Imagine, if you can, having to make monthly rent or mortgage payments, feed and clothe yourself and your family, pay for insurance, gasoline and maintenance of your car, pay for your children’s schooling costs, and pay for needed medical treatment for you and/or your family--all that and more--on the $892.65 per month that you earn from your full-time minimum wage job. (Oh, and that’s your before-tax gross amount; your after-tax net, of course, would, be less than that.)
And just to drive the point home, working full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour would earn you $10,700 per year (gross)--nearly $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.
Can’t imagine living life on the minimum or near-minimum wage? Well, if you want to learn a little about what that life is really like, please point your browser to 7 Days @ Minimum Wage and starting today, October 23, and running for the next seven days, you’ll see real people with real stories about their lives at minimum or near minimum pay.
On Day 1, Denver couple Paul Valdez and Susan Windham tell their
story of living on the minimum wage. Paul receives $35 for a full day's
labor in back-breaking construction work.
7 Days @ Minimum Wage is a videoBlog created by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) in support of minimum wage ballot initiatives in six states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio).
Hosted by actress, comedienne and former Utah waitress Roseanne Barr, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage features interviews with men and
women who are working at or near the federal minimum wage, which has been frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997.
Despite the desperate need to raise it, during the past nine years Congress has refused every call to increase the pay of minimum wage workers. They didn’t refuse the call, however, when it came to their own wallets. Members of Congress voted themselves pay raises that between 1997 and 2007 will add up to $34,900.
But while Congress has time and again refused calls to help working folks, labor unions, workers and their families, and community, church, civil rights, and social justice organizations (like John Edwards’ One America Committee and Let Justice Roll) have come together around this injustice and started fighting to raise state minimum wage rates through legislation or ballot initiatives.
It’s such a simple and real family value: folks who work full-time shouldn’t be paid poverty-level wages. That they are is an outrage. But if enough people organize around this wrong, it’ll be one less social injustice that needs to be eradicated.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel has been attributed with saying that action engenders hope. All of the folks responsible for bringing us 7 Days @ Minimum Wage and working to correct this injustice at the state level are certainly doing just that for me—and I suspect for many others, too.
Joe Hill was right; Don’t mourn. Organize!
Monday, October 23, 2006
Living on the miserable minimum wage
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2 comments:
Walter, thanks for your coverage of 7 DAYS. I'm one of the people who interviewed the workers in the video blog. It's hard to hear someone sit there and tell you that they have to decide whether they can eat dinner tonight so that their kids can eat, because they're trapped in a poverty-wage job. Even $10 an hour doesn't go that far these days, especially in urban America. I just can't fathom how some of the people we videoed actually make it.
And the worst part is, some of the time, they don't.
Thanks again for covering 7 Days at Minimum Wage. With Election Day finally upon us, I wanted to let you know what the project team is up to in support of the six minimum-wage ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.
I won't kitchen-sink you with all the details--you can browse the 7 DAYS project website for that, at http://www.sevendaysatminimumwage.org/site/?page_id=23 . But if you do click through, you'll find information about phone banks, door-knocks, prayer vigils, canvassing, election observations, and watch parties sponsored by ACORN and AFL-CIO throughout the six key states. (You can also find a lot of this last-minute info on ACORN's www.raiseswages.org and AFL-CIO's www.americaneedsaraise.org ).
It's obvious why these increases are important: an hour of human labor should cost more than a Starbucks venti latte. That the federal government thinks it's ok to pay you or me or anyone else $5.15 an hour is positively obnoxious--and most of those hours are below full-time and without health insurance.
I know I'm angry about that, and sad for the way the people we interviewed are forced to live because the law says it's ok to keep them earning below the poverty line. I know how deeply that fact affected me through my work on 7 DAYS. If the project touched just one other person out there to go to the polls and help raise their local minimum wage, then I know we've accomplished what we set out to do.
Please remember the folks we interviewed when you consider your state's or your city's minimum wage...or the next time you tip anyone, anywhere, for that matter. Do click through and see how to support minimum-wage increases in your state. And most of all, thanks for watching. Good luck to everyone on November 7!
Peace...
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