PAYING IS PRAISING

$7.25. That's the federally mandated minimum wage, and it's a wage that hasn't been raised since Congress--as part of a three-step increase approved in 2007-- bumped it up from $6.55. Prior to 2007, the minimum wage had been stuck at $5.15 per hour for ten years and, adjusted for inflation, today's minimum wage is far lower than it was in 1970. At the current rate of $7.50 per hour, a person working full-time, year-round (FTYR) would pull in just a tad bit more than $15,000 per year. That's not going to get anybody much. That little bit of scratch is bound to leave you struggling. To eat. To keep a roof over your head. To pay for childcare. To keep the lights on. To play...to live.

And let's not forget about tipped employees, the folks who are primarily dependent upon tips for their earnings. Tipped employees include folks who make your favorite drink in the club, take your order after you're seated in your fav restaurant, move your stuff when you're transitioning to a new crib or gig, and the bellhops posted up at the hotel's front door, waiting to cart your baggage up to the room. Their wages have been stuck at a couple bucks per hour ($2.13) since 1991. Thirty years without a pay increase!

A RACE AND GENDERED COLORED BOTTOM

A long history of gender and racial discrimination has resulted in women, along with Black and Brown bodies, being disproportionately packed at the lowest rungs on the economic ladder. While women are slightly more than 48 percent of the overall workforce, they represent 55% of all those pulling in less than $15 dollars per hour.

And here's the comparable stats for Blacks and Latinos: We--Black folk-- make up 12% of the total workforce but 15 percent of all those earning less than; Latinos constitute 16.5% of the workforce but more than one out of every five persons--23%-- gigging for less than $15 bucks an hour.

By way of comparison, White folk are 64.5% of all workers but "only" 55.4% of those clocking less than $15 per hour. Low wages, then, is a serious issue for White workers but it is particularly weighty on the shoulders of women, Black, and Brown bodies.

ESSENTIAL AND FRONT-LINE WORKERS

Media is saturated with posts, articles, and news stories encouraging and praising those essential and front-line workers who continue to report and hold it down at work amid a pandemic that has already claimed 500,000 lives. Many of these workers can't get it done via a zoom conference. They--especially the front-line folk who must be physically present at the worksite-- can't get it done by grabbing a laptop and tapping on the keyboard. They're people like the cashiers who, despite the risk of catching a case of COVID, must show up and ring up the stuff we bring up to the counter. They're people like janitors and cleaners, mopping and sweeping floors, and wiping down with disinfectant all the things we touch. They're people like home-health aids who continue to provide care to our loved ones. They're the nursing assistants and the substitute teachers. The median pay of many of these folks falls well below $15 an hour.

Praise is good but you can't eat it, and the rent don't wait. Many of these folks have been risking their lives, and few things are more horrendous, more stress producing, than jobs that pay low but heightened your risk of getting dead.

Further, a recent study, essential and front-line workers "make up a majority (60%) of those who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage." That same study indicates that the Raise the Wage Act, once fully phased in, would lift millions out of poverty, reverse decades of growing pay inequality, improve infant health, and help stimulate economic activity and job growth.

PAYING IS PRAISING

So, enough already with the verbal praise. If we truly value women, Black, and Brown workers is beyond time to start paying them wages that lighten the burden they bear. It's time to realize that the best way to praise these workers is by putting ducats in their pockets. It's time to realize that paying is one of the best ways of praising.

Catch you on the flip side,

Doc Greene