On the Living Wage: We Are Worth More

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This week, the Internet rallied with pitchforks aimed at talia jane. Talia became a vocal detractor of the minimum wage in an open letter aimed at her employer at the time — Yelp — and was promptly fired.

Empathy and grey area went head-to-head with dogma, and dogma won. She was found entitled, lazy, and ungrateful by a jury of her peers. Many rushed to defend Yelp in the name of personal responsibility, urging Talia to stay in her lane and fall in line. The gist was that this was a “teachable moment” for Talia where she got what she deserved: fired for complaining about her pay. But the buck certainly doesn’t stop with Talia and it doesn’t even stop with Yelp.

It is CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s fault that Talia and the rest of the minimum wage army at Yelp are paid below the living wage. However, the minimum wage isn’t Stoppelman’s fault. The busting of unions and the end of collective bargaining isn’t his fault. The extreme cost of living in San Francisco isn’t his fault. But there’s no doubt his business has benefited from policies that have brought workers to their knees, metaphorically blowing some overpaid CEOs who are enjoying the “Eyes Wide Shut” party of their lives.

I’m sure they work hard. I’m sure there’s pressure. I’m sure every one of them believes they are “making the world a better place.”

Morality in Capitalism has become so malleable. Yelp does not make the world a better place. It’s a consumer-friendly version of The Better Business Bureau with standards so low you can become “Yelp Elite” and be somebody with half a day’s worth of couch time and an Internet connection. We don’t need Yelp.

We’re talking about a business in the business of the same thing every other business is in it for: Money. Yelp is a publicly traded online advertising company bred in the PayPal Mafia that commoditized making life just a smidgen easier in the first world, where everything is for sale.

Lost in anonymous yelling and back patting were two questions that we have not answered: Is there a job that is worth working for less than you can survive on? Is there a job that is worth paying less than someone can survive on? If there is, cut that fucking job right now. It’s not helping.

All hail the job creators! Gladiators of Capitalism! They fight the good fight so they can offer you the gift of employment — even if the gift is one Aunt Bethany would’ve given Russ and Audrey in “Christmas Vacation.”

Keep the leaky jello mold jobs you deem worthy of starvation wages. Who are they helping? If it’s not worth a living wage to have someone in a role, then the role must not be essential to the organization. Further, if a company can’t survive paying its employees fair wages, then fans of the phrase “it’s just business” when applied to the minimum wage should apply it to their own failures.

The policies that Jeremy and Co. benefit from were written before they had power and influence. Casino Capitalist corporations (the triple C’s), on the other hand, were involved in creating the very legislation intended to regulate them. Read up on forced arbitration, which allows companies to write employment agreements so employees can only seek justice through a company-appointed arbitrator. Read up on how corporations influenced the law to work in their favor. And even when they weren’t directly involved, in the likely case of Yelp, they still share the spoils from the dirty work of “victors” who came before them.

What does this have to do with Talia Jane? Everything. Nothing. It has more to do with you — with us — and where our visceral reaction to her open letter comes from.

A college graduate lamented at being paid less than a living wage. Where does she get off? This reaction seems to stem from our own struggles — the fact that we had to do it. This is why we hate the jackass who says “I’m so cold” when it’s 30 degrees outside. Yeah, we‘re all freezing out here.

In 2014, there were 3.3 million hourly employees in America being paid at or below minimum wage. Chances are, if your natural reaction to Talia involved fiery anger, you were or are one of them. You were paid minimum wage, you had to do it all yourself, you worked hard, you provided, you overcame, you struggled. You might have received a helping hand. You might still be struggling. But “most importantly,” you didn’t bitch about it or raise a fuss. Our culture demands that you put up or shut up, but culture is created by people. It doesn’t just exist. Why do we accept the way things are instead of wondering what it would be like if things were different?

Let me break and say to you — you deserved better. You deserved better than unpaid internships, better than minimum wage, better than being commoditized on your ability to become employable. We are supposed to want better for the next generation than we had it. Talia and I are part of the same generation. Faced with the same circumstances, I was privileged in many ways. I had it relatively good in a similar situation. I want her to have it better.

If you’re working 40 hours a week, you should make a living wage, regardless of whether or not you have or want a college degree. Likewise, if a company has a role open that needs a person to fill it, that role should pay a living wage.

And yet anyone who dares ask for the fairness we wanted when faced with the same circumstances gets a guttural “Oh, brother.” Where is this repulsion coming from? The media, the lawmakers and the pundits who feed us propaganda on everything from “breaking news” of union workers slacking on the job to welfare queens who abuse the system for Cadillac-sized gains certainly aren’t helping.

