LETTERS: WAGE ISSUE ISN'T A SIMPLE ONE

To the editor:

On June 1 a letter was printed concerning the minimum-wage hike. The writer apparently doesn't feel that the minimum wage should be raised. The reasons he gives for not raising the minimum wage are paradoxical.

He states that the minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. I'm not sure if that is so, but I do know that it is not a living wage. Anyone who makes the minimum wage must receive additional support from another source. The person on minimum-wage income cannot afford housing or the cost of a vehicle or insurance and maintenance on that vehicle. He cannot afford health care. The most he can afford is food and clothing and only the very minimum of that. Often the source of the needed extra funds is the welfare system. Often it is the parents of that person. Either of these additional sources of income puts a burden on someone else, be it the taxpayers as a group or the family of the worker.

I cannot agree that most minimum-wage workers are on their way to something better. I'm sure that all of them would like to be on their way to something better. But the fact that they are making the minimum wage holds them back from being able to achieve that goal.

A person making minimum wage cannot afford to improve his skills or knowledge through additional schooling. If he is struggling to educate himself, the knowledge he gains on his own is not recognized by future employers. Without some kind of verification from an established educational program, the worker has no way of proving his knowledge, and the employers don't want to take a chance that the person knows as much as he says he does.

While it is true that GED schooling is offered free, there is still the matter of the cost and source of transportation to and from the center and the cost of the test itself. As sad as the fact is, a GED or high school graduate is likely to be back in a minimum-wage job after graduation. Most minimum-wage jobs don't provide the kind of training needed to get anything except another minimum-wage job.

The one point I strongly disagree with is that minimum-wage jobs are overpaid and menial and common and that anyone can do them. Most minimum-wage jobs are physical and demanding. They are very hard on the worker in the physical sense. Not anyone can do them. He must be strong and healthy and have endurance and stamina. He comes home at the end of the day totally exhausted. A minimum-wage worker who is trying to raise a family and keep up a home has no time or energy left to get more education, and, as I pointed out before, he certainly doesn't have the income to pay for more education or training.

I take offense at the phrase "menial and common." No labor is menial or common. All jobs are important, and no job is common. Think of how the poor, tired minimum-wage worker must feel. His self-esteem is already low as he struggles to stretch his meager paycheck to cover even the barest of necessities. To call his labor menial and common is like a slap in the face to his efforts to do the best he can, to get a good reference and to move up to the better job that the writer of the letter assumes is out there waiting.

As a person moves up in the job market, the competition becomes more skilled and better educated. The person who has no experience to offer except the skills learned on a string of minimum-wage jobs, a high school diploma or GED, and the education he has provided for himself has little chance against a worker who has formal education.

The 'waiting for something better to come along' often becomes years of waiting while the frustration builds and the self-esteem plunges. The high school student becomes the high school graduate, who becomes the husband or wife, who becomes the mother or father, and chances are, during all these years, the income has risen to barely above minimum wage while the expenses of providing for a family and maintaining a home have risen disproportionally.

A tax cut would give everyone a pay hike, but it would not be enough to provide the education and training needed to pull out of the minimum-wage jobs.

The jobs that are held by minimum-wage workers are jobs that need to be done. They are important jobs. They are physically demanding jobs. They are frustrating and boring jobs. Don't put down the worker by putting down his job. Please don't say the minimum-wage worker doesn't deserve his pay. He deserves more than his pay. He deserves praise and respect. He deserves a chance to better himself. He deserves to be rewarded for his hard work and sacrifice. He stands little chance of improving his marketability while making minimum wage. That's the paradox and the shame.

Don't shame the worker, shame the system that is akin to the feudal system: once a peasant always a peasant unto the 10th generation.

SANDRA FANN

Jackson