Meagan - Rice University
Meagan Barry
BIOE 301
March 24, 2006
“Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America” by Barbara Ehrenreich
In this country, there are many high paying jobs that offer great advancement. These jobs are what most aspire to. However, there are also the less glamorous jobs in which one has to perform work that requires great leaps of focus, stamina, and memory for no more than minimum wage. In her book, Barbara Ehrenreich seeks to raise public awareness on the issue of minimum wage living by writing as an undercover journalist while infiltrating the “unskilled” work force.
Ms. Ehrenreich originally proposed the idea of the book to the editor of Harper’s, not knowing that she would be the person sent to investigate. Heading off with only a few personal items, a car and $1000 for unexpected expenses, she left her comfortable life and joined the ranks of the minimum wage workers to try to find a job in which she could live sustainably by earning enough money to pay the next month’s rent. Ms. Ehrenreich had certain rules for her investigation to better mimic the life of a minimum wage worker such as not being allowed to use the skills available to her because of her education, having to take the highest-paying job offered to her, doing her best to keep her job, and taking the cheapest housing she could find.
She first worked concurrently at two restaurants in Florida, to make ends meet. However, after only two weeks, she quit mid-shift at one of the restaurants because of a strenuously busy night. She then moved to Maine to work as a dietary aide at a nursing home and as a maid in a cleaning business. As with the last jobs, Ms. Ehrenreich also quits these jobs due to work overload and work-related stress. The third and last stop in her investigation was Minnesota where she took a job working the floor at Wal-Mart.
In “Nickel and Dimed, ” Ms. Ehrenreich writes out against the stereotypes that many upper-class citizens hold; namely that “a job will end poverty” and that people who rely on the welfare system are “too lazy to work.” Despite the fact that Ms. Ehrenreich had the advantages of an education (Ph.D. in biology), initial funds, and no family to support (conditions unlike what many minimum wage workers face) she was still unable to live a sustainable lifestyle. Ms. Ehrenreich also combats the idea of “unskilled” labor by describing the mental and physical rigors of the jobs she took and describes how often pain from repetitive stress injuries is “worked through” in order to hold on to a job in a market with a fast turnover. This, I would imagine, is a source of lost DALYs or QALYs that a person in a more secure, higher paying job would not have to succumb to.
Ms. Ehrenreich states that to support one person much less a family, one low wage job is often not enough. As housing prices soar and wages remain the same, people on welfare are not simply living on the generosity of the government. The welfare reform of 1996, which this book was written as a response to, made the situation even more difficult for these people, by forcing them to live on what Ms. Ehrenreich could not, namely minimum wage jobs. Ms. Ehrenreich takes the argument even one step further by saying that the upper classes are actually living on the generosity of the minimum wage workers; that the work they perform for a life that is often unsustainable is what allows us to live the comfortable life that we are accustomed to.
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