The Betrayal of Work

[flashl]

How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans

By Beth Shulman

One in four workers in the United States have jobs that pay poverty wages, provide minimal or no benefits, and allow little flexibility and time for quality childcare. Despite the great wealth of the United States, the standard working conditions for these workers are lower than those of comparable workers in other industrialized nations. Inadequate wages are only one part of the problem in low-wage jobs. Low-wage jobs are not just quantitatively different than better paying jobs, but qualitatively different:

• Health and Sick Benefits: Most of these workers lack basic benefits such as health care, sick pay, disability pay, paid vacation.
  
• Flexibility to Care for Children: Their jobs leave little flexibility to care for a sick child or deal with an emergency at school-let alone the normal appointments and needs everyday life.
  
• Safety: While higher-wage jobs have become safer over the past 20 years, low-wage jobs became increasingly more dangerous.
  
• Child Care: Quality child care is unaffordable for most and many nighttime shifts, forced overtime, and employer changes in schedules make it even harder to find and more expensive to obtain.
  
• Fear Factor: Low- wage workplaces are often emotionally degrading. Constant surveillance, time clocks, drug testing and rigid rules reinforce the pervasive sense that employers view them as untrustworthy. Fear is the chief motivator in these workplaces.
  
• Lack of Training: Low-wage jobs provide the least amount of training for their workers.
  
• Security: Not surprisingly, workers in low-wage jobs suffer more frequent periods of unemployment, yet they are the least apt to qualify for unemployment insurance.
  

Allowing these conditions to continue challenges our notions of basic equity and fairness as these workers play by the rules and get so little in return. It erodes our most cherished values of personal responsibility, hard work, and perseverance. Leaving a large group of workers out of society's rewards impairs the functioning of America's democracy and communities and destroys the kind of nation we want to become.

Fairness Initiative

[Demeter]

1. Not to Mention the Complete Lack of Respect for the Workers

from everyone making above minimum, or with any benefits whatsoever. For as long as they can hold those jobs, that is, or in the case of executives, stay out of prison.

[flashl]

2. You remind me of a documentary about the K-mart manager firings

they were purged in the 90s?? for younger cheaper workers. The documentary followed the stories of several VPs, these guys went from the boardroom to jobs like bricklaying, janitorial, and housemom. Their revelations and testimonies about 'real life' after the boardrooms should have never been forgotten.

o Their boardroom friends abandon them
o They didn't believe it was hard to get a job
o They believed that all jobs paid well and had benefits
o They couldn't afford to send their kids to college

By the end, they all had clarity and deeply appreciated the support they received from the working poor.