The Nation: Alienation Revisited

Is the American worker-blue-collar and white-collar alike-bored with his job and alienated? So it is often said, most recently by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which reported that only 25% of the workers it polled were satisfied and would choose the same kind of job again.

Actually, both the polls and the interpretation are misleading, according to Irving Kristol, Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban Values at New York University. "About 85% of American workers, when asked whether they are satisfied with their jobs, answer in the affirmative," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "[HEW] tries to show that...

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