By HALEY SWENSON
ILLUSTRATION/Lisa Larson-Walker PHOTO/Betsie Van der Meer/Getty Images
Barbara Ehrenreich has written extensively about the impossibility of getting by with low-wage work in the U.S. and the everyday indignities workers in the U.S. face on the job. In her best-selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Ehrenreich wrote about her yearlong experience of going undercover as a low-wage worker. In a follow-up, Ehrenreich explored the world of middle-class white-collar jobs and the insecurity and humiliation of the jobs available to workers who did everything they were supposed to do to live the American dream. She’s also written about the growing inequality between rich and poor in This Land Is Their Land and the false promises of “positive thinking” in Bright-Sided. Ehrenreich is the founder of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which promotes journalism about inequality in the United States.
Last week, Ehrenreich chimed in on the ongoing revelations of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry with a tweet:
Our current sex harassment discussion is woefully class-skewed. Too much about actresses and not enough about hotel housekeepers.
— Barbara Ehrenreich (@B_Ehrenreich) November 9, 2017
I asked her to expound on the conversation she wishes we were having and the cases not being covered. Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
Haley Swenson: Did you have a particular case in mind that wasn’t being covered when you wrote your tweet?
Barbara Ehrenreich: Well, one case that comes to mind was the allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn made by a hotel housekeeper. But I was also thinking about the numbers found by the hotel housekeepers union in Chicago, Unite Here. They found a shocking number, almost 60 percent of hotel housekeepers, reports being sexually harassed on the job. They go up to somebody’s room and there’s no one else there, and some guy tries something or is there with no clothes on while they try to do their jobs. This is routine.
And the other big category of workers we should talk about are waitresses. A waitress has to be prepared basically all the time to hear remarks on her body. And I have experience with that. I worked as a housekeeper for [Nickel and Dimed] and earned $6/hour. But I also worked as a waitress for the book, and I was a waitress when I was in my late teens. I was much prettier then—though I’m not sure what that has to do with it. It happened all the time. The worst thing is a pat on the butt. And waitresses talk to each other—we’ll say, “Hey, watch out for that one,” but it’s thought of as just a part of the job. It’s like, “Well, do you want a tip?”
“You know, they can do pretty much what they want to you, and if you want the job, you just shut up.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich
The other thing we need to start talking about are just everyday instances of harassment that don’t meet the standard of sexual harassment that happen to people in their jobs. I wrote about this case in my book This Land is Their Land, where a sales company would motivate their employees by spanking both men and women who didn’t meet their quotas. They’d stand them up at the front of a room and use a giant ruler. And it was brought to court by a woman, but it was decided this wasn’t sexual harassment because it was happening to both men and women.
There was another employer I wrote about in Bright-Sided that was actually waterboarding employees who didn’t perform well. As part of a motivational exercise, a salesman was held down and had water poured down in his mouth and nose. You know, they can do pretty much what they want to you, and if you want the job, you just shut up.
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