Barbara Ehrenreich: "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream"

Throughout her three decades of journalism and activism, Barbara Ehrenreich has been one of the most consistent chroniclers of class in America. She is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed: Surviving in Low-Wage America. That book, which was inspired in part by welfare reform legislation that pushed some 12 million women into the labor market, described her attempt to live on low-wage jobs making, between $6 and $7 dollars an hour. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She found that with even all of her advantages - race, education, good health and lack of children, her income barely covered her monthly expenses.

In her latest book, "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, Ehrenreich explores the plight of white-collar workers forced from jobs by corporations constantly on the hunt for lower-salaried younger workers. She goes undercover again, this time as a middle-aged professional trying to get a white-collar job in corporate America and finds that the people who are playing by the rules -going to college, being loyal to the to their employer- are too often ending up in financial ruin.

* Barbara Ehrenreich, author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Harpers, and the Progressive, she is a contributing writer to Time magazine.

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