Witness to the Betrayal
News: The 30 million working Americans who can't make ends meet aren't on the margins of our economy -- they are in the stagnating mainstream.
February 23, 2004
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The economy -- and President Bush's dismal record on job creation -- is shaping up as the defining issue in this year's elections. Witness John Edwards' surprisingly magnetic "Two Americas" theme, or John Kerry's dark talk of an economy hijacked by "special interests." This is no accident. The double impact of an economic downturn and disastrous Bush administration policies has swelled the ranks of America's working poor to include large numbers of white-collar middle-class Americans.
But it bears noting that below the newly disadvantaged middle class is a vast population of Americans working in "low-wage" jobs; they work hard and play by the rules, and still can't provide for themselves and their families. Thirty million Americans - that's one in every four workers — live on poverty wages, which is to say they make $8.70 or less an hour. They don't exist at the margins of our economy, but in the mainstream; they are the nursing home staff, poultry processors, pharmacy assistants , call-center workers, janitors, child care workers, and guest room attendants that make the economy tick but are largely invisible. Most are women. Many are minorities or immigrants. And low wages are just the beginning of their problems. Their jobs are the least likely to offer health and retirement benefits, child-care, or sick leave; and the most likely to be part time, inflexible, and dangerous.
Beth Shulman, a lawyer and former vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, spent 3 years traveling around the United States talking to Americans who are struggling by on low wages. She presents her findings in "The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans." The book shows how the United States has neglected these workers, and how, despite the country's vast wealth, American workers have lower living standards than comparable workers in other industrialized countries. It concludes with a detailed call for policy reform to correct what stands as a national disgrace and a betrayal of America's founding notions of fairness and equity.
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" has said of Shulman's book, "The Betrayal of Work is the perfect accompaniment to Nicel and Dimed. I wish I'd written it myself!"
MotherJones.com spoke with Shulman about plight of low-wage workers and the political significance of the issue in this election year.
MotherJones.com: What do you mean when you say that work has been betrayed?
Beth Shulman: In America there's always been a tacit understanding that if you work hard you'll be able to take care of yourself and your family. For 30 million Americans, or one out of every four workers, that's no longer the case. There's also an understanding that your children will be able to do at least as well as you did, if not better. That's no longer the case. The children of low-wage workers start out at a deficit.
MJ.com: You write that low pay is only one of the problems low-wage workers face.
Beth Shulman: Low-wage workers don't only make a low wage. Low wage jobs are the least likely to provide health insurance, sick leave, family leave, vacations, pensions. And they're the most likely to be part time, give fewer hours and less flexibility. They're often the most hazardous jobs. Low-wage workers get the least training and the least opportunity for advancement if there's a ladder, which often there isn't. There's a whole group of characteristics that make these jobs so difficult. The largest costs for workers and their families are housing, medical expenses, and child-care. It makes life extraordinarily difficult for them.
MJ.com: Have things gotten worse for low-wage workers?
Beth Shulman: The data I looked at were from the best of times, and low-wage workers have been hit disproportionately hard in the downturn. The Bush administration has been disastrous for these workers, from the tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy, to cuts in essential programs like health insurance for children. We're going in the opposite direction from the one we need to go.
MJ.com: How did we get here?
Beth Shulman: There have been policy changes that have had an impact on workers: the minimum wage to drop $2 in value since 1968; industries have been deregulated and opened up to low-wage competition; globalization is a factor, though not as big as people think; Immigration has increased the pool of low-wage workers; there's been a sea change as employers increasingly look to shareholder value and the interests of consumers rather than workers. Another factor has been the decline of the labor movement, and not just because the manufacturing sector has declined -- there's been a wholesale assault by government and business on organized labor. These are choices we as a society have made.
MJ.com: Why should we care?
