It is not often I am asked to compile links for a particular book. Well today I was asked by one of the colourful characters at Ville of Hurst who has reread Da Vinci Code three times and is familiar with the issue of the Catholic Weekly. How many people around us are being treated like non-people or like they do not exist? In this book there are no surprises for me - I know how incompetent and unkind most managers are towards their charges. Media might be peppered with massive skill shortages yet most workers travel to work in the red rattler train style afraid of being sacked at the end of the day. Is this smart practice? Whether you work on the ground floor or the underground it seems that Only inconspicuous cleaner is a good one. Ach, in hard-core irony style one wonders how many suspicious and caprious bosses are only after perks rather than the responsibilities that comes with a true leadership. Like Orwellean pigs inside those fat barns they fail to acknowledge real or virtual lesser human beings ;-)
There aren't many authors or journalists being sought for interviews by both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but The Australian's Elisabeth Wynhausen is a little unusual. Her new book Dirt Cheap is an expose of life "at the wrong end of the job market" and involved the author working in a string of low-paid jobs incognito. Wynhausen has now been interviewed by both Boss magazine and the Socialist Alternative. Surely a first? Everyone keen on dirty deeds
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Art of Surviving
Over a period of ten months Elisabeth Wynhausen went undercover and worked as a factory hand, an office cleaner, a retail worker and a kitchen hand, moving from state to state and attempting to live on her meagre earnings.
Dirt Cheap - Life at the wrong end of the job market is the inside story of what it is like to work twelve-hour days on a factory line sorting eggs at a battery hen farm; of working a split shift of thirteen hours cleaning a nursing home for just over ten dollars an hour.
As Elisabeth discovers that many so-called 'unskilled' jobs actually require an incredible amount of skill, so too does she learn that exposing the conditions of low-wage work can be sheer hell for your lower back, not to mention your morale.
Caustic, courageous and often funny, this is a unique view of class, power and middle management seen from the other side of the serving counter, and a very personal experience of what it is like to be under-paid, under-appreciated and part of Australia's emerging underclass.
• His Greed and Heart and Mind of Ston(e) [I came to Dirt Cheap, Elisabeth Wynhausen's account of a year working for minimum wages, fully expecting to hate it. An Australian knock-off of Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling Nickle and Dimed seemed eminently cringe-worthy ; ISBN: 1405036443; Pages: 240; Price: A$30.00; Imprint: Macmillan Australia: Dirt Cheap: Life at the wrong end of the job market]
• · Dirt Cheap: Life at the Wrong End of the Job Market Julie McCrossin: Life Matters ; by Edmund Campion in Online Catholic: God under Howard
• · · Life at the wrong end of the job market ; The class system is alive and well ; Underclass expose just doesn't work
• · · · In her new book, Elizabeth Wynhausen learns how hard it is to live on the minimum wage Masters & Slaves ; Life at the Bottom; A slippery slope to inequality
• · · · · The final of Lit Idol took place on March 14 at this year's London Book Fair, the world's leading publishing business event Lit Idol 2005 UK ; Bruce Elder, who "agrees", and Susan Wyndham, who "disagrees" Writers' festivals are a waste of time ; Increasing sex frequency from once a month to at least once a week provides as much happiness as a $US50,000 ($63,000) a year rise Sex better than cash in the happiness stakes