God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west…keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.
- Mahatma Gandhi
As millions of us on the unemployment lines are discovering, the beautiful thing about an extended recession is that it drives down the prevailing wage for most types of work. It’s simple supply and demand. When you have something like six workers for every open job, which is the last statistic I remember in this regard, workers are at the mercy of employers. After all, if you won’t work for X wage…well, no worries, mate; the employer knows that they’ll be able to find someone even more desperate than you who will. If nothing else, a tough economy provides a license for employers to exploit those in their employ. It’s a buyer’s market, and from what I’m seeing, prices (and regard for the humanity of employees) are at rock bottom.
I have a friend who was fortunate enough to find a job recently. She works in a busy office, takes no breaks, and the implied expectation is that she’s to work through lunch. She’s running from the time she gets into the office until the time she leaves, and like many folks, the harder she works, the behinder she gets. Her story is pretty common these days, but what I find disturbing about her situation is that she’s making the royal sum of…wait for it…$14/hour. With this meager salary, she’s supposed to pay rent (forget buying a house), keep her teenage son in jeans and Chicken McNuggets, and pay all manner of other bills that accrue to most families. As a single parent, she looks at her income, compares it to her outgo…and the numbers just don’t match. At $14/hour, there’s simply no way they can. Welcome to what can only be called the modern-day version of indentured servitude.
Her story is hardly unusual, and I’m faced with that stark reality daily. Still unemployed, I spend a lot of time looking at job postings. I can’t tell you how often this sort of situation is presented as a terrific, career-changing opportunity. Then I read the posting a bit more closely, and they want 5-10 years of experience, fluency in Russian, Latvian, and Swahili, shipping experience, and experience in cold fusion research. Meet these expectations, and you too can make the princely sum of $12-$14/hour. WTF?
The theory seems to be that any job is better than no job, and that beggars can’t be choosers. If you’ve been out of work for X months, you should be grateful for any job, regardless of the pay rate. What’s interesting to note is that most people making this or similar comments are gainfully employed…and don’t have a clue as to what it’s like being in my shoes. So, you’re saying that I should happily accept a job that pays about half what I used to make…and just make do and be grateful for that?
I’m not saying that I’m owed anything…though making something close to what I was previously earning seems to be a not unreasonable expectation. What I am saying is that there is such a thing as a person having a reasonable expectation of making a living wage. Generally speaking, we don’t work because we want to work. We work because we want to be productive, we have a family to support, we have a lifestyle to support, because our parole agreement states that we must be employed…or combinations of all of the above. We don’t work to be wage slaves, to live a hand to mouth existence in which we pledge fealty to our employers and gratefully and humbly accept whatever crumbs they deign to throw our way. (Please, sir…may I have another…??)
I understand the laws of supply and demand. I get that businesses, in order to survive in a tough business climate, need to keep costs down. What upsets me is the idea that this balancing act is being accomplished on the backs of the middle class. Skilled, accomplished, and eager folks like myself and my friend are being forced by penurious employers into living as part of a new class of working poor. An entire generation of American workers is essentially being flushed down the drain…and we’re expected to be grateful for what we can get because of the recession.
The gap between the haves and have-nots in this country is growing at an alarming rate…and yet no one in Washington seems to give a damn. Government uses billions of our tax dollars to bailout Wall Street, GM, and Chrysler…and how much of that is directed to Joe and Jane Sixpack? If we can finance the bonuses of CEOs, shouldn’t there be a few crumbs available for those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic food chain?
A wise man once told me that if you pay peanuts, you’re going to end up hiring monkeys. I fear that this recession is creating an economy in which both employers and workers are becoming expendable, where loyalty and compassion mean nothing, and where workers are regarded as interchangeable parts. We’re becoming, and being regarded as, monkeys. OK; explain to me again why Socialism is a bad, awful, nasty, un-American thing??
I had such high hopes for my retirement. Now that I’m living off unemployment and my savings, I fear that I may not be able to have any sort of retirement at all…and I’m one of the fortunate ones. I have no other mouths to feed, my car is paid off, and my rent is paid through the end of next May. Things could be a whole lot worse. Yes, they certainly could.
I’m generally an optimistic person, and I try to see the good in others and not assume the worst…but this recession has beaten a lot of that out of me, and I hate it. I hate looking around me and seeing people exploited because business have realized that they can do it. If I won’t work for $12/hour, someone else will…and so we all become monkeys.
Too bad so many Americans can no longer afford peanuts.