Beth Shulman: The United States is the richest country in the world; we have an obligation to provide our workers with the basics of a decent life, so there's an obvious moral reason why we should care. Low-wage workers are the least likely to vote because their needs aren't being met, and since money is such a crucial factor in having a voice in the political process, and low-wage workers don't have it, they don't feel they have a say. So our democracy suffers. Our communities suffer because the tax base we rely on for schools and public services is weakened and at the same time tax revenue has to go to food banks and housing subsidies. Low-wage employers don't invest in their workers, and that shows in the quality of work they do and the services they provide. And it has an impact on the economy. Low-wage workers can't afford to be consumers, and they can't save their money. When they retire, because they rarely have a private pension and have to depend on Social Security, which amounts to only a portion of their working wage, so they go from a situation where they're already on the edge to one where they become truly impoverished. And the costs - in housing subsidies, healthcare costs - of maintaining this population get shifted to the taxpayer.
MJ.com: What about the impact on children?
Beth Shulman: This is something that really struck me when I was traveling around the country researching this book. So many people couldn't provide quality childcare, good schools, health insurance. Children were frequently ill and so they missed school, which affected their ability to do well. And their parents didn't have the resources to send them to college. If we care about equal opportunity, we have to do more for these children.
MJ.com: Isn't it a fact of economic life that there are good jobs and bad, low-wage jobs and that's just how it is?
Beth Shulman: There's nothing inherently "bad" or "low-wage" about these jobs. Look at auto workers and steel workers. Those jobs used to be "bad" jobs - they didn't pay well, didn't have benefits; and they were dirty. But thanks to the efforts of organized labor and social legislation they became "good" jobs. There's no reason why low-wage jobs can't become good jobs in the same way. Also, the skills required to do these jobs are undervalued. It's ironic that the jobs the skills needed for these kinds of low-wage jobs that involve dealing with people are downgraded, and I don't think it's by accident -- most of these jobs are held by women.
MJ.com: Why haven't we, as a society, stepped in to do something about it?
Beth Shulman: We've made these workers invisible. That's why I wrote this book - to bring them into full view. Economic issues are only getting attention now because middle class people are suffering in this economy, too.
And there are myths that keep us from focusing on this issue. We tend to see low-wage work as marginal, but it's in the mainstream of the economy. We think the people who do these jobs are teenagers, but two-thirds are white, the majority are women, and many have childcare responsibilities; it's true that their less educated than better paid workers, but 40 percent have high-school diplomas. Then there's the myth of mobility - the Horatio Alger myth - the belief that these jobs are only temporary, that they're stepping stones to better jobs. The reality is that mobility has declined. Low-wage jobs have become career jobs; most people don't move up. Some say it's a question of skills, that if you retrain people they'll do better, but five out of ten of the fastest-growing jobs in the country don't require skills. And there's this idea that globalization makes us do it, but the reality is that most low-wage jobs are focused on the domestic market. Having said that, it is true that the kind of outsourcing of white-collar jobs that we're seeing has an effect on low-wage workers by increasing competition for low-wage jobs and holding down wages.
MJ.com: So there's nothing inevitable about this?
Beth Shulman: No. The existence of vast numbers of low-wage workers is the result of decisions that get made every day, decisions to subsidize businesses, to limit the right to organize. The important point is that we choose, and we can make a different choice.
MJ.com: Are there any bright spots in this picture?
Beth Shulman: Yes, I see a lot of hopeful signs. On a local level, religious groups, labor groups, consumer groups are all pushing an agenda for change. There's the living wage movement. There's the South Bay Central Labor Council in San Jose, California [In partnership with local community groups, it created Working Partnerships USA, an organization with the purpose of bringing a wider range of voices into the discussion about regional economic development.]; and there are movements to hold local government accountable for their spending;. Also, there's a real, concerted effort to reach out to low-wage workers for this year's election. The Center for Community Change and a lot of other advocacy groups are bringing people into the political process, registering people to vote. There are a lot of groups with an agenda that says workers need to benefit as well. And the Democratic candidates joined in sending that message.
