentivized” (bribed sounds so crass) to leave. early and allowed to keep benefits to age 65. Others were just fired with excuses of downsizing and right-sizing the company.

  The son of a very close friend was the top salesman at a fast food packaging company. He had sales of more than $9 million the year they fired him at age 39.
  
  Many of my friends were teachers here in our city — to cut cost those over 55 who had at least 20 years on the job were given a chance to retire early and get the same retirement package as they would if they stayed until 65. Now our state is now approaching bankruptcy and their pensions are in danger.

  There are many more I could add, but the story is the same and the results the same. 

  For the employee loss of benefits, tapping 401(k) early and a lower quality job or muti part time ones.

  For the employer (except the top brass) the quality of service is diminished as the knowledge accumulated through experience is trashed. There is no one to point out the best way, the time saved or the techniques developed. Many wheels will be reinvented which won’t show in the accountant’s office, but will affect the bottom line.

  For the country: Perhaps the worst is yet to come. With qualified machine operators let go young people see no reason to choose that job category.

  As college costs keep rising and foreign workers are imported entry level salaries are lowered, so why bother getting a degree?

  There may be some poetic justice coming on the scene, however. The bean counters are largely responsible for millions of job cuts and recently I read that there is a good chance your next income tax will be sent to India — many financial firms have shifted their work that direction.

  We don’t even need to hang around to turn off the lights — the computer will handle it.
  ------------------------
  This morning another writer expressed the issue in economic terms —
  “It is a great theory—but it’s not working as advertised.”

  See:  From Globalization to Localization, By Stephen S. Roach | New York

  “...there are increasingly disquieting signs.
  
  Most notably, an extraordinary squeeze on labor incomes has occurred in the industrial world—an outcome that challenges the fundamental premises of the “win-win” models of globalization.
  
  In recent years, the benefits of the second win have accrued primarily to the owners of capital at the expense of the providers of labor.

  http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/index.html#anchor4099

  Posted by whattheheck on Dec 15, 2006 at 7:56 AM

  This is another example of the fragmentation of the labor coalition. To combat corporate power, white collar workers cannot abandon unskilled workers to achieve their own ends. The Democratic Party and big unions have largely abandoned unskilled domestic labor in their zest to lay claim to illegal immigrant worker’s dues and future votes.
  What is needed is a strong coalition of all labor, similar to the AARP, that has real power in Washington and can represent workers that unions and elitists have abandoned to achieve their own ends.

  Posted by eaanders on Dec 15, 2006 at 6:10 PM

  Support Unions the Mob needs a hobby.

  Posted by texasindependent on Dec 17, 2006 at 12:06 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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