carol anderson discusses her book one person a no vote. how voter suppression is hosting our democracy. you look at the real world history of the right to vote it has been extremely contested and violently challenge at many points. i wanted to talk about that america is really an aspirational nation and its in it's in those aspirations that we the people we hold these truths to be self-evident. a leader of the free world. the skin of aspirations it's based on those aspirations and not those this kind of hard-core realities where people have fought in order to gain access to this with citizenships and rights.

good evening ladies and gentlemen. welcome to barnes & noble up all -- upper west side. as well as the director of i was instituted for workplace studies . he received his phd in american history. sarah kessler is the author of the end of the job. and she is a deputy editor of ports at work. her reporting has been said by

the washington post new york magazine and npr. they bring us tonight the new book temp. how american work in business. how the american dream became temporary. every working person asks the same question. how secure is my job. for a generation roughly from 1945 to 1970s. business and government leaders embrace it for the american workforce. but over the last 50 years job security has stopped. it insulated us from volatility and has been swept aside by a fervent belief in the markets. the answer goes deeper than ask. further back than downsizing. in contest the most essential assumption about what we have. temp is a riveting read for anyone grappling with the

contradiction in inequities of contemporary capitalism. they show us the decades long evolution of the present epidemic of job insecurity. take the cleared i'd look at the exportation of women. [applause]. thank you to barnes & noble and to my effort has seen us this evening. when we think about insecurity and work in america today. it's very hard to get a historical perspective on them. it. i would like to start history

teacher tucking her history. it reminds you about what you remember from school. in the industrial revolution in school. and maybe the nerdy teacher. we are talking that technological innovation drives change. that technology reshapes work. likewise today we talk about the day's economy we focus on smart phones and artificial intelligence. in apps. and here to it's the marks of technology that is disrupting our work today. and oftentimes we point to the smartphone as a reason for the so-called economy. but the narrative is wrong. the history of waivers shows technology does not usually drive social change. it's typically driven by decisions about how we organize our work and reorganizing people in relationships.

and reorganizing society only later does it come in and consolidate that change. technology is neutral technology is used to solve business problems in sometime around 1970 a stable workforce a secure job long-term investment all became a problem for business and the solutions sold. to end workplace security. in short, to make us all temps. they define the limits of what's possible in our labor markets. casting a long shadow over the rest of the workforce. they can be called day lingers. they call light industrial workers.

our warehouse cardboard packages for him is on. they call it management consultants they fly first class all over the world to advise ceos on global strategy. for some of the new temps like consultants to work it's glamorous and well-paid. for others like office workers it's a dead end. for those waiting outside home depot. the temps have come to define our workplaces in the margins of the center and ways that mad men era could never imagine. this is the history of that transformation. the transformation from a secure post-world war ii in remember ways that they show that they are left out of those good postwar jobs.

for the rest of us today. and as a century progressed the other groups would not have the same kind of protection. as white men. they would act as traditional labor forces. especially in silicon valley. and so as the new deal and protections remain on the book. they were not renewed alongside the economy. the rights ever more for a field to the everyday experiences of working americans. again and again we are forced to ask the question. his accounts. who on deserves uncertainty. this is an important thing we always need to remember as we talk about the freelance.

even for those white men who have good paychecks. they should not do the work of robots. they will not be defending the robot like jobs but discovering it was valuable in being human. it is what the book is about and now sarah and i are gonna have a talk more about her book welcome sarah kessler. it's very appropriate.

so your book is just about the last few years. as a historian in my book i write about most of the 20th century. i start with the formation of a new kind of industrial corporation and trace that through. your book really starts with the invention of the smart phone. will you tell them a little bit about what you do in your book. i think what our books have in common is able to position us as an extension of a trend that has been happening for a long time but my focus is on the extension in years is on the whole history. i thought it was so interesting. to have that all put together and laid out as well. my book starts in 2013.

