AMERICA’S MINIMUM WAGE EPIDEMIC

America’s Minimum

Wage Epidemic by: Samiyah Siddiqui

People working full time minimum wage jobs can’t afford rent anywhere in the United States, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found in a recent study. This report is just one of the many findings that points to the vulnerabilities of the American lower class in their inability to survive on the bare minimum -- especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps it is better put as -- the government’s inability to provide for their people; expanding stimulus coverage, raising the minimum wage, and a whole host of other remedies that have yet to be fully enforced.

It’s not just that the minimum wage (determined by Congress) is struggling now during the pandemic to help support workers and their families - it’s struggled to keep up throughout recent history. In fact, the last time Congress amended the minimum wage was May 2007 -- when it changed to $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009. The US legislative body has never let the federal minimum wage go on unchanged for this long before, marking the longest period in history without an increase. Inflation of currency erodes the buying power when minimum wage remains unchanged for any stretch of time. According to the Economic Policy Institute and the Fair Labor Standards Act as well as its amendments, the federal minimum wage is today now worth 17% less than it was 10 years ago - and 31% less than in 1968 (shown in the associated graphic).

It’s not just the minimum wage itself that has caused workers to struggle greatly but the grueling working conditions as well. Employers and employees may disagree, but one thing is infinitely clear: no amount of

money can fairly compensate for the hell that those in the food and service industries endure (the bulk of minimum wage occupations).

To illustrate this very point, nine employees at a Burger King in Lincoln, Nebraska left simultaneously -“We all quit, sorry for the inconvenience” , the sign read. Employees leaving all at once points to an alarming, yet long-existing trend in minimum wage jobs: being undervalued and disrespected. One of the workers who quit at Burger King, Kylee Johnson, put it plainly: “We became essential, and then we weren’t treated as essential by upper management. ” Johnson and others report that a worker was allegedly hospitalized with dehydration, and put to work under “borderline sweatshop conditions” for over eight hours without breaks. The impact of the reopenings of business after business in the United States amid a largely vaccinated population has had scores of workers leaving, finally expressing their anger and rightful resentment against the very managers that claim to care for them in company statements. Workers’ concerns are often pushed aside until it’s time for publicity, so many feel that enough is enough - and rightfully so.

During the COVID-19 crisis, workers in the service industry feel especially disregarded, not being seen as human beings providing much-needed labor for the economy. Instead, the management as well as society as a whole continues to take these workers for granted. Even prior to the pandemic, jokes about working at McDonald’s being seen as a sign of academic failure ran amuck or being a dropout working at any fast-food joint was mocked constantly.

The jokes, the devaluing of customers, the lack of fair monetary compensation in a timely manner, all of it stems from the bigger issues of classism and elitism. When the middle and upper classes benefit largely from the very same services that these minimum wage workers provide, yet they taunt them for providing it, the hypocrisy bleeds through. It’s our legislators but our peers as well who contribute to the vast epidemic of not only COVID affecting our economy, but the suffering of those who help make our bustling economy possible in the first place

Grade Level Reading:

plus