Don't miss "Waging a Living" tonight, August 29th, on PBS at 10 ET (check listings for local times.) No talking heads, no pie charts -- just the dramas and tragedies of real people trying to support their families on $8-11 an hour. Filmmaker Roger Weisberg followed four low-wage workers for over a year -- into their homes and workplaces -- and let them speak for themselves. The result is a powerful and enlightening film!

Comments

[Thena in Maine]

It's starting in a few minutes. I'd love to watch it - PBS is one of the two stations we get, with no antenna and no cable - but I've got to get to bed so I can head out to my no-benefits under-$10/hr job in the morning. (It's a good job for this area, though - the really bad ones pay $6.50)

Maybe they'll rerun it some time...

[Arrow]

I saw it. It was heartbreaking. Question is: what can we do about this? We working stiffs feel somewhat powerless.

[Martha]

I was listening to an interview w/you on WLRN yesterday. It was a re-run of one from last yr. about Bait and Switch. I have been in a downwards spiral since the 1990's and agree w/everything you say about trying to find a job. I am a single mom with a 17 yr old daughter and it has been H--- for me the last 15 yrs. I am currently just working part time and am soooooo discouraged about the job market and the state of our country. I'll probably lose my house before it's all over and done with. Employer's only want a perky young thing with half her breasts exposed. No skills needed.
Where can I find work for a truly hard working skilled person?
I completed and online application for Winn Dixie that was truly degrading. It felt as if I was applying for a position @ the Treasury!! I am a good person, honest, hardworking with a brain in my head, but it doesn't matter. It came back yellow, yellow which I take to mean be cautious of this person. All because I had a divorce, have had no help from my ex-husband and have struggled to make both ends meet. I am VERY DISCOURAGED!!!! Let's mark this person as a risk because she's been trying hard to keep a head over herself and child w/o going on welfare!!!
The state of this country is very seriously SAD. I fear for it.

[gaby]

I am in my mid-forties I have finally accepted the fact that I will always be somebody's assistant despite an Undergraduate Degree. Lack of nepotism, connection and age made it difficult rise to managment levels. Afterall, I was already in my mid-thirties when I graduated. In my current jobsearch I am dismayed at how many companies require their assistants to have a Bachelor degree, yet offer only an assistant's wage. Something is really, really wrong here.

[Lee A. Arnold]

For a video flow-chart look at the distribution of income, see the first part of "Social Security" at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tts2uTWt6e8

and see Chap. 2 of "Tax Cuts" at:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SA1f2MefsMM

[Barbsright]

What happened to the secuity guards' better paying job also happened to a friend of mine from college. A woman took over at his old jobsite and basically did not like him, so he went from first shift at $10.50 hr with health insurance, to a new secuity company where he worked second and third shift at $9.00hr, without health insurance. They then fired him at his new company because he is a 'nerdy' guy and there is no longer a place around here for 'nerdy' guys. He worked at his previous job for over 13 yrs,has a college degree, and is very bright. So much for intelligence and education getting you a good job. I should note that around here $10.50hr plus health insurance is a living wage for a single man. The value of secuity work must be falling if my friends' drop in pay, and benefits, of over $5000.00 is to be considered along with the guard profiled in Waging a Living.

[eddy]

I recorded it earlier and finally got to watch it.

Wow. Just...wow. I had to just sit for a few minutes afterward and ponder.

Keep in mind that was only five people, the merest fraction of those living the same way. This is the richest nation on earth. It's a sin.

Martha:I've been in the same situation. It's never enough to be hard working. They want your life and your soul. Where I am, it seems not job can be had that's less than 50-60 hours/wk. And if you have kids, you simply can't BE at work all the darn time. But they don't see it that way.

In short, we have become a slave state overnight. It's the New Feudalism, I call it. You get to work the master's property all day in exchange for a tiny portion of the harvest. The master gives you......the right to come back and work his property.

Like that lady said in the beginning, there is no American Dream anymore. There was a brief time when it was real, but no more. Now it's haves and have nots, and no amount of hard work will make a have not into a have. At least for most of us.

All they want from us is shut up, work, breed, and die early. Our poverty is our own fault(they really believe this). Work harder. No, harder than that.

Seems to me 200 some odd years ago a brave group of gentlemen fought against this very thing, and won. Go figure.