i heard about because i was a startup reporter. it's hard to imagine this but this there was a time that anything silicon valley did was kind of seen as synonymous with progress. said they were like oh we have this at congratulations us. it was really positioned that the thing was can be freedom and flexibility and everybody. that narrative has kind of progress and become apparent that guess if you are software programmer. it might be flexibility. it's in some ways the weight to way to strip you of those things. what i thought was interesting. as the larger historical narrative has a lot of that same kind of thing a people marketing as one thing but it really actually has a different effect.

it's capitalism. i called uber the waste product of the service economy. the alternative is it between driving for uber or some other gig job working in a unionized job with guaranteed defied baker benefits. or even just in a well-paid office. the alternative is selling coffee and maybe not getting enough hours or working the walmart. and not getting enough shifts. that kind of uncertainty that they have already been living in since the 1970s that was so strikingly the rhetoric around technology. in the ways stagnation we've had since the 70s. it was something i was curious about. so by 2013 when the buzzword appeared and you have already

been setting studying this in the whole history of it september 11 -- since 2011. that's why i latched into the book because i was like oh people like that. i said he capitalism and how things get sold. i think for me i was like wow, what is this cultural work being done by this term. it seen its progress, it's inevitable. it's in my pocket. it's empowering people with entrepreneurship. and i said it's just like the rest of work. for some people that is true. for some people it is creating new kinds of opportunities.

for lots of people just more of the same only with an expensive cell phone plan. >> i totally agree with everything you said. one thing i do think is interesting about this trend and the story of where it came from. was that it's not a new thing. but the buzzword and uber being this dramatic big company all the sudden while i think it was useful is that people are now interested in it. and they were like a new cast of characters but all the sudden they were think tanks. they were following worker misclassification. a kind of revitalize a little bit of the conversation about the solutions.

i was struck during the conversations going on how it suddenly everybody really cared about taxi drivers which was not my experience in new york before uber came here. who is being left out of that conversation. that's also true for domino's pizza delivery guy. it's also true when i thought about the history of the silicon valley. this is a larger story about how we talk about technology. that some people don't count. they are traditional labor forces. uber is very excited about the fact that robots will drive their cars for them. it's a same kind of language that you see at the very first macintosh factory in 1984. it's actually not robots. they usually mean women of color. an immigrant woman of color. that's hidden from the story.

and it's only because of it being men who are driving these cars that seems to count so much. who's left in, i think we are still grappling with that can question. i was also reading your book interested in how you chose mine has a sense of time from 2011 to 2,017th that i was there the whole time. how did you choose which companies you used where which themes you used to tell the story of manpower when i read your book i was really envious with the idea that you could just talk to people. who were alive. although sometimes are not very nice.

so part of the differences it's like what you find. i found the archives of the founder of manpower which is an important part of the story. the very first ten agency. agency. why do they want that claim. it doesn't matter. maybe if you return my phone calls i found the archives in the papers i think they are somewhat based on whose papers they could have access to it but also companies that work that important. it promises work stable jobs even for people that are not union. and yet that begins to fall apart during the 80s and 90s. i hoped when i wrote the book. i thought maybe carly arena

might be president. i think that is sort of how i was choosing. the things of the book were about insecurity and how our world came into being. a lot of labor history was about the fall of this post war world. i wanted to write about the ascendancy about how they work today. how did you come to the themes and people in your book. your wonderful characters in your book from all different strata. how did you find those people or choose to write about it. we often talk about the big economy. congratulations everyone is working from the beach to this is the worst thing that ever happened we are destined like technology will drive us off

this cliff. i wanted to acknowledge that people's experiences are different depending on who they are. i intentionally set out to work -- to find people are working a different range of jobs where they will get better work through the gig economy all the way up to the computer programmer who is making $12,000 a month to show the range of them. and then when the idea was to follow them through several years of their life. i started with about twice as many people as actually ended up in the book because you don't know what's can happen in their lives. some of them became clear that they didn't really want attention. and then some of them just ended up kind of illustrating different aspects like trying

