Struggles That Low-Wage Workers Had to Suffered

Trieu Uy

Professor: Krishana Munoz-Hodgson

English 28

November 7, 2017

Struggles that Low-wage Workers had to Suffered

        There are too many struggles that prevent lower employees to have a good life. No healthy food is one of many struggles that low-wage workers have to face. With many difficulties in life, minimum wage workers still can overcome and keep looking for ways to change their life. In chapter two of Nickel and Dimed, which is written by Barbara Ehrenreich in 2001, she was undercover work in an area where people get paid with low salary, experienced in a motel, worked in Maine. She claims that minimum wage workers didn’t eat healthy food because the lack of times and money, worker were treated unequally by co-worker, employers, bosses so, they usually got stressful and Barbara was suffered all those struggles, too. At last, low-wage workers have to overcome many problems likes no healthy food, pressure, carelessness from bosses, managers, living far away from jobs or even no accommodation. Those people tried their best to live through miserable life.

        People were usually afraid to lose their jobs because of the low salary they got and many fees to pay. They even had to work through pain, illness to earn money, bit by bit. Barbara worked in the Maid, she met Holly, her co-worker, a pregnant maid, whose alarmingly pale, seems abnormally thin, and never seems to eat more than a tiny cracker sandwich during her eight-to-nine-hour-long shift. As the author claims that lots of low-wage workers afraid to lose their job, as Holly, she lets her manager exploit her, in spite of her injure, twisted ankle, she still wanted to work. As the author said: “You hear me, Holly? You can't work on this ankle.” (page 63, p.3) Barbara told Holly to not to work. However, she didn’t listen to Barbara and called her manager and apologize weepily to him. As she believes that their manager, Ted, who was keep putting money above his employees’ health. He just only encouraged them to work harder, despite that they were sick, illness. He said: "working through it," and "calm down," (page 63, p.4). Because they got paid so low, they had to have multiple jobs, afraid to lose jobs, so they could earn enough for their living fees, for food.

        Other struggle that minimum wage workers had to face was no healthy food, as a result of lack of money and times. As the author wrote: “…limited to any two of the following: one-box spaghetti noodles, one jar spaghetti sauce, one can of vegetables, one can of baked beans, one pound of hamburger, a box of Hamburger Helper, or a box of Tuna Helper. No fresh fruit or vegetables, no chicken or cheese, and oddly, no tuna to help out with.” Because they lack of times and money, two or more jobs, low salary. As a result, they had to get food from Shop-n-Save, free lunches at the Woodcrest, which was far away from their work. Furthermore, she was treated unkindly, looked down by other people, by the cashier at the convenient store. It’s because those foods were free, cheap although they were unhealthy food as she mentioned in page 59. Sadly, those foods just enough for keeping them alive, had stamina to work for a whole day, it’s not enough for their health. 

        The other difficulties that low-wage workers had to suffered is that treated unequally and unkindly by their manager. As the author wrote: “This is not, for us, an occasion for joy like a snow day for the grade-school crowd, because Ted blames us for his customers’ fecklessness.” (page 51) She emphasizes that manager could blame anything on them, just because they were low-wage worker and they need that job to survive through days. Ted just only care about money that his customers paid, above his employees’ health. Even just a little mistake, those managers could blame on those poor workers, punished for no reason. The author said: “Ted doesn’t have much sympathy for illness, though; one of our morning meetings was on the subject of ‘working through it’.” (page 51)