From the Publisher
Praise for Sleeping Giant:
"Read Sleeping Giant. It is raw. It is honest. And it is powerful. It is about the conversation we need to have in this country."
— Senator Elizabeth Warren
“Books about the state of the American working class do not usually fill me with optimism, but Tamara Draut's thorough and lively report on the ‘new working class’ that inhabits our ‘bargain basement economy’ is a big exception!”
—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, Founder of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
“Sleeping Giant sets the record straight about what most American workers face every day—and what it's going to take to win a future where everyone who works hard in our country can thrive. Tamara Draut is telling the stories of today's working families, especially the growing and diverse group of service and care workers, whose stories politicians and other policymakers need to hear. These workers are demanding a better future for themselves and their children, through movements like the Fight for 15.”
—Mary Kay Henry, President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
“On the eve of the financial crisis, Tamara Draut provided a stirring picture with Strapped of the stagnating wages and rising personal debt that was creating a more unequal—and unstable—economy. Now, a decade later, she’s issuing an equally important and hopefully equally prescient message: America’s diverse new working class is ready to be mobilized behind a bold agenda for economic and political reform. In our populist time, her call could not be more relevant or vital.”
—Jacob S. Hacker, co-author of American Amnesia and Winner-Take-All Politics
“This is quite simply the best analysis yet of the difficult challenges and dynamic potential of today’s working class. It’s also a wonderful read that will leave you both moved and hopeful.”
—Bob Herbert, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos and former Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times
“Tamara Draut's new book is a wonderful tribute to working people. By offering a fresh and insightful new look at work in America—who's doing it, how it's changed, and why we should care, she helps us understand where everyone from the caregiver to the sanitation worker is situated, and offers a blueprint for a better life for all of us. “
—Ai-jen Poo, Director of National Domestic Workers Alliance, Co-Director of Caring Across Generations and author of Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America
“A close examination of the plight of the working class, the decline of organized labor's political power, and the stirrings of activism that indicate change may be on the way. Draut pulls no punches in her analysis…. Readers who concur that we have a ‘neoliberal economic system that is systematically rotten to the core’ will welcome Draut's impassioned report.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
03/01/2016
Draut (vice president of policy & research, Demos; Strapped) spends much of this book describing the depressing plight of today's working class, which she says is about to emerge as a powerful force. Central to the service rather than manufacturing sector, the occupations of these workers are scattered across many parts of the economy, including retail, health care, hospitality, and other low-pay, high-turnover businesses. Draut is at her best presenting moving portraits of individuals hopelessly stuck in poorly paid positions with little hope of advancement. Moreover, they are often employed part-time (typically working more than one job at a time) and are isolated from the employer they frequently despise. In most settings, their ability to develop cooperative solutions (such as unionization) has been impeded by the influential companies that have used their profits to marshal political power against potential worker opposition. While the book's title implies a path forward in this environment, Draut's analysis better describes the existing dilemma than offers future outcomes, and in places appears superficial, particularly compared with Victor Tan Chen's Cut Loose, which covers similar topics. VERDICT This decent introduction to the experience of today's common laborers is recommended for general readers but unsatisfactory for those seeking a more sophisticated approach. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
APRIL 2016 - AudioFile
Narrator Tanya Eby’s tone perfectly fits this cogent reporting on how employers large and small fail working-class people in the U.S. The startling inequities she shares—brutal working conditions and systematic corporate and government suppression of wages—are egregious enough to justify a hectoring tone. But the equanimity in her voice better allows this information to help create public awareness about the feudal conditions in much of the retail, service, construction, and healthcare sectors; the hidden costs of low wages to families; and the government agencies called upon to help them survive. Many in the working class are people of color, and their awakening to their demographic power will surely move our culture toward more equitable pay and working conditions. T.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-01-19
A close examination of the plight of the working class, the decline of organized labor's political power, and the stirrings of activism that indicate change may be on the way. Draut (Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead, 2006), the vice president of policy and research for Demos, the liberal think tank, pulls no punches in her analysis. Asserting that "the social contract of the New Deal is in tatters" and that "the working class has had a boot on its neck for three decades," she goes on to tell how that came about, who the responsible parties are, what that has meant to American society, and what can be done to create necessary changes. Draut defines working class as anyone in the labor force without a bachelor's degree. Because this group is more diverse—i.e., black, Latino, and female—than in the industrial era, it has been, she writes, easier to ignore. Interviews with workers in "the bargain basement economy" provide a glimpse of their lives, and interviews with assorted activists in such movements as the Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter show the latest strategies. The Republican Party and the once pro-union Democratic Party come in for some sharp jabs, as do America's cultural elites, its power brokers, and its news- and its policymakers for being too socially distant from the working class to see and understand what has been happening. The middle chapters focus on history, and the closing one, which calls for a "Better Deal," sees a possibly brighter future, the details of which are spelled out in an addendum, "The Blueprint for a Better Deal." Readers who concur that we have a "neoliberal economic system that is systematically rotten to the core" will welcome Draut's impassioned report; others may be unmoved.