to organize and what that looks like. that was it for me. the idea was to take the workers perspective the ones i usually see which is the company and the politicians. also taking the perspective of a worker and how it impacts them. what challenges does that perspective present. >> it's really hard to find workers voices. it's easy to find the stuff that steve jobs rates. working in the processing plants that are not registered with the government. you can find traces of these people in the archives. be to have the complete story that you have of the wozniak's

and the other sort of celebrated titans. i think that's the hardest part. it takes a lot of time to try to recover those stories and those people so you get a story from capitalism all the way to the top. to get the complete picture. one of my favorite ways to do this is the common theme. a lot of them are hilarious. i was also like a punk rocker in the '90s. that can vibe came through of vibe came through in the culture of the 80s and 90s which i was really enamored by. one was called process rule world. these people had amazing stories of their lives people using those new computers to push back against the

experiences of what they're told they are told their experience should be. they are certainly a fresh breath of air. why did this become a thing in their culture. remember back before the internet. we were not allowed to blogger had facebook. you also had access to copiers what you do. you make photocopies of them and then you distribute them to their friends. and then they tell other kind of stories of what's going on with work at being terrible. it should end. i think that is the other part of this. is not just about getting paid enough.

it's also about what it means for life for human being. a lot of these people are writing about these things. i worked as a temp for a while. just any day after day updating forms i think everyone else has something they would rather be doing. i think the impulse is an important part to redskins. everybody here likes to read books i just got cut off apparently when you think the limits were in terms of conversation and the people that you met. finding people was a big deal.

i wanted you to feel like i cared about everybody i was working with. to get to the level of trust and familiarity where you can actually write about someone in that way. it takes a really long time. spends a lot of vacation time talking to them. that was the biggest key to that. also fact checking them. you having these conversations you are looking at their criminal record. also, the way that you show the uncertainty of the business leaders about the house cleaning company that pivots to an office cleaning company. and they try to figure things

out. it's easy to think that corporations and business people have it all figured out. this is how they represent themselves. you really show that it's very contingent. they're trying to figure out what to do how did you gain their trust in telling their story. i met them really early on. they had 30 people working for them. and by the time i was done with the book. i think they got so far into it that we can take it back. i think what were talking about is they ultimately kind of adopted a theory that's based on research. a sickly her whole argument studied really -- really offbeat companies like cosco quiktrip and trader joe's. you've never heard of these

people. that is a choice. you can succeed by treating people as poorly as possible. if you make the right business decisions you can also gain a lot by treating people well. are we solving for profit. or just enough profit. you can make more money by paying people while and giving them health insurance. and certainly we do that for a very long time. that's what the postwar. was all about. we also had rapid technological process. the top corporations all have money hand over fist. they wasted in many different ways. it's something that is hard to remember what that would be like. to have a corporation that is it just isn't just pulled into short-term is him into long-term investment. but i also, i'm heartened a

colleague of mine says i'm whistling in the graveyard as i'm telling an optimistic story about the possibility of this new economy but i also think it's better to whistle that did just lay down and die. in the past it took us 100 years to turn the industrial economy so that it worked for regular working people and hopefully it won't take a hundred years. hopefully we can figure ways are very policies and collective action to make it work again and to make it an economy that works for everybody. and something i was trying to do when i was researching the book is looking for those places where people were starting to make movement and i think they're there. it's not easy. there is a lot of common sense about how to destroy people's lives and how to make profit.

that sounds lovely all right. i have a q&a mike here. we can get to as many questions as possible. you talk about private-sector responsibility i don't think in a capitalist economy you can expect to not to be confident with that. what you had is government you could have government countering that and taking worries off of people's minds are freed that labor market up. for example the idea and i think people are waking up to it. a lot of republican seats are demanding and expanded medicaid and the republican governors want to give in to it. people are moving out towards

more conscious they don't like the idea that you have to depend on your company for healthcare. how about healthcare and the guaranteed income what would that do. one of the things we can talk about in thinking forward. how do we enable people take risks especially young people were burdened by student debt. and figure out a way to enter the world in new ways. i think personally it's a very conservative argument to be made for the expansion of medicare and medicaid and other kinds of things. this is one of the options. i personally think that basic income is there. and this is a kind of thing we should be thinking about. how do we make it so it's easier for people to work in this new workforce.

