Last week a Republican congressman who was born to wealth and has never held a real job demeaned the worth of low-wage workers, and asserted the GOP does them a favor by blocking a federal minimum wage increase, because that keeps them employable. For details, see my previous article:
This clueless and patronizing shill for employers craving cheap labor doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Minimum-wage workers get the worst of all worlds — low pay with no benefits, hard and dirty work, nasty and uncompromising employers. As a general rule, the less a job pays, the worse it is. The kind of job that people would walk away from if they could.
Here’s what the lives of minimum-wage workers are really like: “A hotel maid told Al Jazeera America: ‘My boss is making me work tonight and tomorrow night. If I didn’t go in, I would lose my job.’ She has to commute 25 miles on dangerous roads to make less than minimum wage.”
Frankly, I don’t think Rep. McClintock could cut it in the world of real work. He wouldn’t last a day on a job like that. Heck, he wouldn’t even make it in to work. It must be nice to have money handed to him, so he doesn’t have to work and can spend his time playing at public policy. I’m sure that hotel maid can’t imagine such a life. She’s too busy working.
Photo: Minimum-wage worker trudging to work through yesterday’s snowstorm under an employer’s show-up-or-get-fired rules. Photo credit: Anthony Quintano via Truthdig.