The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light a problem we refuse to resolve—too many Americans being paid too low a wage—and illustrates a lack of concern for Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Let’s look at the numbers. More than 53 million people—44% of all workers aged 18-64—earn median hourly wages of $10.22 and median annual earnings of $17,950, according to research from Brookings. Nearly two-thirds of these people are in their prime working years of 25-54, and 40 percent are raising children. Nearly half are concentrated in 10 occupation groups, such as retail sales, janitorial and pest control, and personal care.
Workers in essential businesses must continue to work for low wages while putting themselves at greater risk of infection. They toil because they have little choice. Regardless of the health risk—they don’t have the luxury of working remotely—they work because they need to put food on the table.
Bad enough that essential jobs put workers are at greater risk for infection, but some of those jobs, such as those at slaughterhouses and poultry processing plants, which President Trump ordered to be kept open, are dangerous. It’s easy to demand that others accept low wages and put themselves at risk. The irony is stunning—essential and sometime dangerous work is rewarded with low wages. How does that make sense?
Workers who were employed at non-essential businesses actually caught a break by losing their jobs. By virtue of receiving state unemployment funds and $600 a week in federal benefits, some have been able—at least for a limited period of time—to pay their bills. But when economies opened up, these workers faced criticism for choosing unemployment benefits over returning to work.
Employers and some politicians blame the CARES Act for this predicament. What matters to them is that many employers who pay low wages can’t compete with the CARES Act. As Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) put it, “These employers are going to need these workers to rebuild this economy, so we cannot pay people more money on unemployment than what they would get in their jobs.”
An episode some weeks back on talk radio, The Dave Ramsey Show, showed that employers are flabbergasted that employees would choose not to return to work. It’s as if employees are doing something wrong by making a rational economic decision.
Saru Jayarman, president of One Fair Wage, an advocacy group, puts it this way: “They don’t want the benefits to be easy to access because they want people willing to take low-wage jobs. We always want to keep a pool of low-wage labor at the ready.”
Criticizing the CARES Act is easy work, but the CARES Act isn’t to blame. It just brought to the forefront an issue we’ve been wrestling with for years.
Think about it, we’ve been paying a large segment of America low wages for years. Now, for the first time we’ve provided these workers with unemployment benefits that allow some modest degree of comfort, and we’re stunned when they don’t want to go back to work. Who in his right mind would decide differently?
Instead of looking at the CARES Act as the problem, why not change our mindset that wages for a certain sector of the economy must be kept low?
Support for change and a higher minimum wage is increasing across the nation, but there’s still not enough support in Washington to make things happen. Worse yet, the opposition fails to present an alternate solution. Poor people are just left to be poor.
Sure, coming up with a solution is no easy task, and maybe there will be problems with raising wages. I don’t know how to fix the problem, but I’m not willing to accept that the system must continue because, well, this is how capitalism operates.
And I’m bothered that those who say no to increasing the minimum wage are all employed and earning a good wage.
[This post was published as an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch on August 20, 2020.]
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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com
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