i don't think i can add to that. so i had been both a real estate agent making good money and a uber. meeting cap driver is fun you get the whole upper east side snob edge for a few minutes. people are curious about what it is to drive for uber at the end of the day they don't really care. there is an article on business insider about uber drivers peeing in caps and driving through traffic to vary to veer to barely make their lease payment. but cabs are dirty. and their suspension is screeching.

people understand that people's lives are worse to make their life convenient. they don't understand that they subsidize fares. your friend when it comes to pick you up. so with the amazon of transportation. their crushing rates to own market share until they can replace drivers with robots. i think collectively we don't care about one another as people in america pushes this idea of boxing out for your soul. how do we get the political will without kinda being that society to actually care about one another and make things better for the bottom 90%. and make things better for the

bottom 90%. i think that is the question. we would solve 70 problems if some new problems if we just did that. in terms of the business model it's in terms of how we do that private and public. describing it as a app that helps venture capitalists. basically they're not making any money there just like you said spending subsidizing the 8-dollar ride. i think there is policies in new york city pushing towards minimum wage for uber drivers and certainly they are doing those same things to put into context what was just not the story of transportation in new york city but the story of a service economy that has left

people behind. we hear all the time of unemployment rates are so low. labor force participation rates are low also. but people are just dropping out of this economy. they feel alienated from the economy and people are doing those jobs because they don't have a better alternative. they want to take responsibility for themselves but they don't had opportunities to do so. if and only burn it for so long before there's none left. my question is as you are saying there were kind of getting out of those jobs. the technology. [indiscernible] and restaurant owners had to

pay for the rent, electricity et cetera. what he think you think about that as well. i think there is a general plat problem with who controls the platform. this is a similar problem in the 19th century the similar thing to the platform was the railroad so yet everybody in america west of the mississippi trying to have a farm they were gouged. my eastern bankers in the fees paid for the railroad. and in response to that give a massive political up rising in the 1870s 80s and 90s. the question is who controls the railroad. i got regulated by the government. that's one option. in other countries it was a nationalized railroad system. how do we control the network

this is what a railroad the railroad network is. how do we make sure that the charges for that reflect the interests of society as a whole. and that is not just the question of business or economics it's a question of politics and a question of how we share this economy. we all know it's most easier to just press a button on grub hub. we also want to make sure that everyone gets compensated fairly. as a question we are still figuring out what that platform looks like whether it's collectively owned by the workers or businesses whether it's regulated by the states but what's important to do i think is to have that conversation and not just assume the market is can a turned out in the white -- right place. >> these companies started and we don't have that. well have any responsibility

for that. i think you are starting to see some pushback on that with the new york trying to set this minimum-wage thing and then something that's really promising is the idea that you could make a cooperative where the businesses on the platform in the app instead of it being grub hub it could have all of the restaurants have a share. there's a couple of examples of companies working it out but one of the major hurdles has but it's really expensive to make them. maybe everybody could use the same one and it would not be expensive. to me that is a problem that technology solves. the way we solve this was that

we had hiring halls. we could imagine having digital hiring halls in the future. you could go in higher that. as we think about the future we have to think about that what we want to build together and how can we support people as we do that. in the beginning of the industrial revolution we don't have many worker protections and their kind of in the 40s and 50s. and they're kinda stripped away again. and maybe were on the path to restoring them again. will there ever be an end to the end of that. >> i don't think so. i think there is always a struggle between different groups in society over who has the power. every time i talk about something i get cut off.

