Undercover by Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who went ‘undercover’ inspired by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform that anyone can survive and in the end prosper on $6 an hour (Homeless 2008). Ehrenreich goes out of her home to look for low paying jobs stays in the cheapest lodging she could find. She was out to unmask the rare view of prosperity from the bottom which is different from how the reformers view it from the top.

 The low wage worker has to pick more than one job as reviled by Ehrenreich so as to have a roof on top of their head. Talking of family time and sleep to rest to the low wage worker is totally new. The worker has to work overtime sometime sleep in the car and go without food or result in the unhealthy fast foods easily available.

    Ehrenreich sought out to know how the low wage workers managed to match the little income to the daily expenses every day. With a car, shelter, and food she was unable to experience the fact that the workers sometimes are thrown out of their houses, go hungry and get to work soaking wet during winter (Platt 2009).

A more wide spread idea that the jobs that the low waged workers do require needs no skill is untrue (Ehrenreich 2001). According to Barbara the low wage workers are the real philanthropists for they forsake their own families to take care of others and clean people’s house when they don’t do that to theirs. Barbara calls out for a revolution so that people are treated fairly and paid what they are worth.

Works Cited

Ehrenreich, Barbara Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) getting By in America. p.6.

Homeless: Can You Build A Life From $25? The Christian Science Monitor, February 11, 2008

Platt, Charles (February 1, 2009). “Life at Wal-Mart”.  Boing. Retrieved 2008-02-03

Tremoglie, Michael. ”Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Diming Truth”. Front Page Magazine.