They seem to have convinced us a living wage requirement could cripple business, or “worse,” increase costs for consumers. They’re not saying CEOs can’t fathom a pay cut from the astronomical high of more than 300 times the pay of their typical workers. They’re not explaining why corporations have been given personhood but pay lower effective tax rates than the majority of the population. No, they’re busy telling you it’s your fault when the economy fumbles and corporations have to lay people off — that you just weren’t spending enough of those pennies you’re paid to work or that you were spending more than you had. Something’s gotta give, because costs go up anyway and the minimum wage doesn’t keep up.

That’s the other side of the argument for business — employees who are paid too little have nothing to spend. If workers continue to be deskilled, devalued, and debased, who will be left to buy products and services? An earner in the top 1%, after all, doesn’t need 300 washing machines. They need one. They don’t need 300 cars. They don’t need 300 houses. Society is worse off when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few because that wealth isn’t working for the general welfare. Someone’s sitting on it. They’re hedging their bets against the future they’re helping to create, just in case this whole idea of trickle-down economics blows up in their faces.

Worse? Sometimes companies with pay below a living wage are subsidized by us through safety nets and assistance programs, as is the case with Wal-Mart to the tune of $6.2 billion in taxpayer money in 2014. That doesn’t include Wal-Mart’s share of the 3.2 Million American jobs outsourced overseas since 2001. Turns out saving 50 cents on Hanes is so not worth it.

I’m trying to be fair, here: Jeremy can’t be lumped in with the CEO of Wal-Mart in most of this — Yelp is, by many standards, a great place to work. The company offers free food to employees, a strategic move used by many companies to boost employee satisfaction and productivity. He might have done it simply because he’s a nice guy, but he’s still reaping some benefits from this “altruistic” move. Jeremy is among popular CEOs who take home annual salaries of $1, relying on their own performance lifting stock prices to compensate them through shares they own. So while I’m trying to be fair, every dollar above minimum wage Jeremy offers his front-line workers represents a dollar from the metrics for his success, and both directly and indirectly, comes from his own pocket. His decision to pay workers minimum wage in a multi-billion dollar corporation was his to make. It is fueled by greed: Both his greed and the greed systematically wired into Capitalism.

The result is an unfortunate contradiction. Customer service roles at Yelp aren’t worth paying a living wage. Yet, customer service roles are so essential, they’re required before college graduates can do the work they were hired to do.

If the work of customer service is essential to performing a job within corporate at Yelp, then, at the very least, people like Talia Jane should be paid at the same wage they’ll be earning after they complete this time period that should be called “training.”

The last time I got paid a different wage during training than I would be receiving doing the work I was hired to complete was when I was a server. Workers who are paid “tip wages” (federally $2.13/hr. + tips) are usually paid minimum wage during training until they can begin earning their own tips. The tip wage game is simple. Restaurant owners who pay according to the federal tip wage almost entirely subsidize their labor costs to the end consumer.

The family that goes out to eat for $100 is served by someone who’s often not employed in the strictest sense, but who has been given the opportunity to professionally panhandle for customers to pay their bills.

Today’s standard is to tip 20%+ of the bill: $20 in this case. A truly subpar server might earn something South of 15%. Maybe even $10 or $12. If that server is tipped low enough, waiting on that family costs the server money, because they have to pay a tip out to the bar and bussers at the end of the night that usually ends up being around 5%. In the case of a zero dollar tip on $100, the pleasure of waiting on that group costs the server $5. Plus the time they wasted sucking up to that table when they could have had a table of former servers, who often tip 20% even for terrible service because they know the struggle is real.

Now you show me a person, whether a high school or college graduate, who wants to work with no benefits for the closest to zero dollars pay legally allowed in the messy business of food. But we do it. I did it. Servers are on their feet, subject to the moods of restaurant goers, and bossed around by an employer who doesn’t really pay them. In many other countries and in select states, restaurant owners pay the equivalent of $10-$18/hr for foodservice workers.

And still, many tell servers to be grateful.

Where did we get the idea that the people who power companies with their work should be grateful for the opportunity to do so, even if they’re being paid scab wages? Like a job in-and-of-itself is something to be thankful for — even if the details of the job make it exploitative. Should any job be without dignity?

The reaction to Talia’s letter was knee-jerk. This is something we believe, even if not consciously: Employers are doing employees a favor.

Add to that our belief that the hours of one person’s life are worth more than the hours of another simply on the basis of supply and demand. Minimum wage workers can be replaced. “Thought leaders” and executives can’t be replaced as easily. We’ve allowed our value as people to be dictated by our value to business. The economic system of a civilized nation should not have the power to determine the worth of people. Corporate CEOs are “worth more” to society than almost everyone else — scientists, teachers, healthcare professionals, engineers, caretakers, hospitality workers. Someday, if I find myself in hospice care, I hope my caretaker is paid enough to give a shit about me. I hope their finances aren’t a source of distraction and angst. I hope they aren’t motivated to sell the morphine I might need.

At the core of the argument for Capitalism is the idea that money is the best motivator. This carries the assumption that without the promise of financial incentives, no one will care about their work.

