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. In 1995, less than half the workers making under $20,000 a year ($10.00 an hour working full-time) were offered health insurance by their employer in contrast to over 80 percent of workers making over $40,000 a year. And for those that are provided health insurance, many cannot afford the premiums, so many do without.
- 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. Only one in three low-wage workers receive paid sick leave for a child's illness. They have the most rigid schedules and little or no family or sick leave.
- Safety: While higher-wage jobs have become safer over the past 20 years, low-wage jobs became increasingly more dangerous. Nearly one in five poultry processing workers, for example, suffered a serious injury in 1995.
- 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. Being five minutes late can mean the difference between having a job and not. A few minutes too long in the bathroom can mean a dock in pay or discipline.
- 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. For workers who earn between $10-15,000 a year, less than half were offered a retirement plan in contrast to 84% of those who make over $50,000 a year.
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.
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Beth
Shulman (bethshulman@yahoo.com)
is a lawyer and consultant focusing on work-related issues. She is a
former vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union.
