No, the working poor can't just "get a better job"... Here's why

One of my sisters made $9.50 per hour working as an assistant kitchen manager at a fast food restaurant in Tennessee before COVID-19 struck. This was "good" money for the area; she’d been there a while. But she still qualified for Medicaid and food stamps because she could never get enough steady or guaranteed hours, even when promised them. There was always someone new who could be hired for less. 

The chain gave a $2 per hour extra hazard pay in March and April if you’d work so she took it despite having an underlying condition that made her vulnerable and despite living with my 80-something-year old dad at the time. Then she got exposed to COVID at work by a coworker in April and was told she needed to go get a test; but she kept calling around and nobody would give her a test because she wasn’t symptomatic. It wasn’t enough that her coworker who she was on shift with was laying in a hospital bed in the nearest big city, an hour away. Without a test, best guidelines are to quarantine for 14 days. 

 It took her four days to find a place that she could get a doctors note—still no test—and she’d have to pay $135 out of pocket. They didn’t take Medicaid. So she went. She had to wait till my dad could take her because she doesn’t have a car. She’s never been able to afford one, even when she was an elder care worker, making $10/hr.

Can you imagine what that's like? Never earning enough to own a car--or if you do scrape together money, you're only able to afford an unreliable car?

I called in and paid the $135 for her. It was six days since she’d been to work and my dad drove her straight from the clinic to the fast food joint so she could give the note and get it on time to get on the next week’s schedule. The manager said, “Sorry, you abandoned your job. No coming back.” A former colleague told her the manager had replaced her with someone else who was now making $8/hr, with no hazard pay. 

She had no recourse. It was her word against theirs and she had no real protections in Tennessee. We even called the corporate office. They never returned calls or emails. She filed for unemployment and the fast food company, luckily, didn’t deny her claim. She collected for four weeks—at the $600 a week. But, that sum meant she lost her food stamps and was in danger of losing Medicaid, but she also would not be able to afford to go to the doctor or her medicines for an underlying condition without Medicaid. This is the situation for many working poor--to the point that it was hard not to feel outrage when I'd hear people say "they make more staying home, why would they want to work." That "they"? It's a lot of working poor Americans (many white, rural dwellers) who have to choose between finally having a weekly check that is beyond anything they could have imagined or money for doctors and medicine.

She was job hunting from the day she was officially let go. She saved some of that extra unemployment money move out to an efficiency motel near an area with fast food and hotel jobs, as she’d planned, to ease the driving burden (35 minutes each way on windy mountain roads) on my dad. It's not at all unusual for the working poor to live at efficiency motels. There's a whole community of people she knew who already lived there. Other fast food workers, just trying to get by.

Can you imagine if your normal was living in a motel room? Because that's the only way you can easily afford to live and get to work--because you can't afford a car?

She got another job at another fast food joint, walking distance from the motel. This time for $8/hr. Much less then she made before. They promised 32 hours a week, minimum. They never gave her more than 26. Some weeks they gave her 12. She couldn’t make her $175/week rent. When she asked for steady hours she was promised, they stopped putting her on the schedule. I started sending her emergency money so she wouldn’t be homeless. She applied for unemployment again and emergency food stamps. She immediately started applying for other jobs. Five weeks went by and she’s never got an unemployment check, despite certifying, calling, trying to reach a human. I sent her what I could. But the bad economy means I didn’t get a raise this year and I’ve got a family to support, too. 

Three weeks ago, she got a housekeeping job for barely over minimum wage—$7.50 per hour—at a hotel, but there was a paperwork issue. I sent her enough to cover rent and her phone bill. Do the math. At $7.50 per hour, 32 promised hours, that’s $240 per week before taxes. Her rent is $175/week. Her cell phone, cheapest plan she can find that works in the foothills, is just under $50/month. She currently receives $204/month for food from food stamps, that’s $50 a week. For an entire human being. $6.80 a day. Not a lot of nutritious food can be purchased for that. 

Can you imagine being paid less and less each job and trying to feed yourself a nutritious diet on $6.80/a day or less?

She kept applying for jobs. Perhaps the delay in paperwork was a blessing, because last week she got a job at a gas station convenience store--one of those jobs fewer people want because it comes with additional dangers (robbery, shoplifting and other concerns employees deal with). But, it paid $9 an hour and they promised 32 hours a week. She started Saturday.

But do the math. That's $288 a week, before taxes. She'll still qualify for at least $185 in food stamps a month. And Medicaid. And the free clinic. She'll be working--she's always been a really hard and eager worker--practically full time, but one slip, one sick day, one shift not assigned, and she will be behind again. There's no getting ahead, not ever, only just barely treading water. And she's 37 years old.

There are tens of thousands of people just like her across the U.S. particularly in states where the minimum wage remains at the long-stagnant federal level of $7.25 per hour. In many places--most, really--local and state laws don't require a living wage. There are no repercussions for businesses that promise hours and then don’t deliver. Benefits for the working poor are continually reduced at the federal level without any demands on employers to pay enough that workers don't need assistance programs or don't need to live in motels. And, not to be too political, but Republican-dominated legislatures at state and federal levels consistently vote down minimum wage increases and repeatedly vote to decimate the safety net that keeps working poor people like my sister merely subsisting at the best of times and needing help from friends and family at many times. And companies lobby for this reality--to have higher wage efforts quashed.

"Roughly 60 percent of all workers in the bottom decile of wage earners (those paid less than $7.42 per hour) receive some form of government-provided assistance, either directly or through a family member. Similarly, over half (52.6 percent) of workers in the second decile of wage earners (those paid between $7.42 and $9.91 per hour) receive public assistance," according to the Economic Policy Institute a few years back.

Every job my sister has had has been with a company whose name you know. Whose food you eat. Whose rooms you stay in when you travel. Whose gas you buy. The jobs she's had--home care for the elderly, gas station clerk, fast food worker--you or someone you know relies on these roles. To care for your elderly parent or grandparent, to make sure they take their medicines and are safe in their homes. To be there so you can grab a snack or your favorite coffee when you fill up on the way to your job that surely pays more than $288 per week and probably offers health insurance as a benefit. To be there behind the counter so you can pick up lunch on your guaranteed lunch break or just because you feel like a burger and fries.

Can you imagine being paid so little or getting so few hours that no matter how hard you work, you could never get by without food stamps and Medicaid?

Nobody would argue these jobs don't need to be done. But have you ever stopped to think about the people who do them? They're so underpaid they qualify for food stamps and free clinics. They live without a lot of the protections professionals have. They're not one paycheck from ruin, they're one shift from ruin. They're employed by companies whose profits fuel investor and shareholder gains, yet they are always in danger of losing everything if a simple scheduling error gives them eight hours less. Or if Covid-19 comes to their workplace. Or if the boss just doesn't like them. Or if someone else can be hired for a dollar less an hour. There is no American Dream for the vast majority of the working poor.

The working poor can't just get a better-paying job. The next job is more likely to pay less than the last. The argument that higher minimum wages hurts business hasn't proven out, according to much of the research on the topic.

Why should paying a living wage or living up to the hours you promise have to be legislated at all?

Why should you need a college degree to "deserve" a living wage? Why should it be that I escaped the lower middle class life while my sister fell further? What does that say about the many companies that only make sure their people make enough to not get food stamps if the government forces their hand? It's well past time for corporate America to do better.

Can you imagine a society where we didn't blame poverty on the poor, but on those who hold the power to end it?