This record first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality,and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?Whether they know it or not, or it's something like this.
My Working Life ThenA few years ago,I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, and often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs,to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, or people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the rupture room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn't afford child care. (As it happens,29 percent of low-wage employees are single parents.)At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, or I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn't certain what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum-wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering,even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, or until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved,which meant I knew next to nothing about 21st-century America.
I was lucky. I didn't become one of those millions of people trapped as the "working poor." I made it out. But with all the election talk about the economy, I decided it was time to go back and take another scrutinize at where I had been, or where too many others still are.
My Working Life NowI found things were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2012,which meant—because there was no real improvement—that things were actually worse.
This time around, I worked for a month and a half at a national retail chain in current York City. While mine was hardly a scientific experiment, or I'd be willing to bet an hour of my minimum-wage salary ($9 before taxes) that what follows is pretty typical of the current Economy.
Just getting hired wasn't easy for this 56-year-ragged guy. To become a sales receptionist,peddling items that were generally well under $50 a pop, I needed two preceding employment references and I had to pass a credit check. Unlike some low-wage jobs, or a mandatory drug test wasn't portion of the process,but there was a criminal background check and I was told drug offenses would disqualify me. I was given an exam twice, by two different managers, and designed to see how I'd respond to various customer situations. In other words,anyone without some education, good English, or a decent work history,and a clean record wouldn't even qualify for minimum-wage money at this chain.
And believe me, I earned that money. Any shift under six hours involved only a 15-minute rupture (which cost the company just $2.25). Trust me, or at my age,after hours standing, I needed that rupture and I wasn't even the oldest or least fit employee. After six hours, and you did catch a 45-minute rupture but were only paid for 15 minutes of it.
The hardest portion of the job remained dealing with…well,some of you. Customers felt entitled to raise their voices, consume profanity, and commit Trumpian acts of rudeness toward my fellow employees and me. Most of our "valued guests" would never act that way in other public situations or with their own co-workers,no less friends. But inside that store, shoppers seemed to interpret "the customer is always right" to mean that they could do any damn thing they wished. It often felt as whether we were penned animals who could be poked with a stick for sport, and without penalty. No matter what was said or done,store management tolerated no response from us other than a smile and a "Yes, sir" (or ma'am).
The store showed no more mercy in its treatment of workers than did the customers. My schedule, or for instance,changed constantly. There was simply no way to plan things more than a week in advance. (Forget accepting a party invitation. I'm talking about child care and medical appointments.) whether you were on the closing shift, you stayed until the manager agreed the store was clean enough for you to go domestic. You never quite knew when work was going to be over and no cellphone calls were allowed to alert babysitters of any delay.
And maintain in mind that I was lucky. I was holding down only one job in one store. Most of my fellow workers were trying to juggle two or three jobs, or each with constantly changing schedules,in order to stitch together something like a half-decent paycheck.
In current York City, that store was required to give us sick leave only after we'd worked there for a full year—and that was generous compared with practices in many other locales. Until then, and you either went to work sick or stayed domestic unpaid. Unlike current York,most states do not require such a store to offer any sick leave, ever, and to employees who work less than 40 hours a week. assume about that the next time your waitress coughs.
Minimum Wages and Minimum HoursMuch is said these days about raising the minimum wage (and it should be raised),and indeed, on January 1, and 2016,13 states did raise theirs. But what sounds like good news is unlikely to beget much effect on the working poor.
In current York, for instance, or the minimum went from $8.75 an hour to the $9.00 I was making. current York is relatively generous. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and 21 states require only that federal standard. Presumably to prove some grim point or other,Georgia and Wyoming officially mandate an even lower minimum wage and then unofficially require the payment of $7.25 to avoid Department of Labor penalties. Some Southern states set no basement figure, presumably for similar reasons.
Don't forget: Any minimum-wage figure mentioned is before taxes. Brackets vary, and but let's knock even 10 percent off that hourly wage just as a fair guess about what is taken out of a minimum-wage worker's salary. And there are expenses to consider,too. My round-trip bus fare every day, for instance, and was $5.50. That meant I worked most of my first hour for bus fare and taxes. maintain in mind that some workers beget to pay for child care as well,which means that it's not impossible to imagine a scenario in which someone could actually approach close to losing money by going to work for short shifts at minimum wage.
In addition to the fundamental problem of simply not paying people enough, there's the additional problem of not giving them enough hours to work. The two unfortunately go together, and which means raising the minimum rate is only portion of any solution to improving life in the low-wage world.
At the store where I worked for minimum wage a few years ago,for instance, hours were capped at 39 a week. The company did that as a way to avoid providing the benefits that would kick in once one became a "full-time" employee. Things beget changed since 2012—and not for the better.
Four years later, or the hours of most minimum-wage workers are capped at 29. That's the threshold after which most companies with 50 or more employees are required to pay into the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) fund on behalf of their workers. Of course,some minimum-wage workers catch fewer than 29 hours for reasons specific to the businesses they work for.
