Underpaid Jobs Are Sadly Normal, Here’s How To Solve It
I get paid five cents over $10 an hour.
That means I can make $28,000 annually gross… if I work 60 hours weekly. You heard me right: 60 hours to make less than the median income of an adult in the United States.
Where Do You Live?
The question I get after saying that to my northeastern friends is, “How can they legally pay you that little?”, I respond by saying that it could be lower. In my state, we use the federal minimum wage of $7.25 as the baseline for our workers. This number was low when it was created, let alone now.
The states around me, living in the southeast, also have these undesirably low wages. Yet when we look at the median pay of my town, our household income is $34,551, a whole $40,000 less than the United States median. That is just a “wow” type of statement. How can it be that, with rents still being in the thousands, food at the same price, and cars with the same interest rates they can pay us $40k less than normal?
The answer: minimum wage, right-to-work laws, and lack of unionization.
Cheap Southern Labor
As of now, Mississippi has around a 6% unionization rate. Compared to the rest of the country, that is pretty abysmal. We have always been low in progress reforms, however, you would think one of the biggest manufacturing and agriculture states would have solid unions. You would be very wrong.
As a short history lesson, I think it is important to know that at some point manufacturing jobs and factory work was done up North. Then, as Jim Crow went away and air conditioning became normal (thank god), corporations took the opportunity to use the untapped, unregulated Southerners for manufacturing work.
The issue is — everything is in China now.
Therefore, all the jobs that blue-collar Mississippians (and other Southerners) had disappeared. This leaves us with service work such as reception, serving tables, and fast food as the main source of work in our states. Normally, these jobs are low-wage and part-time. When your employer won’t give you 30 hours, how are you supposed to pay the bills?
Manage Or Die
Since these places only have service work, the only way to move up is to become the dreaded manager. Instead of working what many would consider a “boring desk job” to make $45k a year, you have to take care of the entire underpaid staff at your workplace. What other choice do you have? The full-time options now require a Master’s Degree, and the income isn’t there to pay that! So we go into the workforce, while in school if you’re lucky or start your journey at 18.
Sure, you could weld, do a vocational, etc. However, you’d have to still be working while going through that process as well! So the only option is to take on unbearable debt (especially for the income levels) or work a service job that pays less than 12 an hour normally and pray that the boss will choose you to be his lackey.
It’s also the only job that gives you full-time hours in these industries. They want you there to take care of things for them, so you get the opportunity to work longer for rock-bottom pay.
The choices are grim.
How Do We Solve This?
For starters, the $7.25 minimum wage needs to be thrown out immediately. You can barely make it on double the federal wage, so it needs to be at least 15 dollars an hour. That means that you at least make enough to not completely starve. Despite that statement, I still think it should be around $20 an hour. Why should workers suffer on $15 an hour when your boss makes $50–5000 per hour? They shouldn’t.
It isn’t enough for me to say “Just give us money”. Let me give you a “how to make the change” tutorial.
- Contact your local congressperson (state and federal) and tell them exactly what you want: a raise.
- Do this by sending an email or by calling their local office.
- Tell them that you support any bill that will raise the minimum wage in your state to 15 dollars an hour (or higher if it is already $15).
But before you do this, read what else you need to tell them:
Right To Work
We also need to abolish right-to-work laws. Now, if you’ve never heard of this, you may think I just hit my head. Nonetheless, I will inform you of what these laws mean: the right for a worker to not be required to join a labor union. They do not mean to guarantee employment, they’re meant to demean union organizing. This plays right into what I said earlier about our low union rates — it’s hard to make one.
So, why is this a huge issue if you don’t have unions? When an area doesn’t have any friction against the corporate class, that means they can step all over you. They do this through at-will employment (can be fired for any reason), not giving benefits above 20–25 hours, working 39 hours so that you don’t have to provide healthcare, low wages, and more.
The final (and best) solution is to form unions in your workplace. It will be hard, they will fight back, and someone may get fired. However, if you succeed, you may kickstart your whole industry by getting better deals for yourself (such as in the case of Starbucks). Find an organizer, talk to some coworkers, and make a petition where you can bargain for your well-being, not leave it up to the CEO.
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