General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt's Interesting That Many "Essential Workers" Are Also "Poorly Paid Workers"
Today is trash and recycling day on my block. The trash truck and recycling truck will pick up and dump our wheelie bins. Operated by poorly paid workers, who are classed as "Essential Workers."
The same is true of the clerks at my supermarket, the people working at the drugstore, and many, many others.
We depend on them. The government calls them essential. Yet, they are paid wages that don't allow them to live on their paychecks.
There's something wrong with that. Very wrong.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Krogers pays $7.50/hr in Memphis region, so workers have told me.
😳🤯😰
dailytroubadour
(41 posts)Mineralman. Time to start paying people what they deserve.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)We need to stop treating people who do important jobs we all count on as second-class citizens.
redstatebluegirl
(12,264 posts)I think that is why there is such a high percentage of African American's dying. Our mailperson is Black, our trash guys are Hispanic, the lady I love at the grocery store is Black and over 60.
This whole thing is wrong on so many levels.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)uponit7771
(90,225 posts)Yavin4
(35,357 posts)And we treat money manipulators as if they were Gods.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)There are many facets of our 'market economy' being shown up for stark nonesense in this crisis of contagion. Better the fellow who delivers the groceries than a dozen stock-jobbers or bankers....
"Defeat of a hated enemy is something to be for."
malaise
(267,823 posts)by any other name
superpatriotman
(6,232 posts)Union!
Union!
Union!
Get the idea?
kentuck
(110,950 posts)...are also lower paid jobs.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)I use the pyramid metaphor, though those at the top may not see it that way or choose not to.
The entire system is really resting on the lowest workers as a foundation in one way or another, for now. I think we are going to see that played out during the crisis. It may not be directly hierarchical, but it is similar.
Meanwhile, we hear the wealthy justify their holdings and acquisitions. The self-made person. The hard worker who made it to the top, (there are a few, but not all of them). That facade of elite, justified entitlement has been rather easy to maintain. During a crisis or breakdown, it gets a flimsy and see through as cheap lingerie.
I think we should keep driving that home since we have rarely seen the spotlight on the workers who keep things running and yet, live most precarious and stressful lives with no more of that implied upward mobility of the past, sustenance wages and a paycheck-to-paycheck life until the grave. Inequity can have results for an entire society as we are seeing.
Down the roads, more automation and AI will only exacerbate this huge, inflamed wound in America. It will not just go away and get better, we have to make it so.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)There are many others, like nurses and doctors, who are well paid, but they, too, are risking their lives to do their jobs. However, for every one of them there are 10 others who are working for minimum wage, but are expected to risk their lives, as well. In the same hospitals, there are low-paid CNAs, Janitors, maintenance people, and others who are taking similar risks, but for far less pay.
It's important right now to recognize that and think about how it can and should be changed, I think.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)Out of chaos, order, as an old saying goes.
Times like these may be difficult and chaotic, filled with uncertainty and fear, but they also reveal the great cracks and faults in the system and that can give us an opportunity to change and improve it.
We also, notice how the upper-crust are asking for handouts and doing their best to do damage control for their part of the system.
I guess vigilance and solidarity are the way to go. We may be able to start acting on it. At least, we can start considering it and envisioning potentials while we ride this storm out for a while.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,280 posts)the people who do those day-to-day tasks that we take for granted will be fairly compensated. How essential they really are didn't become obvious to most of us until now. I'm staying home and having groceries delivered instead of going out for them, and obviously I need the people who deliver them, as well as those who collect the food, and everybody else in the supply chain. The mailman comes every morning, just as His Lardship and his GOP goons are trying to destroy the USPS. And there are all the others: Yesterday there were city vehicles going through the alley sweeping the remaining snow away. On Friday the trash collectors will come and empty my bins, as they always have done. I hope there will be a movement to treat the people fairly who keep the wheels turning when the rest of us aren't watching.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)I've been thanking everyone profusely who is doing a job for low pay right now.
I can't pay them more, but I can at least acknowledge what they are doing.
fescuerescue
(4,448 posts)It's probably quite the opposite.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,746 posts)the trash and recycling people make reasonable money. Well above minimum wage.
Here's a link to average garbage truck driver salary by state. https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Garbage-Truck-Driver-Salary-by-State
I know there will be a good number who make less than the average, and where there's a driver and the guys who hop on and off the truck to throw the garbage or recycling in probably make less.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)come by, which made me think about it.
It's the principle of the thing.
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)That average might be skewed by central & southern IL companies.
The average salary for WM drivers in NE Illinois is $52k. That's $25/hr. The state average, per your cite, is $33k.
Folks doing that downstate must be working for minimum wage.
raccoon
(31,091 posts)MineralMan
(146,192 posts)tonedevil
(3,022 posts)from capitalism?
EarnestPutz
(2,086 posts)...but essential jobs, but seem to be in the majority when the media interviews doctors and nurses in emergency rooms and intensive care units about how the epidemic has burdened their operations. One would think that we live in some foreign country what with all the wonderful brown people, many of them women, who work and risk their lives for us every day. The folks who hate all immigrants and want to build a wall to keep them out had better hope that they don't catch this virus and have to confront their bigotry in the form of a nice women doctor from Syria who wears a hijab and pats their arm in a comforting manner.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)We're told again and again how the big shots deserve all the millions and billions they've acquired, and it's just because we're a bunch of lazy slackers that we aren't fabulously wealthy, too. As drains on society, we should be grateful for any crumbs that fall off the table of our betters (and you can tell who's better because they have so much more money). But where are they now? Why aren't they pitching in and saving this society they've built with their own two hands? The way things are organized inures to their great benefit, but it's the folks on the sanitation truck, the field workers on the farms, and other overworked folks holding things together for the rest of us.
Maybe when this is all over - or maybe even sooner - we should all sit down and make some adjustments to how we order society and how the wealth generated by labor gets distributed.
ck4829
(34,977 posts)fescuerescue
(4,448 posts)At least the locations I've lived.
A good friend from college dropped out of IT work and took a job with the city picking up garbage bins.
He has a better retirement plan than I do.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)They realize, even if we dont, that they dont make their money we do.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)and this catalyzes a return to the days when working people had power and decent incomes. The Democratic Party has always been on board. What we need is for this to "wash through" this conservative era as Trump puts it, sweeping Republicans out from power and a new liberal era in.
Meanwhile, an anti-science movement is being built on the right to make it politically feasible for red states to force people back to work and McConnell & co. to continue to block action.