For three decades award-winning journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen has written compelling accounts of the lives of the working poor and the downside of Australia's 'miracle economy'. In late 2001, she decided to join them.Over a period of ten months Elisabeth went undercover and worked as a factory hand, an office cleaner, a retail worker and a kitchen hand, moving from state to state and attempting to live on her meagre earnings.Dirt Cheap is the inside story of what it is like to work twelve-hour days on a factory line sorting eggs at a battery hen farm; of working a split shift of thirteen hours cleaning a nursing home for just over ten dollars an hour. As Elisabeth discovers that many so-called 'unskilled' jobs actually require an incredible amount of skill, so too does she learn that exposing the conditions of low-wage work can be sheer hell for your lower back, not to mention your morale.Caustic, courageous and often funny, this is a unique view of class, power and middle management seen from the other side of the serving counter, and a very personal experience of what it is like to be under-paid, under-appreciated and part of Australia's emerging underclass.
Elisabeth Wynhausen was at her desk writing a story about people being sacked when she was sacked herself. The Short Goodbye is the untold story of a nation forever changed by the global financial crisis and the people whose lives have been glossed over in the grand narratives of politicians and commentators. With verve and wit, she dissects the myth that Australia dodged a financial bullet by documenting the lives of those discarded on an economic minefield, from bankers to factory workers, and warns that without reform Australia could suffer a more terrible social and economic calamity from the next global rout.
Elisabeth Wynhausen was at her desk writing a story about people being sacked when she was sacked herself. The Short Goodbye is the untold story of a nation forever changed by the global financial crisis and the people whose lives have been glossed over in the grand narratives of politicians and commentators. With verve and wit, she dissects the myth that Australia dodged a financial bullet by documenting the lives of those discarded on an economic minefield, from bankers to factory workers, and warns that without reform Australia could suffer a more terrible social and economic calamity from the next global rout.
Elizabeth Wynhausen tells the story of an extraordinary inspirational character and reflects on the mysterious quality that is resilience. A humorous, irreverent essay that arrives at contentment and joy.
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