KINGSTON, R.I. – APRIL 16, 2009 – Steven Greenhouse, the author of the best-selling book, The Big Squeeze, Tough Times for the American Worker, will speak at the University of Rhode Island Tuesday, April 21 at 7 p.m. in Lippitt Hall Auditorium, 5 Lippitt Road. The talk is free and open to the public.

Greenhouse is the labor and workplace correspondent for The New York Times.

The book is described as a fresh, probing look at the stresses and strains faced by millions of American workers as wages stagnate, health and pension benefits grow stingier and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Greenhouse tells stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York and janitors in Houston.

The book explains how economic, business, political and social trends – among them globalization, the influx of immigrants and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze.

The New York Review of Books called the book “excellent and relentless.”

Greenhouse’s lecture is presented by the URI Schmidt Labor Research Center and URI’s Honors’ Program. Additional support is being provided by the Rhode Island Labor History Society, Providence Newspaper Guild, URI’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the faculty of the Schmidt Labor Research Center.