Many workers in developing countries work long, hard hours for very low wages. Many companies benefit from low-wage work because they can spend less on employees which makes it easier for their companies to survive. On the other hand, the people who obtain these jobs dislike low-wage work, yet they know without these jobs they would have no income and could be living on the streets. Overall the two essays “No Sweat” and “Low Wage Strong Backs” discusses low wage workers and they talk about working conditions, one focus on both positive and negative effects of low wage work while the other focuses only on the negative effects.
The two essays No Sweat and Low Wage Strong Backs talks about workers who get low wages. In the essay No Sweat, “In Uzbekistan, thousands of children must pick 10 to 40 kg of cotton per day, earning a wage of 38 cents for their efforts (Garyfalakis, Page 299, Para. 3).” Also in the other essay Low Wages Strong Backs said that “this job pays $8 an hour. That’s nearly $3 more than I made last week stacking boxes of foam padding at a factory in Moonachie” (Meaghe...
The invisible workforce consists of the low-wage workers that face harsh working conditions, a few or no benefits, and long hours of labor that exceed the regular business week. Barbara Ehrenreich, narrates her experience of entering the service workforce, in the book Nickel and Dimed. She proves that getting by in America working a minimum wage job is impossible. Although, the book was written in the 1990’s, the conditions in which minimum wage workers lived still prevail today. Minimum wage no longer serves its original purpose of providing a living wage for the invisible workforce.
The wages are very low compared to Americans doing similar work, even if they work the hardest out of all the employees of the business. Shipler in his book talks about a young woman named Candalaria, who works for a sewing company and receives payments by sewing jeans and makes only 5 cents for each fly she sews on the jeans. But, since she is an illegal immigrant she barely receives the minimum wage for her work. According to Shipler, “To make California’s minimum wage, which was $5.75 at the time, that added up to 767 flies an hour, allowing her just under 5 seconds for each fly” (Shipler). The work, Candalaria has to do, is twice as much work as any other worker does; in order for her to live on a low-budget. Giving workers less money for a lot of work may seem like a dream for the boss of the company, but it could be the polar opposite thought. Shipler states “Paying so little may seem like a boon for a boss, but he isn’t always delighted” (Shipler). Shipler points out that people who run the company and notice a person that does a lot of hard work; only to be paid in such low amounts of money can be upsetting to witness. But, as of late, California has been taking a better shape for illegal immigrants that come into the country looking for a better life. According to Greenblatt, “California was the most active state last year,
The phenomena of Migrant Workers would not be possible if the migrants were able to get jobs elsewhere, but as many come from Third-World Countries with little economic possibilities, this is not possible. What has resulted is an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor to the United States. This willingness on the part of the workers to work for wages otherwise unacceptable in the United States is problematic. Employers in this position are not under any pressure to reveal truthful, or even any information about wage rates, and many workers do not ask how much they will be paid. As a result, workers often do not know how much they will paid until they are thousands of miles away from their homes, and frequently not until they are paid at the end of a week. This is the story for the Mexican blueberry pickers in Maine, and the growing number of apple pickers who are Jamaican.
Barbara Ehrenreich's intent in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America exhibited how minimum wage isn't enough for Americans to get by on and that there's no hope for the lower class. Her main objective was achieved by living out the life of the "working poor". During the three cases studies she worked many jobs that are worked by many that are simply striving to live day to day. The jobs she had didn't generate sufficient income to avoid or help her rise out of poverty, in fact the six to seven dollar jobs made survival considerably difficult. Enitially, she believe the jobs didn't require any skill but while on her journey she started to realize they were stressful and drained a lot of energy. In addition to that she saw it was almost impossible to get out of the rut of low paying professions once you're in. Barbra Ehrenreich moved throughout three locations attempting to prove her argument. In those states she obtained a job as a waitress, hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Not only did she learn about the low wages but also the treatment that was shown to the workers.
Expanded and strengthened state private insurance companies are to be expected since more younger Texans enter the market thanks to the premium support. Texas can expect savings through more proper use of medical care, lower numbers in Medicaid, and savings from increased recipient cost sharing. Texas must refuse to comply with the new high-risk pools. There are many reasons Texas should not comply but the main reason is poor design. Currently, eighteen states have decided not to participate in these pools, Texas is undecided. Any person with a pre-existing medical disorder whom has been without insurance for six month will qualify. The law gave the Department of Health discretion in determining with conditions qualifies. Theoretically, the Department of Health could say the flu is a pre existing medical condition. If Texas does not refuse to comply with these pools it is only a matter of time before the demand will exceed the supply. A huge concern is when the funding is gone what do the state politicians do. I see two options. One, state officials will end the coverage all together and pull the plug. Two, continue to allow the program to run with the use of state tax dollars.
