Shenita Simon watches a twilight rain wash across Brownsville. Softly, from her apartment in a public housing tower, she begins to talk of her life’s impossible mathematics.
This 25-year-old woman with striking black eyes and hair pulled back in a bun is a shift manager at KFC — her title is good for 50 cents an hour above minimum wage. From this, she and her husband, Jude Toussaint, an unemployed antenna installer, buy clothes for their three children and food, and help her mother with the rent.
Her wages erode on all sides. Often, she said, she finds her check is hours short. And when she works overtime, she receives two checks, each at straight time, as if she worked for two different employers rather than a single KFC across from Bargain Land on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.
Last year boiling oil spilled over and scalded her hands; she received $58 a week in workers’ compensation, she said. Nearly every day her manager called and demanded: When are you returning to work?
She looks you square in the eyes.
“I’m beyond not satisfied,” she says. “This isn’t the life I want for my children. This isn’t the life I want for myself.”
Read the entire article at: The New York Times
While I do believe that not every job can, or should, provide enough money to support a entire family, it should however provide a decent livable wage. Which the current minimum wage is most definitely not. The average full-time minimum wage worker simply can not support themselves without assistance in most of America.
This article does bring to light some of the issues with that arise from our consumer culture mindset. We as a culture want more and more for less and less regardless of the impact. Corporations do whatever they can to cut costs and that is always at the expense of the unskilled labor force. Whether it is the person making your burger or the person who made the iPad your reading this article on.
Minimum wage by definition is the lowest you can legally pay someone. Think about that for a second, shouldn't it be at a minimum a livable wage.
This 25-year-old woman with striking black eyes and hair pulled back in a bun is a shift manager at KFC — her title is good for 50 cents an hour above minimum wage. From this, she and her husband, Jude Toussaint, an unemployed antenna installer, buy clothes for their three children and food, and help her mother with the rent.
Her wages erode on all sides. Often, she said, she finds her check is hours short. And when she works overtime, she receives two checks, each at straight time, as if she worked for two different employers rather than a single KFC across from Bargain Land on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.
Last year boiling oil spilled over and scalded her hands; she received $58 a week in workers’ compensation, she said. Nearly every day her manager called and demanded: When are you returning to work?
She looks you square in the eyes.
“I’m beyond not satisfied,” she says. “This isn’t the life I want for my children. This isn’t the life I want for myself.”
Read the entire article at: The New York Times
While I do believe that not every job can, or should, provide enough money to support a entire family, it should however provide a decent livable wage. Which the current minimum wage is most definitely not. The average full-time minimum wage worker simply can not support themselves without assistance in most of America.
This article does bring to light some of the issues with that arise from our consumer culture mindset. We as a culture want more and more for less and less regardless of the impact. Corporations do whatever they can to cut costs and that is always at the expense of the unskilled labor force. Whether it is the person making your burger or the person who made the iPad your reading this article on.
Minimum wage by definition is the lowest you can legally pay someone. Think about that for a second, shouldn't it be at a minimum a livable wage.
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