cover image Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line

Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line

William M. Adler. Scribner Book Company, $27.5 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-684-83779-6

This thoroughly researched study explores the way ""free trade""--particularly the transfer of jobs to locales where workers can be paid less--adversely affects individuals, communities and industry. Following the trajectory of a factory manufacturing job from Paterson, N.J., to Simpson County, Miss., and finally to Matamoros, Mexico, Adler reveals that workers in Paterson were paid $8 an hour, while those in Mississippi got 75 less, and employees in Mexico earned merely $4 a day. Bringing together the stories of the three women who held the same job (in each of three locales) with the contemporary history of the labor movement, the effects of the Cold War on union organizing, the Ku Klux Klan's role in Southern factory life, voter registration patterns in the South and even the rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, Adler, who writes for Esquire and Rolling Stone, humanizes national and international economic forces, political events and trends in industrial management while elucidating them with clarity and insight. A keen observer, he gives his story depth and immediacy with precise detail, while his provocative and nuanced insights make for an important chronicle of the economy of industry and human lives. (May)