Now lets take a look and see why sweatshop work is so horrendous. The way that sweatshops treat their workers is absolutely brutal. They force their workers to work all the way up to 60-80 hours per week and do not pay them nearly enough to even be able to provide food for their families. Sometimes the workers will only receive a few pennies for one whole day of work (Background). Another downfall is that the workers are sometimes even forced to work without receiving any wage until they have paid off escalating debts, which can end up taking several years to do. Basically, no matter how long these workers work they will still continue to be poverty stricken (Women).
Many people, all throughout history, have aspired to create a perfect life for themselves. However, this dream is not often very easily available. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about the decay of society, the blindness of love, and the pointless pursuit of the now non-existent American dream. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows the United States not in the glittering golden light that many claimed, but rather cast in a dark gloomy haze, polluted by crime, corruption, and moral decay. Fitzgerald also strikes down the notion that foolish love is harmless. Additionally, the author illustrates that the American dream is a now no-longer existent, and foolish pursuit. Many thought the roaring twenties were the height of American society, but they were actually just the beginning of a downward spiral.
Velasquez, James. “Minimum Wage Debate: How Sweatshops Are Actually Good for the Poor.” Policy Mic. N.p., 9 June 2012. Web. 7 Feb. 2014. .
Outsourcing creates a loss in secure work and leaves people with retail and restaurants jobs, where there is little to no employee benefits and are essentially dead end jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich, “Nickel-and-dimed on (Not) Getting By in America”, talks about her undercover experience working a low wage job and the difficulties living with those financial constraints (1998). She concludes that her wage needs to be increased by about two more dollars an hour to really be a livable wage. That was in 1998 and almost 20 years later we are still facing the same issue. The lack of a livable wage cause some workers to take on two, three, or even four jobs to make ends meet. Ehrenreich continues on by saying that welfare recipients use the funds given to them in conjunction with their job(s) in order to live (1998). When marginalized groups are constantly working with low wage jobs, they have no time to trying to pursue a technical trade or higher education to get a better job in the future. This problem is what creates the continuous rut, that never allows the disadvantaged a chance in achieving
Parenting may be said as an experiment, because every parent has different views and ways of raising their own children. Parents raise their child in such ways in which they believe is beneficial and healthy for the child. A story that came across media news about a baby, Storm, being raised as “genderless” fueled a controversy in defiance of gender stereotyping. The Witterick family in Canada believed that by acknowledging this practice it would, “tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime” (Davis and James). However, in terms of raising a genderless child, this can cause the child to be unprepared to face the conventional norms or society. This practice may be causing the child a disservice.
In the excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Nickel and Dimed”, Ehrenreich uses her own knowledge and scientific experience from a PhD in biology to further research the life of a low wage worker. She goes through her own low wage job experience with the corporate cleaning agency, “The Maids.” Ehrenreich offers a profound perception of the day-to-day challenges and sacrifices that low wage workers face to keep their jobs, support their families, and survive in a corporate driven society.
One of the major reasons people believe sweatshops are harmful is because they pay very little for grueling labor. From the perspective of most Americans, the equivalent of two dollars a day seems cruel, but when compared
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.
Many businesses that employ illegal workers have shifted their pay from middle-wage to low-wage (Ruark).
Linda Lim, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, visited Vietnam and Indonesia in the summer of 2000 to obtain first-hand research on the impact of foreign-owned export factories (sweatshops) on the local economies. Lim found that in general, sweatshops pay above-average wages and conditions are no worse than the general alternatives: subsistence farming, domestic services, casual manual labor, prostitution, or unemployment. In the case of Vietnam in 1999, the minimum annual salary was 134 U.S. dollars while Nike workers in that country earned 670 U.S. dollars, the case is also the similar in Indonesia. Many times people in these countries are very surprised when they hear that American's boycott buying clothes that they make in the sweatshops. The simplest way to help many of these poor people that have to work in the sweatshops to support themselves and their families, would be to buy more products produced in the very sweatshops they detest.