Mollie\'s Job, Author William Adler

Mollie's Job, author William Adler uses the biography of a job experience to try to illustrate what has happened to jobs and employment in the America since 1950. In doing so, he examines issues such as race relations, unions and also the general changeover from the individual ownership of businesses to their ownership by large corporate formations during the era of NAFTA.

This story is one of migrations both of companies and individuals in three different areas for individual stakeholders that have radically different reasons. On the one hand, it is about the migration of individual workers like Mollie. Secondly, on the way of travel, we meet white middle class families that have fled the city for suburbia from civil rights activists, from principled and corrupt union leaders and entrepreneurs such as Paterson native Archie Sergy who help make Paterson powerful. Thirdly, it is the story of Sergy's Universal Manufacturing that was started up in Paterson that ends up moving to Mississippi to help its owners keep more of their share of the American dream. Thirdly, we see the globalist corporations under NAFTA that move their outlets around the world to maximize profits.

In 1950, Mollie traveled from her old home Cartersville, Virginia, to Paterson, New Jersey, where she moves to meet up with her fiance. In Paterson, she gets a job at the Universal Manufacturing . Adler follows Mollie's life and job over the next four decades. Her fate becomes intertwined with the fates of Dorothy Carter from rural Mississippi and Balbina Duque from Matamoros, Mexico, coworkers at Universal.

In 1963, Universal was lured by the intense competition in the Sun Belt for new industry. When Universal opened their plant in Mississippi, many of the workers in Paterson lost their jobs. In the 1980s, the company was the swept up in Wall Street's merger mania. For instance, twice in eight months, Universal was sold, to companies headed by students of Michael Milken, the inventor of junk bonds for corporate raiders and pirates who bought and sold companies for lightning quick profits (Adler, 2000, 168-170) .

Paterson simply was not able to compete with Mississippi and Mexico. The migrations of the companies, mid-size and global, left the common people in the lurch with no way to feed themselves or their families.

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Adler's argument is persuasive. While everyone can respect the small business owner's who work hard and built their businesses, one can not help but feel sorry for the poor workers who are the ultimate victims. While the business owners are living the American dream by owning their own business, commoners have only one dream, which is to make ends meet. Unfortunately, their American dream is more often than not the American nightmare. It does not provide living wages for their families to live on. Their blood, sweat and tears build the companies. The leaders attempt to evade paying the workers their fair share by moving to other states where they can pay less money. This is exactly what Universal Manufacturing does by moving its operations to Mississippi. It goes there to pay less money and avoid the unionization that is the only weapon that the workers have in their struggle to organize and get more money and better working conditions. Mega corporations in the time of globalization do exactly the same thing, but just on a much greater scale in the time of NAFTA when selling out to lowest bidder and making people into commodities that can be sold over international borders has been raised to a high art.

Part 3