Love the Work, Hate the Job

In his intelligent narration of this sociological analysis, Tom Weiner enlivens events that contributed to the evolution of the white-collar labor movement. America's most talented workers want to do their best for their employers, argues Kusnet, a former speech writer in the Clinton administration, but they're often hampered by short-sighted corporate policies. Weiner's crisp delivery enhances the author's role as historian of the last several decades of decline in worker satisfaction, as evidenced by attempts to organize Microsoft's tech workers and Boeing's 2000 engineers' strike. As narrator, Weiner handles what may have been actual discussions and speeches well, but he tends to make the male speakers sound more pugnacious than the text implies. R.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

May 5, 2008
Presidential speechwriter and political adviser Kusnet has assembled a plodding and pessimistic analysis of how workers struggled to adjust to an evolving employee/company relationship at the turn of the millennium. According to the author, a marked shift occurred at the turn of the century as workers graduated “from the blue-collar blues to the white-collar woes.” In the 30 years after WWII, at the height of assembly-line production, many Americans reportedly disliked their jobs, but were content with their wages, benefits and economic security. The end of the 20th century heralded cutthroat competition as American corporations jostled with rivals in global markets, and the social contract between American employers and employees began to fray. In Kusnet's analysis, employees found their work more enjoyable and creatively rewarding yet reported increasing dissatisfaction with growing job insecurity and frustration with how meddlesome bureaucracies impeded their efficiency. Citing four examples of workplace conflicts in 1990s Seattle—Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, Boeing, Microsoft and Kaiser Aluminum—Kusnet answers his titular statement in the first few pages, leaving readers to slog through an uninspired and laborious history.