Minimum wage jobs are jobs for people that have no skills. These jobs are the type of work that most people “would not really want to do under any circumstances.”
Wait, what?
Americans United for Change, a progressive group, announced its new “Live the Wage” challenge Monday morning, calling on lawmakers and citizens to attempt to live on a minimum wage equivalent for a week. Brad Woodhouse, the president of Americans United for Change, promoted this initiative on a conference call with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), former Gov. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), and Heather Holstein, a low-wage worker.
But while the initiative is designed to show support and solidarity for minimum wage workers, I was struck by how condescending the message was.
“Some of these people who make the minimum wage work harder than Mitch McConnell and John Boehner or any of the rest of us. They do work that we probably would not really want to do under any circumstances,” Strickland said.
“As someone who has taken the food stamp challenge three times now, I can tell you, there is no substitute for experience,” Schakowsky said.
“A lot of times our friends in the tea party or in the conservative movement try to marginalize these men and women who work extremely hard in many jobs that those of us in Congress or many of those in Congress wouldn’t dare dream of ever doing. The people that clean the hotel rooms, make sure our public facilities are clean – these kinds of jobs are tough work,” Ryan said. “…This challenge gives us an opportunity to step into their shoes for a week.”
Isn’t perpetuating a system that keeps people in these minimum wage jobs – even if the minimum wage is raised – marginalizing workers?
This thought process is in direct contrast to Republican Rep. Rand Paul’s stance on the minimum wage, brought up in a speech over the weekend.
Paul argues that minimum wage should be “temporary.”
“It’s a chance to get started. I see my son come home with his tips. And he’s got cash in his hand and he’s proud of himself. I don’t want him to stop there. But he’s working and he’s understanding the value of work. We shouldn’t disparage that,” Paul said at the Reboot conference.
Woodhouse took aim at Republicans on the conference call, stating that raising the minimum wage was an act of “human decency” and daring them to take his organization’s challenge.
But why is living on $77, the approximate weekly budget after taxes and housing for someone earning the federal minimum wage, for one week better than discussing upward mobility?
Why is wanting people to use minimum wage jobs as a stepping stone considered marginalization, while calling those jobs undesirable and permanent is not?
It’s time to reframe the minimum wage debate.
