Will work for less

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Whenever Robert Johnson puts in 12-hour shifts, which is often because he needs the money, he knows he should grab a bite in the factory lunchroom because he's a diabetic.

But he rarely does because a slice of pizza at the Caterpillar plant costs nearly $3, and that's beyond his means.

Glued to a bare-bones budget, he saved for weeks to buy a five-pack of $7 T-shirts. Sunday visits with his kids, 53 miles away in Springfield, are out of the question if he doesn't have gas money.

He didn't always live this way.

Six years ago Johnson was earning more than twice as much money--$29 an hour--at a nuclear power plant in nearby Clinton. Then he got laid off and tumbled into an underworld of low wages and slimmed-down benefits.

This underworld is now the reality, or a disheartening look into the near future, for thousands of workers as the industrial Midwest undergoes the most wrenching economic transformation since the bad old Rust Belt days of the 1970s.

With the forces of globalization leading companies to slash costs, move out of the country or go under, workers who don't bring a clear competitive advantage to work every day are vulnerable to having their pay cut.