i think that's okay. i think it's okay to have contesting interest with different institutions. and it doesn't have to be stable and capitalism has been in a major engine for growth. in violence. and it's important as we do this to realize that we have to be vigilant. >> i feel weird leaning around this podium. i think this is more about sarah question. i'm curious about what you saw in terms of the philosophical change that you saw. i used to do some low income organizing. going back to the 70s. and he always said that one of the things that made it tough to work with and organize low income people in america they all have this belief that life

sucks now but we could be rich tomorrow. he said that is just a philosophy that folks had here. that kind of holds folks back. they think they have a shot. and he goes way back. i'm just curious is that we your perspective is. i think a lot of people started very hopeful on some of these platforms that they were's using. it's a kind of work that has been around forever. they started off as hopeful because that is the pitch. and then when they understood it which sometimes takes a while. the rules are working this way for me. and i can only get this much work.

they came to understand that this is not the deal and that is not a path somewhere else. that happens for some people i think it's probably different for different people. >> e you of a character in your book i think it does say something bigger about how people believe they will be successful in america. or what you need to be able to do that. he was convinced that they have to be a millionaire. most of them don't have the shot at. kevin trudeau sign of your friends is a pyramid scheme. this is my ticket out.

this is the thing is gonna launch me. if you look at the statistics. if you look at research people have done about entrepreneurs. i thought it was true in some weird way. for me the american dream is not about more money more money, that's a cheap and version of what the real american dreams are. not being told what to do all day.

i think that there was an older vision in the 19th century of farm work having your own farm in autonomous. and i think that is what that is a substitute for. if we can get that with a lot of different ways. they get to start businesses. but ordinary folks and their kids. so we sort of have that old school tent industry. sort of in parallel to the gig economy. and as a household name.

a lot of people don't know. to have the big media attention that they been able to grab today. i think that already exists for sure. any company they probably use some sort of labor instead of direct employment. you can probably speak more to this. it is incredibly common to have this sort of scheduling that is sporadic and you don't

necessarily had to be concerned with how much you cannot make can make next week. they are basically structured. they are still calling someone up and have something do something for you. it means that they're not as susceptible to the lawsuits. but they're living this kind of precarious life. it's a strange dance. it is good and holy and moral in the 1099 is dehumanized. it sort of a terrible job this is why i titled the book temp. mostly to irritate social scientists. very interested in the different kinds of work. what i think is important. the insecurity.

and talking about consultants and temps and freelancers and market workers together. that is a new kind of structure under which our businesses are run. you chose to call your book temp and not flex. how do they see the big attraction do you see any evidence of corporations reacting to provide that. we look lose a lot of people from the w workforce. was any movement in the other direction to move towards flexibility. what should i call my book. and obviously it's not.

i think there's a lot of people. for whom this is working out. independent contractors. they had worked in these companies for 20 years. and then decide to go up in their own shop and make their own living. i gets important to keep track it as well. how do we do that for more people. not how do we change it to go back to their desks. we want to have the evil versus good narrative of the changing relation of work. and we have to keep track of both of those. see mike what was the question i'm so sorry. i think when you talk about that is a good thing. i take a lot about flexibility.

who gets to decide for land service workers the flexibility is for the employer he comes back to power i think. the job as we know it. is not a perfect thing and that we shouldn't disrupt. we do good job doing that. the economy could fix some of that. potentially, one thing i think is interesting. do you like flex ability, that is a question that the ask. do you like flex ability, that is a question that the ask. what idiot is good to say no. but when the researchers whose names i can't remember right now. their economist. they did the survey where they

take this much cut in pay to take -- to have a flexible schedule. and the answer that came up was not much. if you want flexibility. you are often given up a lot. you can buy your own safety net. i think that is worth considering in the conversation. i read this article that you wrote. he have yet a short article we talked about counting people in the contingent workforce. i think i saw the study i don't know how many years. seventy or 80% of the new hires it's interesting that you're saying that. they are really undercounted.

