I’ve never quite understood why there’s such resistance to the idea of a $15 minimum wage. In the past few years, as the Fight for $15 movement has gained momentum, I’ve had friends make comments about fast food workers “who think they should make $15 for flipping burgers,” and that perspective leaves me perplexed.
I mean, I get it. We all think that we should be earning a higher amount. Many of us probably should. But to me, that only furthers the argument that someone who makes less might deserve more.
As a teenager, I worked minimum wage jobs, and as I entered my twenties, I started to work my way up to a little bit more money, taking supervisory positions that, at best, I tolerated and, at worst, I hated, all for the sake of a better payday. At Target, for example, I ended up in one of my store’s “team lead” positions, earning a little over $12 an hour. After leaving Target, while finishing my degree I took a student position as a ticket seller at a performing arts center; after a few years a supervisory position opened, and I was able to move up there.
I took these positions not because I loved those jobs, but because of the money.
Granted, I still lived at home when I was working at Target, but even with the higher compensation that came with a different pay grade, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to move out on my own. Rent, even in small-town Illinois, cost enough to keep me in my dad’s house. The full-time performing arts center job brought me back up to about what I was making at Target, but I was living in St. Louis then, not at home, and after about a year, the position changed so that it was full-time throughout the university’s fall and winter semesters, then part-time during the summer—a severe blow that threw a wrench into what little financial resources I could rely on.
By that time, I was living with a boyfriend, and he had what I sometimes call a “big boy job,” making more than enough to cover the basics like rent, utilities, and food. Back at Target, many of the other team leads had spouses or significant others to help shoulder the burden of bills. But what about the people who didn’t have a partner or a parent to rely on?
When I hear people sneer at the idea of a living wage for workers, I cringe a little bit. After all, I remember what it was like. Worry lurks like a predator at the back of your mind. You think about things like, “What if my car needs repairs?” or “What do I cut if I have to buy new clothes?”
It’s no wonder people dig themselves into credit card debt (that’s what I did), or skimp on things like healthcare or nutrition, when they barely make enough to cover the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
In a recent article for The New York Times Magazine, writer Matthew Desmond explores some of the ways that even a slight increase in hourly wage can affect low-income workers. People start to eat better, or they can cut back on an 80+ hour work week to just catch a breath.
In America we tend to think about poverty and unemployment like they’re exclusive, but they’re not. There are plenty of people who are technically employed, but who don’t make enough money to invest, let alone save anything; who don’t have the resources to maintain a car, let alone get one fixed; who don’t have the time or energy in between jobs to devote to general wellbeing, let alone pay a doctor’s bill.
But people still look at them and say, “What, you deserve $15 to flip burgers?”
I think about the part-time workers at Target, or the cashiers at the small town grocery store where I got my first job. People of all ages and backgrounds, some of them just looking for extra cash, some of them kids with one of their first jobs, but a lot of them just trying to make it work. To get by.
When you’ve had the opportunity to level up to a higher paying job, it’s easy to lose sight of how hard it is for those who make less. Everyday struggles get recontextualized in the light of new burdens, like a mortgage or a car payment or daycare. Valid concerns, but they don’t invalidate the struggles of anyone else.
Maybe you say, “Well, I did it. Nobody gave me $15. I worked my way up.”
And maybe you did, but at Target, my store had about eight team leader positions, and I just happened to be lucky enough to get one. At the performing arts center, I was able to move up when someone who had been there for years decided she’d had enough and wanted her own big girl job. For most promotion opportunities, there’s one spot, which means that if there are two or more people going for that position, there’s going to be someone who doesn’t get it, someone who doesn’t get a raise.
Even annual reviews don’t cut it. At Target, annual reviews came with “recommendations” that we not issue too many overly positive ratings (which affect merit increases), to keep the expense of compensation in check.
It frustrates me that conservatives don’t want to support social services, but they also don’t want to let go of any of the precious, precious wealth hoarded by the people at the top. And that’s wrong. Amazon can pay $0.00 in federal tax on billions in revenue, but there are men and women in this country who have to work ungodly hours across multiple low-paying jobs just to scrape by?
So, I don’t begrudge anyone standing up and demanding that they get paid enough to live. I don’t agree that a fast food worker with no other options shouldn’t say, “I deserve more.”
At a certain point, we have to start treating people like they’re human, right?