Nickel And Dimed

Nickel, Dimed, Roger, and Me

After viewing Michael Moore's documentary, Roger and Me, and reading Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, it is effortless to distinguish the effects large companies often have on its employees, as well as community. In Michael Moore's documentary, the town of Flint, Michigan is ruined by General Motors' (GM) economic issues, forcing many of its workers to be laid off, eventually affecting the whole community. Moore created his film to raise awareness and speak for his fellow citizens. He wished to inform the public of the "true" story behind GM. For the same reason, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed. It is a book thoroughly explaining her experience, firsthand, as a Wal-Mart employee. Although GM and Wal-Mart are negatively portrayed by Moore and Ehrenreich, the question is who is in fact responsible for these problems? Is the company or the employee to blame? Both sides are arguable, but in these types of socioeconomic situations, who is ultimately responsible? The answers to these questions, in relation to GM and Wal-Mart, can be established by examining the constancy of economic conditions, the effects a corporation has on a community or individual, and the responsibilities of the company and individual.

By watching Roger and Me, GM seemed to be a powerful and stable company, being one of the most successful automobile suppliers in America, however, on the inside there was considerable economic turmoil. The Chairman of GM, Roger Smith, had a plan to combat this anarchy. The plan was to close down eleven of GM's plants, (one of which was located in the center of Flint), build sufficiently cheaper plants in South America, build the company's monetary status up again, and eventually reopen localized plants in America. While this plan seemed promising, it would leave many workers unemployed, resulting in an unstable economy within Flint, Michigan's community. Virtually all of Flint's economic stability was due to GM's existence as a major company within the city. This sort of dependency of a small town on an enormously affluent firm leads to a jointly unsteady condition. Nonetheless, it is not always thus. For instance, Ehrenreich's experience as a Wal-Mart employee: Searching for employment in the lower class, Ehrenriech applied for a job at Wal-Mart, one of America's wealthiest companies. Wal-Mart is notorious for its low wages and "non-existent" employee benefits; however, Wal-Mart isn't to blame for its employee's economic situations. It is Wal-Mart's job to provide reasonable jobs for its employees. It is clear that anyone who would decide to work at Wal-Mart with its seven dollar an hour wages and no benefits is desperate for a job, and must be living a fairly economically distressed life. Wal-Mart treated its employees just as horrifically as GM, but GM's treatment of its workers is more justified than Wal-Mart's, in the sense that GM was experiencing an economic crisis, while Wal-Mart continued to thrive. These economic circumstances are what companies like Wal-Mart prosper from. Due to the fact that working at Wal-Mart requires little skill, its employees are fundamentally disposable, causing Wal-Mart's employees to be economically dependent on the company, rather than the other way around.

Companies such as GM and Wal-Mart are able to have indefinite effects on a community or individual. In Flint's case, GM benefited the community so much that employees and everyone else within the community almost inevitably became dependent on the company's wealth and success. As workers were being laid off more and more, it appeared more and more as if the town was failing. Because workers lost their jobs, they could no longer afford to pay bills, resulting in the home evictions of many former GM workers. With a large number of the population forced to leave Flint, smaller businesses had less customers, causing them to fail, and in time forcing them to leave in search for employment elsewhere also. Even if Wal-Mart has not caused an entire community to fall apart like GM, it certainly has had a large affect on its employees. Wal-Mart is recognized as an incredibly influential and prosperous company; therefore it does all it can to push its potential employees towards the credence that they each play a key role in the preservation of the company. Based on Ehrenreich's account of the process of becoming an employee at Wal-Mart, it is evident that Wal-Mart is manipulative and has a great influence on its employees' manner of thinking. The process of becoming an employee takes up a lot of time, making it so applicants feel as though because they have put so much time into the process of becoming an employee, that they should take the job. Subsequent to filling out a questionnaire, taking a drug test, and attending an eight-hour long orientationÐ'...who would not feel inclined to work for Wal-Mart? This is all Wal-Mart's system of manipulating its potential employees. One of the company's goals is to prepare a family atmosphere, making its employees feel as though they belong. Even Ehrenreich confesses her ignorance for becoming a Wal-Mart employee. "Wal-Mart, with its endless orientation, has, alas, already sunk its talons into meÐ'...In the days that follow I will try to rationalize this decision by telling myself that, given Wal-Mart's position as the nation's largest private employer, whatever I experience there will at least be of grand social significance. But this is just a way of prettifying yet another dumb mistakeÐ'..." (148-149). Employees work at Wal-Mart with the thrill that they belong to something where they are accepted. The atmosphere is almost cultish. "We sit around