a lot of people i know are still getting full-time jobs with benefits. in terms of what the numbers that you see out there. it's not reflecting. by the way i didn't bring up. it's not my fault. about 80% of workers still have a primary full-time job. that doesn't mean it's the same experience. so when a princeton economist comes up. and he did this study. he found that 94 percent of the net new jobs of the jobs that were created were in these alternative work arrangements. so the alternative work arrangements. i think it's part of the

story. have you worked in this kind of space in the last two weeks the answer is about 10%. it's been that way for a very long time. if they ask them the numbers change. it's not part of how you are paying your bills. as a playstation didn't matter. it's wonderful. these are the questions. what kind of work matters. if you can't pay enough at your regular job and you need an extra job. about half of people under 35. live in this freelance economy. depending on where you are in the world. in society. they are getting full-time jobs at the same time that a

lot of people who aren't. a lot of people i know are tenured professors. 70% of higher ed professors are there to pay about two to $3,000 per course. they don't had time to do the research. they're very difficult lives. this is all part of the same system. i think one of the frustrations is that data you get the surveys that say different things. and the world doesn't handle nuance very well. everyone in the whole country is doing this. and the next day you get a headline this doesn't even exist. and it's really it's really somewhere in the middle there. both of your books sound really interesting.

here are a wrote a book called good business. and tom peters wrote a book about the excellent devil it -- dividend. the number one reason why businesses exist is so that they can invest in people and then when you look at the fortune side. a lot of the ones that land on the best places to work list usually are the most profitable. there is a correlation between business is doing well when they put people first. how much do you see may be more companies kind of buying into that train of thought. i think there's a lot of people that wish more would.

there think tank is working on how they get more for the short-term investors and think about value and a different way and how much progress they made. and i have don't have any actual data about that. i have examples of companies that do things this way. i don't know the exact measurement. they get acquired or sold. by how few employees they have. they want those. those are obligations. i think these are part of how we value corporations this is accounting questions. have we think about this kind of issues. how do we help business people of tomorrow. figure out the path to profitability. in valuing people and recognizing that everyone counts in an inclusive kind of capitalism.

[applause]. alright folks just give us a second to get set up. we will be signing books right here on stage. and then just line up along the wall. have a great evening. c-span launched book tv 20 years ago on c-span two and since then we had covered thousands of authors and book festivals. included more than 30 events with supreme court justices.

in's 2007. a book party was held for clarence thomas in his autobiography. how can for a man for example in the south at that time never had been -- bitterness. never had anger. or resentment. and never have the sense of having to get even. that's what we try to emulate every day. we just emulate that attitude. that no matter how bad it goes. there is still a reason to get up in the morning and be hopeful and positive. you can watch this and all other book tv programs from the past 20 years and book tv.org. geraldine brooks is our guest on in-depth fiction addition. the live call-in program on sunday, october 7. the secret court. the other novels include

march, caleb's crossing, people of the book live on sunday october 7 from noon to 3:00 p.m. eastern on book tv. and brad melcher will be our guest in november. my husband and i have both served at the pentagon i left the pentagon to go down to paris island. he retired as a lieutenant governor as well. the year he retired as the happen and he started hearing from his contacts because he just retired that my name was being brought up for the equivalent of the ceo of the

fortune 500 company. in charge of the whole marine corps. give this little bitty lieutenant colonel. it was being talked about by name in the meetings. what we recognize very early on. this was there. conducting his own test to see how well men and women could perform with each other. so we knew he did not want women to go into these roles. and as we were showing that they could shoot and run and be tough and strong he was showing the opposite with that disintegrated ground task force. and those two things started to collide. so in march of 2015 i went to my husband's retirement and we were sitting in his office with my in-laws. and he looked at me and said

how is everything going at parris island. i leaned over and i said i think it's amazing. were really getting ready for what it's happen. he leaned forward and said zero no kate, were not ready for that. that was the alarm that started going off. we are sort of ahead of the power curve there. .. ..

>> but i also think that it has to do with the way that women are perceived when they're or strong and aggressive leaders. it's the same double bind that women face in almost every segment of the community. and in the marine corps, you have to imagine there aren't that many lieutenant colonels. so here i am thinking i'm going to do what i've done for the 17 years that i've been on active duty, i'm going to be the aggressive, i'm going to make change happen, we're going to improve everything, and i'm seen as mean and abusive. and that's sort of the justification the marine corps used to fire me, was i was too hard on my recruits and marines. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> good afterno