American Made: What Happens when Work Goes Away

 

AMERICAN MADE (2021)

By Farah Stockman

Random House, 432 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

The subtitle of American Made, Farah Stockman’s look at blue-collar work, is What Happens to People When Work Disappears. Labor historians speak of “deindustrialization” to describe exporting factory work out of the United States. Alas, it’s an antiquated label given that far more than factory labor is outsourced.

 

Capital flight is a more accurate term. It has long been linked to negative social indicators: drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, divorce, suicide, medical woes, early death, homelessness, psychiatric problems, imprisonment…. In today’s service industry-driven economy, displaced workers seldom replace income lost to capital flight. Not many non-white-collar jobs pay $26/hour, the starting wage at Rexnord in Indianapolis, a shaft bearings manufacturer. Do the math. At $26/hour, a Rexnord worker made $54,000 per year—without overtime. If laid-off workers are lucky enough to find another job paying half of that, their annual income is $27,000—25 percent below the nation’s median individual income.

 

Few who have studied worker displacement will be surprised by the data in Stockman’s book. Stockman instead puts human faces to capital flight. Many workers are given voice in American Made, but she spotlights three: Wally Hall, an African American who dreams of operating his own barbeque business; Shannon Mulcahy, a white single mother and skilled machinist; and John Feltner, a white family man and union activist. By focusing on a factory in Indianapolis, Stockman highlights how the American Dream was battered in the American heartland. Blue-collar work has declined in such places to the point that those who punch time clocks have become out-of-sight/out-of-mind forgotten Americans. In 1972, sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb published The Hidden Injuries of Class. It was meant as a warning, but is now an unintended harbinger of what continues to happen to those falling behind in income and social clout.

 

Because professional classes no longer “see” the working class, they are baffled by the 2016 election and the propensity of working-class voters to support politicians whose policies are antithetical to their best interests. Stockman provides uncomfortable explanations for the rise of Donald Trump: free trade and elitism. She traces how the Democratic Party shifted from the ideals of New Deal and Great Society to modified Reaganomics coupled with support for the social concerns and stock portfolios of educated bourgeois elites. In this sense, blue-collar anger toward the Clintons makes sense. Stockman writes, “The Democrats had gotten into bed with corporations when no one was looking.” Tim, a Rexnord worker, put it more graphically: “The dirty bastards sold us out. They allowed millions of jobs to leave the country … good jobs with benefits. They sat on their asses and did absolutely nothing.” Many of those whose jobs fled to Mexico—like Rexnord workers—turned their backs to a party tone deaf to job loss.  

 

Stockman observes, “The Republicans were no better about free trade. They were worse. But at least the Republicans had never pretended to be faithful to the working class.” Parse that and you get a vast segment of American workers that indeed feels sold out. Trump at least acknowledged that blue-collar labor exists, though his vow to stop outsourcing was unfulfilled. (For the record, 58 percent of American workers are non-salaried.) Thus, many Rexnord workers liked the fact that Trump, “didn’t talk like a college boy. He cursed. He bragged. He threatened…. Trump was a hillbilly in a suit. Trump had a chip on his shoulder, like the steelworkers did.” Such perspectives also explain why many wage earners express contradictory admiration for both Trump and Bernie Sanders.

 

A unique twist in American Made lies with Stockman’s admission of her class privilege. This grabs our attention because Stockman identifies as African American. She has much to say about white privilege, but also incisively compares herself to Shannon. Stockman grew up in bourgeois comfort, graduated from Harvard, lives in tony Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has worked at the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Shannon overcame sexual abuse, an abusive husband, raised kids on her own, suffered workplace discrimination, and was ordered to train a Mexican to perform complex tasks on a machine that was about to be disassembled and shipped out of ther country. Is it any wonder Shannon hasn’t been an avid supporter of NAFTA, middle-class feminism, #MeToo, or Hillary Clinton? The kicker is that Shannon is not racist. She did not lash out at the Mexican man about to take her job. Shannon blames Wall Street for her dilemma, not Mexicans hoping to build a better life.

 

American Made is filled with such insights. Another eye-opening observation is that people of color often cope better with job loss than whites. To put it starkly, they have fewer reasons to believe in the American Dream and aren’t shocked when its promise is betrayed. By contrast, Feltner was staggered when union solidarity disintegrated among workers given a choice between refusing to cooperate with plant relocation or collecting a few more paychecks from a company hell-bent on squeezing greater profits from lower-paid brown workers south of the border.

 

Stockman is a lucid writer who knows how to personalize capital flight and make stories live. A review such as mine is by necessity formal and academic in tone. Stockman also culls labor history and sociological studies, but because she got close to her subjects, she writes from the heart. Read her words to see what happens to Rexnord workers, especially Wally, Shannon, and John. Warning: no fairy tales. Stockman references Sherry Lee Linkon, who compared economic “right-sizing,” restructuring,” and other such euphemisms to what really happens when a plant closes. It’s akin to a nuclear detonation that leaves misery and destruction in its wake.

 

Robert E. Weir, Ph.D.