[MB]

The most insightful comment in the film came from the supervisor who was disappointed about losing a good worker to the part-time school/work routine, but was empathetic about the young mother's need to get out of the system (the welfare-subsidized employment system) so she can "hang in here like the rest of us." --an apt description of the career path/American dream ladder-climbing work experience of huge parts of the American labor force. Although not as vulnerable as the subjects of the film, I recognized the double-bind situations of being stuck and needing to make narrow life decisions around the preservation of access to health insurance. My own bachelor's degree has run out of steam so apparently I need to run another treadmill routine of part-time shool/work for "an" advanced degree. (I know Art History won't do too much for me in that regard but at least the pursuit of a grad degree--any grad degree, apparently-- can purchase my way out of my dead-end job that at least has health and pension benefits. But wouldn't it be better if I came to my senses and suddenly wanted an MBA or a nursing degree. In other words, doing good work in your current high-skilled job is not enough to grow within the job.)

Recruitment ads for the US Army scream out, Be All That You Can Be!, a good motto for everyone to live by. Yet this country is not sincere about everyone becoming All That They Can Be, that's only a reality for privileged young people, whose affluent families ease the awkward transitions between school and the employment of their dreams. But the damage to our country will unfold over time--we need the most highly skilled and highly educated workforce to meet the challenges of the future. Yet, we waste vast amounts of people and lives here at home. At this time, huge amounts of smart people, hard workers go to work and can reasonably only aspire to the privilege to just "hang in here like the rest of us." My co-worker describes this putting up with exploitive/non-growth work situations as "adding weeks to my severence package." What kind of future does this country build when so many of us have so low expectations?

The healthcare racket is unbelievable. Not only are bad jobs being created by employers who are staffing hospitals and nursing homes with a welfare-subsidized labor force, the people in the care of these institutions suffer as well. The woman who has worked steadily as a nurse's aide for more than ten years, and whose boss told her that if she was younger he would suggest that she go back to school for an LPN degree (he should get fired from his well-paid healthcare desk-job for such age-ist/sexist commentary)--she should be able to grow with her job and gain credits for her work experience towards higher-paid credentialing. All healthcare workers, including doctors, learn on the job and spend short periods in classrooms. There is no good reason why her current job does not have pathways for advancement within the workplace, especially since the work she performs is so vital to the care and well-being of other people.

This country can do better. We must demand that this country do better.

[eddy]

Education has become a job now. More than that, a god of sorts.

Education is good, and necessary. But when much of your citizenry is forced to spend a major portion of their adult lives continually getting educated to advance in jobs experience should more than cover, you need to ask hard questions. Why has education now become an industry in itself?

There is a such thing as going overboard with it. If one is designing spaceships or cutting edge computer tech, then I'd say fine. That person would need to stay current or ahead of the curve.

But to be a nurses aide? To advance in jobs that as little as 20 years ago they'd be more than qualified for with current experience? Has it advanced that much?

Answer: no it has not. Fact is, the education system is being used as a tool to seperate the classes, as MB alluded to. It comes down to a priveleged old boy network finding a way to preserve that privilege. Since they cannot openly discriminate on the basis or race, gender, religion, etc, the next best thing is economics. How to do that?

USE the educational system as a filter. Make a degree a 'requirement' to advance. When too many degrees are around, make it grad work(this is the stage we are at). When grad work gets too easy, raise the bar even higher.

All the time keep raising the price. Thus you weed out 'undesirables' (cuz if they were desirable they'd be one of you), without looking like you are doing so. When someone figures it out, you tell them it's their own fault. If they only 'worked harder' they'd get ahead. But guess what? While you are doing what they 'require', they are moving the goal posts.

Fact is, it's all designed to make SURE very very few people move from their 'place'. Once that becomes apparent, it makes total sense. If we analyze it in terms of an educated workforce, it seems overkill, cuz it is. They don't want educated workforce so much as they want a nation of slaves pushing ever harder for a carrot that they'll never get.

Cuz when you work harder, they get richer. What do you think 'productivity' means?

[bg]

I'd love to watch this documentary but I'm not in the US, which seems to make it impossible. Also sad because it would make a really good "real" source for my master thesis.

[Jacqueline]

When none of us peons can afford anything anymore and the effects of that are felt at the corporate elite level when companies can't sell their products and services anymore because nobody else has enough money to be able to live, this will come full circle and eventually bite the rich in the ass. But we should not have to wait for that to happen. We should take action now - by massive protests and incumbent-booting, and property tax strikes if necessary.