PRC Book Group

The PRC Book Group, “One Book, One People,” at the People’s Resource Center brings volunteers, staff, and clients together to discuss some of the best books written about the various countries and cultures of the people we serve, and to get to know one another better. We even get to taste some of the great foods from around the world!!

2nd Wednesdays of the month at lunch (12 – 1:30) in the Megan Bradshaw Learning Center, 201 S. Naperville Road, Wheaton (on the second floor of our building).

Borrow or buy your own book. Bring your own lunch.

On Wednesday, January 18 we will discuss The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America by Rick Wartzman

Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore.

In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers–General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola–he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed.

But the corporate social contract didn’t last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the ’50s and ’60s; the turbulent years of the ’70s and ’80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman’s narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways.

Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class.