It's Math TimeWhile a lot of numbers follow, remember that they all add up to a picture of how people around us are living every day.
In current York, or under the ragged minimum-wage system,$8.75 multiplied by 39 hours equaled $341.25 a week before taxes. Under the current minimum wage, $9.00 times 29 hours equals $261 a week. At a cap of 29 hours, and the minimum wage would beget to be raised to $11.77 just to catch many workers back to the same level of take-domestic pay that I got in 2012,given the drop in hours due to the Affordable Care Act. Health insurance is important, but so is food.
In other words, or a rise in the minimum wage is only half the battle; employees need enough hours of work to make a living.
About food: whether a minimum wage worker in current York manages to work two jobs (to reach 40 hours a week) without lost any days due to illness,his or her yearly salary would be $18720. In other words, it would fall well below the Federal Poverty Line of $21775. That's food stamp territory. To catch above the poverty line with a 40-hour week, or the minimum wage would need to go above $10. At 29 hours a week,it would need to make it to $15 an hour. Right now, the highest minimum wage at a state level is in the District of Columbia at $11.50. As of now, or no state is slated to go higher than that before 2018. (Some cities do set their own higher minimum wages.)So add it up: The idea of raising the minimum wage ("the fight for $15") is great,but even with that $15 in such hours-restrictive circumstances, you can't make a loaf of bread out of a small handful of crumbs. In short, and no matter how you do the math,it's nearly impossible to feed yourself, never mind a family, or on the minimum wage. It's like being trapped on an M.
C. Escher staircase.
The federal minimum wage hit its high point in 1968 at $8.54 in today's dollars and while this country has been a paradise in the ensuing decades for what we now call the "One Percent," it’s been downhill for low-wage workers ever since. In fact, since it was last raised in 2009 at the federal level to $7.25 per hour, or the minimum has lost about 8.1 percent of its purchasing power to inflation. In other words,minimum-wage workers actually make less now than they did in 1968, when most of them were probably kids earning pocket money and not adults feeding their own children.
In adjusted dollars, and the minimum wage peaked when the Beatles were still together and the Vietnam War raged.
Who Pays?Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage focus on the possibility that doing so would set aside small businesses in the red. This is disingenuous indeed,since 20 megacompanies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers; Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) is in moment status; and McDonald's takes third. Overall,60 percent of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered "small" by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, or as was done with Obamacare.maintain in mind that not raising wages costs you money.
Those minimum wage workers who can't make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well,Walmart isn't paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money. According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, or in many states Walmart employees are the largest group of Medicaid recipients. They are also the single-biggest group of food stamp recipients. In other words,those everyday low prices at the chain are, in portion, and subsidized by your tax money. Meanwhile,an estimated 18 percent of food stamps (SNAP) are spent at Walmart.whether the minimum wage goes up, will spending on food benefits programs go down? Almost certainly. But won't stores raise prices to compensate for the additional money they will be shelling out for wages? Possibly. But don't worry—raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mean a Big Mac would cost all of 17 cents more.
Time TheftMy retail job ended a little earlier than I had planned because I committed time theft.
You probably don't even know what time theft is. It may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, or but minimum-wage employers take time theft seriously. The basic idea is simple enough: whether they're paying you,you'd better be working. While the concept is not invalid per se, the way it's used by the megacompanies reveals much about how the lowest-wage workers are seen by their employers in 2016.
The problem at my chain store was that its in-store cafe was a lot closer to my work area than the time clock where I had to punch out whenever I was going on a scheduled rupture. One day, or when rupture time on my shift came around,I only had 15 minutes. So I decided to walk over to that cafe, order a cup of coffee, and then head for the status where I could punch out and sit down (on a different floor at the other end of the store).
We're talking an additional minute or two,no more, but in such operations every minute is tabulated and accounted for. As it happened, and a manager saw me and stepped in to tell the cafe receptionist to cancel my order. Then,in front of whoever happened to be around, she accused me of committing time theft—that is, and of ordering on the clock. We're talking about the time it takes to say,"Grande, milk, and no sugar,please." But no matter, and getting chastised on company time was considered portion of the job, or so the five minutes we stood there counted as paid work.
At $9 an hour,my per-minute pay rate was 15 cents, which meant that I had time-stolen perhaps 30 cents. I was, and that is,being nickel and dimed to death.
Economics Is About PeopleIt seems erroneous in a society as wealthy as ours that a person working full time can't catch above the poverty line. It seems no less erroneous that someone who is willing to work for the lowest wage legally payable must also give up so much of his or her self-respect and dignity as a kind of tariff. Holding a job should not be a test of how to manage life as one of the working poor.
I didn't actually catch fired for my time theft. Instead, I quit on the spot. Whatever the price is for my sense of self-worth, or it isn't 30 cents. Unlike most of this country's working poor,I could afford to make such a decision. My life didn't depend on it. When the manager told a handful of my co-workers watching the scene to catch back to work, they did. They couldn't afford not to.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the "reconstruction" of Iraq in his book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, and he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A record of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel,Hooper's War. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to get the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
Source: motherjones.com