Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by In America

    Let it be known, that Barabara Ehrenreich’s book is about three problems in American life; first, that minimum wage jobs are full of worker abuse, secondly, that they’re not enough to live on, and third, this is even more likely if you’re a woman. I’ve seen few women in the well-paid,  blue-collar jobs, like trucking, construction, cab driving, and restaurant kitchens. Here in New York City, some of the best-paid jobs for those with no college degrees are the building staff – doormen, concierges, and porters – with few women on staff. Let it also be known that the author does not survive off charity, and when she does get free food from a food bank, it’s crappy canned food and Hamburger Helper, full of salt.

Ehrenreich wrote this book in the early 2000’s, in order to see if the 1996 Welfare Reform had made things better or worse for the poor. She finds that the average minimum wage job is barely enough to support a single woman, and certainly wouldn’t be enough to feed the kids, rent more than one room, pay the medical bills, and eat well. Worse, there are towns where the only unskilled job is in Walmart, and she finds that Walmart abuses the employees and often tries to cheat them. In Florida, she takes a job waitressing at a restaurant where tourists go, and under the state laws she gets less than minimum wage; a common problem for tipped employees. While the customers are supposed to leave tips, many do not, and the employers rarely bother to obey the law and make up the difference. She tries working at a cleaning service, and here’s where she encounters another troubling factor. There’s a protocol for cleaning the bathrooms, and it requires a huge mental effort to learn the routine. Thanks to the high turnover rate, the boss can change your schedule at will and without notice. You can be at the end of your shift and be told to stay late and work at night. You have to pick your kid up from the babysitter? Too bad. You can’t get childcare with no notice? Too bad.

One of the more surprising things in this book is the drug testing of employees. I’ve only been drug tested twice in my life, once at Chase Manhattan Bank, and once by the Department of Education. None of the brokerage houses where I worked ever drug-tested me, and neither did the construction jobs or tutoring services. I find it surprising, because a construction company, with safety issues to consider, can least afford a worker with a drug problem. But Walmart? Would it make much difference? Another problem that a lot of poor neighborhoods are facing is what we call the criminalization of the poor. Parents can be fined if their children are absent from school, and face jail time if they haven’t got the money to pay. When you’re on the move from one homeless shelter to another, and have no transportation, getting your kid to school is a problem. If you need any kind of government aid, you can expect to be drug-tested.

Ehrenreich starts out her journey with only $1,000 and tells everyone she has a high school diploma. The question is whether the money she has with her will be enough to start off, and she finds that it isn’t. Her savings are barely enough to pay the deposit on an apartment, and local cheap hotels aren’t that cheap in the end. Renting a car costs more in the long run, but without the startup money to purchase one, she has no choice. The poor neighborhoods are food deserts, and the only food available is salt and fat.

There is a cure for the problem, and that is solidarity. People who live in a food desert can club together with someone who has a car, chip in for gas, and drive to a place with a cheap supermarket. Some people form food co-ops, so they can buy good quality food at wholesale prices. If several families live together in one home, they can gain two benefits; first is a lower living cost, and second is available childcare.  In the book Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street, the artists in Soho formed food co-ops, daycare co-ops, and others that provided home repair, homework help, art supplies, and more. The problem with charity is that it’s a “top-down” program, where the money on top can dictate, but solidarity is a “bottom-up” effort that allows the people to decide for themselves. It is my belief that this is why Jewish immigrants in the USA (and later Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants) did better than others. The Jews relied on each other for housing, food, education, and health, with benevolent lodges that provided emergency funds for medical bills and burial costs. You had three generations of a family living in one apartment, so the grandparents watched the kids while the parents worked 12 hour days.

In another book about poverty, Joanna Lipper’s Growing Up Fast, we see how a hotel employs women housekeepers while the cooks are all men, and while the women are paid a pittance, the male cooks eat well from the leftovers. Another difference is that the male cooks have a greater opportunity to work their way up the ladder, while a female cleaner can only be promoted to head housekeeper, with few levels in between. The cooks and the maids are on their feet all day, but the maids have to kneel and stoop. It’s a similar thing with construction; laborers don’t have to dress up, don’t have to buy expensive uniforms, and aren’t at the mercy of decent tips.

The end result is that the 1996 Welfare Reform law didn’t make things better. This book was published back in 2001 and is still read frequently, so it remains to be seen how the issues in this book will pan out in later generations. With the decriminalization of marijuana, there will be fewer people in prison, and thanks to bail reform, we’ll have fewer people missing work while they sit in the lockup.