Research Hypertext Proposal

I am going to focus my research hypertext on factory workers. My family owns a glue factory in Massachusetts over the years pretty much every Lynch has gotten a summer job at the factory. It was kind of tradition. Every Lynch got to work in the blistering heat in an industrial park, moving drums of solvents and rubber around on with a forklift, operating heavy machinery, the works. It wasn’t quite tradition however, to the other people working at the plant. This was their full-time job, all year round. No AC in the summers, no heat during the New England winter. Though the workers weren’t part of union, they were paid union wages which is much higher than the minimum wage. What I would like to focus on is the low wage life led by factory workers, either union or non union factory workers. I would like to research how the hierarchies of factories work and what opportunities a factory laborer has of advancing in the workplace depending on their qualifications. I found it interesting when both Ehrenreich and Shipler talked about the psychological effects and considerations of living the low wage life. Shipler notices a small, most likely unintentional benefit of having digitized food stamps- the fact that it is less degrading when at checkout lines (Shipler, 40). Ehrenreich mentioned the one thing she missed the most about her old life was “competence”. Having no skills and no future left Ehrenreich feeling hopeless and no real “notion of procedure”(Ehrenreich, 17).If possible I would like to see if there is any researching the emotional and psychological aspects of long term labor in factories. I especially liked the concession Ehrenreich made about her project. That she was not embarking on a “death defying undercover adventure”. In fact, she says, “millions of American’s do it every day.” I would really like to emphasize this too in my project (Ehrenreich, 6). There is no way for me to truly understand what being a factory worker is like.

Works Cited

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickle and Dimed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001. Print.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

Shipler, David K. The Working Poor. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print.