The author of this article, Barbara Ehrenreich, dives into her article by discussing her plan to enter the low-wage workforce. She adjusts by trying to go on a $500-a-month “plan”. She went into this with 2 rules. First one being that she cannot use any skills she learned from education or usual work. The second one was that she had to take the best paid job that is offered to her and do her best to hold onto that job. She also had mentioned that she had various jobs she wanted to avoid one being waitressing. Ironically she decided on to take a waitress job at a restaurant called Hearthside with a wage of $2.43 plus any tips. At first the job went well but then she talks about some “problems”, one being how her manager is always on everyone's
Who is Barbara Ehrenreich? Barbara Ehrenreich is a bestselling author! Ehrenreich is best known for her book “ Nickel and Dimed”. The book is about Ehrenreich herself doing a three month, experiment project. Ehrenreich is challenging herself to survive, three months on minimum wage.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America is a critically acclaimed investigative biography of a reporter going undercover to see how individuals manage to live on minimum wage across America. More specifically, Barbara was curious about how were “the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour” (1)? Ehrenreich developed a plan and some rules for her undercover research for finding jobs, housing, and living expenses. The research for this book covered a span of three states, Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, between spring of 1998 and summer of 2000.
In this book of nonfiction based on the journalist's experiential research, Ehrenreich attempts to ascertain whether it is currently possible for an individual to live on a minimum-wage in America. Taking jobs as a waitress, a maid in a cleaning service, and a Walmart sales employee, the author summarizes and reflects on her work, her relationships with fellow workers, and her financial struggles in each situation. An experienced journalist, Ehrenreich is aware of the limitations
For a solution, we need to change the fundamental way employers like Walmart and McDonald’s do business. He would also say that in addition to raising minimum wage we need to have all kinds of social programs to prop-up the low-wage workers. We need a “strong economy and a tight job market” (34). 2. After I read writer A (Surowiecki), I thought . . .
Minimum wage has always been a difficult topic to talk about in political situations with questions about increasing or decreasing it forever on the ballot. In today’s economic state there has been an increase of the minimum wage in several states such as California; which has caused a debate on the national level of how much the lower class can live on. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book she tries out low wage living and documents it in Nickel and Dimed, in her opinion it's barely possible to survive on low wages for even one person. To show this she employs conversational and concrete diction to show the difficulties of living two lives that are at different poles of the economic scale and the ignorance of both classes to those besides themselves with a confusion of audiences.
Individual’s attitude definitely makes or breaks how they feel about their jobs. In addition, the workers’ attitudes and need result from their reason for working. Most of the employees in Gig work simply because they want to remain busy or they knew what they like, enjoyed or had the addition qualifications for those jobs. However, Ehrenreich worked the minimum wage jobs because she needed to support herself, keep food on the table and a roof over her head.
She explains that it is mathematically impossible to make a living off $6-$7, and through her experiment we can clearly see this. Barbara was unable to make ends meet and eventually was forced to find another job to bring in a second income. She was unable to make it to the grocery store often, due to lack of gas money, and was eating unhealthy food every day and was even losing weight within the four-week time frame. Individuals who are working in low wage jobs are also experiencing living in conditions that are not favorable. Some are living in vehicles, others are paying for a hotel room night to night, and some are living with others that they can’t tolerate rate.
The impact that any activist has on society, stems from lifetime commitment, determination and passion that allows drastic changes to be made in even the most stubborn societies. Significant activists channel their talent into persuasion for change. Many activists that have had a great societal impact in the past, use exposure as persuasion. Exposing the truth on important matters that are not visible to the public, is the most genuine way to activate change. That is exactly how Barbara Ehrenreich carried out bringing great attention to women's rights in healthcare.
Because the cost of living has welkin rocketed, it has become virtually infeasible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be exorbitant. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families salubrity. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than a moiety of his or her family 's weekly earnings.
Desperate for money, she worked 12-hour days, six days a week. First she worked as a cook, then in a nail salon. To this day she still feels
Minimum wage and poverty With everything going on with the Walmart workers picketing for fifteen dollars an hour wages, the topic is widely discussed with many people taking many different sides. The essay “Raising the Minimum wage will reduce poverty” By Sharon Parrott and Jason Furman, They go into how they think the minimum wage should be raised in order to decrease poverty in america, Of course there are reasons to raise it and reasons to not raise it. Yet with the multitude of reasons for and against it, it’s hard to make a decision that makes everybody content, Some of the reasons not to raise it include, Raising it can make prices for everyday items go up, Why go and spend thousands of dollars on college when you could get a decent job right out of high school, and Why let workers who work at unskilled jobs make as much if not more than the military. Some reasons for minimum wage raising is, The fact that the cost of living is higher means people can’t survive with minimum wage without federal care, And just helping people get back on their feet when they couldn’t find a job. The reasons Minimum wage shouldn’t be raised outweigh the reasons it should.
Which leads to the rebuttal of the argumentative piece, “Curiously, most members of Congress who take a hard line on immigration also strongly oppose increasing the minimum wage, claiming it will hurt businesses and reduce jobs” (Dukakis & Mitchell, 2006). Nonetheless the authors have an exception to this rebuttal, that is if “We want to reduce illegal immigration, it makes sense to reduce the abundance of extremely low-paying jobs that fuels it. If we raise the minimum wage, it’s possible some low- end jobs may be lost; but more Americans would also be willing to work in such jobs, thereby denying them to people who aren’t supposed to be here in the first place” Assuming that most american citizens are going to work, they would take up all the jobs provided out there, assuming that the minimum wage went up and they would be payed better (Dukakis & Mitchell,
The Minimum Wage Struggle Money is an essential object to acquire in the society we live in. Various places demand a high monthly rate in order to occupy a premise, along with the stress of utility bills that may not be included. Aside from living costs there are many other factors which must be calculated when budgeting on a day to day basis. Overall, the survival rate tends to increase due to so many responsibilities that need to be upheld, as well as costs being raised. This rise in both the cost of living as well as the need for higher wages proves that the standard of minimum wage needs a major increase.
I know from personal experience that it is a rough life without being able to get educated and find a high paying job. The minimum wage is not high enough for people to make a living off of if needed. For example, Colleen, one of Ehrenreich’s coworkers at the hotel in Maine says, “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they
For these services she is paid twelve dollars an hour. It is these jobs that can lead to her fourth accompaniment, which costs three times more than her standard hourly rate. As to be expected, a third of her income must go to the owner of the bar, also known as her pimp. What is sad about this interview is that this young girl displays that she is ashamed of what she does. She was in a sense left with few options to help support her family, amid her parent’s financial struggles.