MJ.com: Has the Democratic primary process given you hope that the issue is being taken seriously?
Beth Shulman: It has. Edwards, Dean, Kerry - they understand that working Americans aren't getting what they deserve. Look at this idea of the Two Americas. It's starting to be talked about, and the reason for that, of course, is that it's not just workers in low-wage jobs that are suffering; workers in middle-income jobs are just as insecure. There's a recognition that people who work need to have health insurance, that they should have family-sustaining jobs. Dean and Gephardt played a part in this. They spurred a better dialogue among the Democratic candidates around economic issues. They both really pushed the issue into the discussion.
MJ.com: Why hasn't the Democratic Party been more active on this before now?
Beth Shulman: The Democratic Party hasn't really focused on bread-and-butter economic issues for a while. There's been a shift to issues of individual rights, some of them very important, like the rights of women and minorities. But now the party is refocusing. They should have been focusing on low-wage workers, but the reality is that people tend to focus only when middle-class workers start being affected.
MJ.com: Republicans are strongest in areas with large populations of low-wage workers - rural areas and the South. If the GOP's policies are hurting these workers, why do they keep on voting Republican?
Beth Shulman: A lot of low-wage workers vote for the GOP on social issues. The question is, Can the Democrats talk about economic policy in such a way that people, whatever their social views, gravitate towards them?
MJ.com: In the book, you lay out what you call a Compact with Working Americans -- a set of detailed policy recommendations aimed at improving the lot of low-wage workers. What are the terms of this contract?
Beth Shulman: We need to get back to the belief that if you work hard you'll be able to take are of yourself and your family, to make sure that work really works for Americans. The first thing is we need a livable wage. There's a variety of ways you can do that, like raising the minimum wage to $8.70 an hour, which is the poverty wage - and everybody understands that it's an underestimation; it takes at least double that to live, so the problem is far larger than I've indicated in my book. We have to make it so that companies receiving public monies - like nursing homes, which get 85 percent of their funding from the government -- should pay their workers a living wage; there's no reason we as taxpayers need to be subsidizing companies that pay a poverty wage. It's ludicrous that workers are going without health insurance. The Democratic candidates are all talking about this. It's imperative we cover more and more of the uninsured. We have to give families the flexibility, sick leave, family leave, time off to be with a sick child. Many of the programs aimed at giving families this kind of flexibility miss the neediest; same with Unemployment Insurance; the very people who need it most get least. We have to provide quality childcare, increase social security or ensure that workers can have private pensions, so that workers can end their careers and have security in their retirement. And we have to guarantee the right to organize. If we really believe in the right to organize, we have to apply penalties to employers that prevent it. Look at the difference being able to organize makes. In Las Vegas, where hotel workers are unionized, they get $12 an hour and benefits; in Reno they get $8 an hour and no benefits.
MJ.com: Sounds great, but how can the country afford all this?
Beth Shulman: There's a variety of money being spent in a variety of ways. These are choices we, as a society, make that have an impact on our ability to pay for other things. If we make these things priorities, we'll find ways to shift money from one place to another. The first thing to do is to ensure that the Bush tax cuts are not made permanent.
MJ.com: What about the argument that raising the minimum wage means higher costs for employers and ultimately higher unemployment?
Beth Shulman: That's not the case. A variety of studies have shown that the kind of increase I'm talking about, to $8.70, wouldn't increase unemployment.
MJ.com: What if we do nothing?
Beth Shulman: We'll end up with a society in which a lot of children start from a deficit, where there's a bifurcation. The Harvard economist Richard Freeman calls it the "apartheid economy" divided between the haves and have-nots, where workers are unable to provide for themselves and their families.
MJ.com: In a review of your book, the economist James K. Galbraith says you'd be a great secretary of labor in the next civilized administration. Are you interested?
Beth Shulman: My purpose is just to ensure that this issue gets as much of a public airing as possible. It's been overlooked for too long, and we need to address it going into the 21st Century.
