"The Company Town" in USA Today and Beyond

I spoke at the New York Public Library on September 21.

My book The Company Town was positively reviewed this morning in the Money Section of USA Today.

And you can read my musings on the future of company towns, “George Jetson on the Unemployment Line,” at the History News Network‘s website.

Later this week, I will be on a publicity tour to Seattle and the San Francisco Bay area. I will be speaking at Town Hall in Seattle (October 4) and at Books Inc. in San Francisco. (October 5)

Book Event at New York Public Library

Tonight at 6 p.m., I’ll be speaking at the Science, Business & Industry Library, 188 Madison Avenue at 34th Street. I’ll describe how company towns remain very much a part of the global scene and end by asking audience members to weigh in with comments and questions.
So far on the various radio programs, I’ve picked up information on even more company towns, ranging from Montreal, Wisconsin, to Morgan Park, Minnesota. New Yorkers, it’s your turn!

Press Coverage for "The Company Town"

I’m basking in the very flattering coverage of my book, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy. Last week the book was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal and The Minneapolis Star Tribune. Bethanne Patrick, managing editor of Washington, D.C. public television station WETA’s The Book Studio, named my book one of “September’s Top 10 Reads.”

On Monday, I was the guest on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kathleen Dunn Show, featuring many callers who spoke knowledgeably about the area’s industrial settlements, from U.S. Steel’s Morgan Park, Minnesota to S.C. Johnson’s involvement in Racine, Wisconsin.

Yesterday, I was on Santa Fe, New Mexico NPR affiliate KSFR, speaking on Diego Mulligan’s program “The Journey Home.” And other public radio interviews are scheduled for weeks ahead.

I was also interviewed by Lewis Lapham for his Bloomberg podcast, “The World in Time,” now available online. And the Providence Journal has just posted its review online–it runs in the newspaper on Sunday.

Is my 15-minute allotment of fame coming to an end? Hard to say….

Two Cheers for the Return of Welfare Capitalism

Boston department store magnate Edward A. Filene

The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation has just announced findings that will surprise no one: companies that provide their employees with health care coverage are increasingly passing higher premium costs on to their workers. Over the past five years, while wages have increased by only 18%, contributions to health care premiums have jumped 47%, leaving each one paying nearly $4,000 for a year’s worth of family coverage.

But running counter to that unhappy turn of events is a truly surprising mini-trend: The return of what was once called “welfare capitalism,” albeit in an inchoate fashion. My analysis of that trend is described in an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe.

In short, many employers are providing subsidies and other forms of aid to help workers with housing costs. Over 700 Chicago-area companies now offer such assistance, as do such outfits as Silicon-Valley-based Applied Materials and, in Washington, CVS Caremark. Corporate support for education has been a trend for years, but it may have even increased during the current recession.

Adding to the parallel with the earlier period of “welfare capitalism” is the development of what we might call substitute unionism. So-called “employee-representation plans,” or company unions created by the boss to subvert union-organizing drives, were outlawed under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. Nevertheless, a great many companies now require mandatory arbitration of employment disputes—and the practice was endorsed by a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Today, more employees are covered by this form of arbitration than are covered by the grievance procedures of independent unions. I’m not endorsing that development–in fact, it seems to me to subvert the NLRA. But it’s a fact of life, for better or worse.

Edward Filene, a pioneer of welfare capitalism at the turn of the 20th century, would be pleased to see so much of his program being brought back to life.