It's unlikely holiday reading, but Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-wage USA by Barbara Ehrenreich has been on the bestseller list this summer, writes Ruairí Quinn
It's an absorbing, if disturbing, read, telling the story of a journalist who leaves her home, her car and her life behind and tries to survive by working in low-paid jobs. The poverty and exploitation she so vividly unveils provide a shocking picture of the underside of the much-vaunted US economy.
People working on $6-$7 per hour struggle to pay the rent, often ending up living in cars, hostels and rundown motels. They lack access to basic medical care - one man lost his job because he couldn't afford antibiotics to cure a work-related injury. They struggle with childcare and transport problems and have more than one job to try to make ends meet.
But the exploitation is about more than just pay. Supervisors constantly harass staff to extract the maximum amount of work. Even toilet breaks are restricted, while staff are told that just talking to each other is "time theft". Employees are encouraged to "work through it" when they are sick or injured. Privacy is invaded with random searches to prevent theft and demeaning drug tests.
Employers actively discourage union membership, going so far as to include questions on attitudes to unions in job applications.
Some 10,000 workers are fired in the US every year for taking part in union-organising campaigns. But that is America. Surely that kind of poverty and exploitation doesn't exist in Ireland.
Or does it?
While there are no up-to-date statistics in this area, we know that in 1994 Ireland had one of the highest percentages of low-paid workers in the OECD. As late as 1999, an ESRI survey of private sector firms found that one in five employees was being paid less than €5.72 (£4.40) per hour. While the boom and the national minimum wage will have raised wages for many, we must wait for more recent data to see what the impact of these factors has been, and whether those on low wages have kept pace with those who are better paid.
Of course, not everyone who works for low wages is poor. In Ireland, as in other European countries, many low-paid workers live in households where more than one person works so their combined incomes keep them above the incomes of, for example, those on social welfare.
But what really differentiates Europe from the US is the availability of affordable housing and healthcare. As Ehrenreich says, rent is the "deal-breaker" which makes it impossible for many low-paid US workers to make ends meet.
Similarly, medical bills will, often unexpectedly, upend even the most careful budgeting. European countries, on the other hand, tend to have more developed public healthcare systems and social housing programmes.
That is one reason why Labour is so strongly opposed to the recent cuts in health and housing. Local authority housebuilding programmes have effectively been frozen.
Meanwhile, healthcare is also being cut, including higher charges for A&E visits and for prescriptions. Those on low incomes will suffer most.
And what of exploitation? Are Irish workers subjected to the same abuses as their US counterparts? Thanks to the EU, significant progress has been made in worker-protection legislation in Ireland. The EU has brought equal pay for women, limitations on working time, the right to paid annual leave and other protections.
But there is still a lot more to be done. Irish workers, for example, have no right to paid parental leave, whereas their Swedish counterparts can enjoy 13 months' paid leave when a baby is born. Childcare provision is still woefully inadequate, and the cost of childcare too expensive. The number of public holidays in Ireland is one of the lowest in the EU.
In addition, the level of statutory redundancy payments is inadequate. The shabby treatment of workers from the Irish Glass Bottle Company, who were denied a redundancy package proposed by the Labour Court, highlights the need for urgent reform of the law.
I wholly support the day of action on Friday by trade unions on this issue.
IBEC's opposition is, perhaps, predictable. But it comes at a time when that organisation has shifted perceptively to the right, adopting a much more overtly ideological stance on economic and social policy. Its trenchant promotion of "Boston over Berlin" will make agreement on a new social partnership accord even more difficult.
As Ehrenreich shows, that is a route which the trade union movement and Irish workers cannot follow - not on redundancy payments or worker protection, on low pay or public services.