The Big Squeeze

After reading the Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse, try "Hobo-ing America" for something a little lighter or "America on Strike" for something heavier. Thanks.

For more information on either of my books click on book covers to the right of this page. Thanks again.



The Big Squeeze

By Steven Greenhouse

Book Review

By Richard Edward Noble

In William Grieder’s book “One World Ready or Not,” Mr. Grieder takes us on a trip around the world. We visit the homes and workplaces of everyday workers of all types. We see up close and personal how they are being used and exploited by the new Globalism and the international business community. We get all points of view but when we see the same thing happening over and over all around the world, we can not help but to realize that these are not the exceptions but the abusive manner in which the world is being operated.

The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse is a door to door stop and visit with workers all over America who are being used and abused in a similar fashion. In this work we see the domestic pattern.

I have seen the same type things and experienced the same disrespect as a workingman all my life. But I always considered it just a matter of my personal bad luck. I realize after reading this book, “The Big Squeeze” that it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just a bad company here and there. It wasn’t just a selfish employer that I happened to stumble upon. It is the way our country and our world has been heading for most of my life.

Because of my personal experiences as outlined in, “Hobo-ing America” and “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother,” I was led to do my own research and produce other works, “America on Strike,” and “Mein Kampf – An Analysis of Book One.”

My own works exhibit different aspects of this same sad story – the abusive treatment and total disrespect for working people that permeates our society and the globe.

I understand clearly that for every dissatisfied worker in any situation there are considerably more who are at the moment contented.

Even during the Great Depression when our nation was experiencing 30 and 40 percent unemployment, 6 or 7 out of every ten workers still had a job. As a consequence FDR was forced to subsidize photographers to go out and take pictures of soup lines and the homeless and unemployed all over America. Men, women and children who were down and out and even starving all over this country were suddenly made visible via newsreels and local newspapers and magazines.

These pictures had to be exhibited to the general public to prove to the working Americans who were lucky enough to still be employed that America was experiencing a serious economic problem.

Today unemployment has not reached Great Depression standards but we may be witnessing the preliminary stages.

In the Big Squeeze we see how the fear of unemployment and falling back from the “middle class” into the ranks of the poor is being used by employers to take unfair advantage of working people. Many of the stories in this book are horrendous. They go beyond just taking advantage and enter into the category of cruel and unusual. These Corporations and Companies are immoral without question.
But people do not go to prison for being immoral in America. All one can do is expose their immoral behavior and polices and hope that a majority will agree and be spurred on to action at the polls or in the streets if necessary.

The names and the companies are documented. The author tells the reader the home addresses of many of the bad guys – not the individuals but the corporations and their policies. You will recognize their names.

The biggest value of this book to me was to read and understand that it wasn’t just me. What I saw throughout my working career was commonplace. My experiences were not individual and unique. I was one among millions of other Americans who were waging their individual wars and fighting for their personal rights and self respect.

I realize now after reading this book, that if we all knew one another and were able to share our individual experiences we could have formed the largest worker rights advocate group that ever existed. But we didn’t … and unfortunately we still don’t. But maybe the time has come.

I have certainly been luckier than many of the people in this book. But I have had equal or worse experiences than some. My Johnny Paycheck philosophy of “take this job and shove it” I now realize saved me many years of potential misery.

The bottom line: the tactics and practices outlined in this book must be stopped. They can only be stopped if more working people know that what is and has been happening to them is not an anomaly but a policy and a practice of many companies in the business sector here and around the world – and these policies and practices are spreading. We can not let all the safeguards working Americans have fought for, for decades be eradicated by the false excuses proffered on behalf of Globalism or some misguided concept of supposed economic reality.

Globalism does not have to be synonymous with immorality and cruelty. There is no excuse for immoral, cruel, abusive behavior no matter what the economic situation.
This has got to stop.