Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada

by Dan Zuberi

This book shines a spotlight on the causes and consequences of working poverty, revealing how the lives of low-wage workers are affected by differences in health care, labor, and social welfare policy in the United States and Canada. Dan Zuberi's conclusions are based on survey data, eighteen months of participant observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with seventy-seven hotel employees working in parallel jobs on both sides of the border. Two hotel chains, each with one union and one non-union hotel in Seattle and Vancouver, provide a vivid crossnational comparison because they are similar in so many regards, the one major exception being government policy. Zuberi demonstrates how labor, health, social welfare, and public investment policy affect these hotel workers and their families. His book challenges the myth that globalization necessarily means hospitality jobs must be insecure and pay poverty wages and makes clear the critical role played by government policy in the reduction of poverty and creation of economic equality. Zuberi shows exactly where and how the social policies that distinguish the Canadian welfare state from the U.S. version make a difference in protecting Canadian workers from the hardships that burden low-wage workers in the United States. Differences That Matter , which is filled with first-person accounts, ends with policy recommendations and a call for grassroots community organizing.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2006

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Academic. Dry! Uninteresting despite the interesting topic. Got this book from a free little library. Worth that. It’s going into my free little library. I’m a retired academic so I read a lot of stuff but this could have been better.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was dry and academic, yet I'm glad I forced myself to read it. The author compares the lives of hotel workers in Seattle and Vancouver. They work for the exact same hotel chains. Yet because of governmental policies in these two countries, the quality of life for those in Vancouver is much better. Things like community centers, parks and beaches easily available. City planning things like mixed-income neighborhoods, so the low-income folks in Vancouver don't have to live in ghettos and fear for their safety. And policies on how easy it is (or not) to start a union. In the United States it's much harder. Much easier for the employer to intimidate workers at the workplace. He has a concluding chapter laying out what social policies should be pushed for (in both countries) to help the working poor.

[Devorah Firestone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ground-breaking, at least for me. Reccomended reading for long-term watch of similar families with the same job, but different countries with different social policies.