While rogue Capitalists abstractly attach a price tag to every hour of every life, they expect gratitude for success by the standards they helped write. But you don’t have to be grateful to your employer for the gift of work. This belief highlights the imbalance of the employment agreement in our recovering economy.

Corporate employers are not grateful for their employees. When appreciation measures are taken through employee recognition and reward programs, it’s because they’re presented as a business opportunity to gain a competitive edge. It’s rare that measures are taken truly and exclusively because an executive charged with babysitting the bottom line cares about employees. Often, they’re looking to squeeze that last drop of discretionary effort out of a working population that is overwhelmingly disengaged. According to Gallup, 70% of American workers don’t give a shit about their jobs.

Even beloved perks like ping pong and foosball tables are weighed as business decisions with metrics like reducing turnover and improving employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

There’s a small caveat for the new wave of business leaders realizing all business is personal: B Corporations, select startups, companies like Costco and Trader Joe’s. For an example, check out the transparency page of Buffer’s website, which displays every salary, every email, and every dollar broken down for any bystander to see.

Being part of the working poor is relative. So is the minimum wage. In San Francisco, the minimum wage is more than $12 per hour. In Fort Worth, it’s $7.25. Neither are living wages. In 2013, there were more than 354,000 Californians working full-time living under the federal poverty limit. Whether or not you want Talia Jane to be the face of the revolt against the minimum wage is irrelevant. The glaring, undisputable fact is the value of minimum wage has not kept up with the times:

This is partially due to mass deskilling with automation. It’s partially due to the rising costs of goods and services — healthcare, for example. But even both of those factors link back to unadulterated greed. In fact, senior leaders at publicly traded corporations like Yelp are legally required to be greedy — to seek profit for shareholders (almost always including themselves) above all else.

Talia Jane is one minimum wage casualty in millions. She is one David vs. one Goliath. Her situation is only a fraction as bad as it can get. Imagine having two children to provide for on the same wages. Imagine not having a college degree illuminating the end of the minimum wage tunnel. Imagine if the job was physically demanding to boot.

Who gives a fuck if you didn’t like “her tone?” Who cares if you didn’t identify with her perspective? Or if you don’t identify with mine or like my tone? Forget that for a second. Forget it long enough to consider if your American Dream includes going into debt to graduate from college only to be paid the legal minimum by a multimillionaire for a job presented as beneath your skill level. And then picture yourself being grateful for being so lucky.

I hate to put the owness back on Jeremy Stoppleman and his peers, because it doesn’t exclusively belong there. It also belongs with our lawmakers, our media, and ourselves. We were complicit in the corporate takeover that created today’s widening income inequality. We stopped paying attention. We let them take our power.

So, no, it’s not Jeremy Stoppleman’s fault that Talia Jane is broke if you consider employment to be strictly reliant on free will and people to be worth the sum of their marketable skills. As I said, the owness isn’t entirely on corporate executives anyway, but we’re talking about the same people we societally believe deserve those ungodly take-homes of millions of dollars. Why? Because they’re job creators — even if the jobs they create pay humiliatingly low wages. Because they’re innovative, hard-working folks who brought a big idea to life — even if that big idea is unnecessary.

If they don’t want the responsibility of the general welfare of those in their employ, they suddenly don’t deserve all the benefits of being heralded a job creator or “leader.” Are they the captains of their ships or aren’t they? Will they go down with it if they hit an iceberg? Or, like many corporate captains before them, will they jump ship with a tidy exit package while their minimum wage workers unwittingly watch the place fill up water?

Whether you’re paid $7.25 an hour or $725 an hour, you don’t owe your employer gratitude simply for the gift of employment. We can be generally grateful for the opportunity to have a job and a comparably comfortable standard of living without considering our employers beyond reproach.

For example, Yelp has 100% employer-covered healthcare. According to numerous Glassdoor reviews, this perk is a source of gratitude for many employees. You might be grateful for a similar perk from your employer. But you don’t have to be grateful to Yelp or any employer just for your job. Per your employment agreement, that shit’s business. You got a job to perform a set list of duties within a set timeframe for a set level of pay. In exchange for this pay, your employer receives the organizational impact of your work. They’re not grateful to you for accepting. You don’t owe them your unquestioning loyalty for offering.

If you’re employed, I hope your employer does right by you. I hope you’re allowed to complain about your job. I hope you’re allowed to raise questions and start conversations about policies that impact you. I hope if you ever lose your job for “complaining,” the Internet doesn’t corner you, shouting, “Serves ‘ya right!” I hope your employer earns your gratitude and that you earn theirs. Trust their appreciation for you is conditional. Yours should be conditional as well.

When you stop being unquestioningly grateful for your job, you can take a more objective look at the fairness of your own employment agreement and maybe find some empathy for the stonewalling of Talia Jane.