Progressive Wednesday

Doing Work for Hard-Working Families: Change

Editor’s Note: This Wednesday topic first appeared on March 14, 2007. To read our introduction to “Doing Work for Hard-Working Families,” just click here.

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Change:

We don't mean change like nickels and dimes, and we don't mean change like when you trade in your business casual for actual casual. We mean in the ways you spend your Washingtons, Lincolns, Hamiltons, and the ever-popular Benjamins (from what we hear, it's “all about– the latter). Money, in America, is power, so with some slight alterations in the way we redistribute our paychecks, we can all empower American workers all the more.

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1. On a recent trip to Topps (one of the two major grocery store changes in Western New York), I was about to use the self-serve checkout to purchase toilet paper, Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, and an avocado (I know, I know– ¦ weird) when Jeremy, an old friend of mine, saw me, waved, then yelled, “Hey Zambito, you're taking someone's job away.–

He was right. So here's our advice: use real, live, human cashiers at grocery stores instead of the self-serve checkouts with the creepy, HAL-like voice telling you what to do. By taking this simple action, you keep more people employed. Yes, many of today's cashiers are teenagers, but the majority are not and need all the support we can give them. The extra few minutes you spend in a line waiting helps put cash in someone's pockets. Plus, I mean, when else can you scan the tabloids and not feel dirty about it?

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2. The notion of a 15% gratuity is a social custom in the United States, and by no means requisite. Most restaurant servers work off tips, because the federal minimum wage for servers is $2.13 an hour (you read that right). This 15% nonsense seems unjust.

A server in a diner probably works harder than a server in a fancy, schmancy ristorante, and yet receive less in tips simply because the food costs less. So, since tipping, as archaic as it is, isn't going anywhere anytime soon, we'd like to offer up this little tidbit of progress: add two bucks.

Figure out whatever tip you think the person “deserves,– and then add two bucks. Not only will you make someone's day (since a surprising number of people tip far less than 15% if they tip at all) and you'll help that person, coincidentally enough, eat.

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3. Count with me, people: 1, 2, 3, 4. Below you'll find four companies that treat American workers right, and get our PW seal of approval. These companies aren't perfect. Let's call them “more perfect– than most others. So, if and when you can, try plunking down your hard-earned money with these companies.

1. eBay – Yes, eBay. They offer health insurance for PowerSellers and their employees. eBay let's its employees use health care debit cards to tap into their FSAs. By buying off eBay, you get to help out the smallest of business (the sellers). As an added bonus, the head honchos at eBay donate generously to charities and respect the environment.
2. Southwest – This progressive airline has dolled out hefty signing bonuses to baggage handlers and provisions agents. They support changing the mandatory retirement age of airline pilots. Southwest has the highest paid pilots in the industry (I don't know about you, but I want my pilots– ¦ I don't know– ¦ happy?). They also build strong relationships with front-line employees and among front-line employees.
3. Costco – As of 2005, “Costco [paid] its full-time workers an average of more than $16 an hour, while also picking up 92 percent of the cost of employees’ health-insurance premiums– and “82 percent of Costco workers are covered– by the plan. And check this out: “after four years with [Costco], a cashier can earn around $44,000, including bonuses.– Enough said.
4. New Balance — This company, I promise you, sells many sneakers made right here in the U.S. of A. (that means America). Take that Nike!

Doing Work for Hard-Working Families

Problem:

Eric and I have held oodles of very different jobs. Here's a list: bookseller, McDonald’s cashier, factory worker, shop foreman for a construction company, maintenance worker at a state park, newspaper reporter, office assistant, courier, audio/visual equipment operator, audio/visual specialist, college professor, substitute teacher, children's writing instructor, home theatre sales associate, customer service associate in a bank, residence life assistant at a college, and phone surveyor. Most of these jobs are the kind that could best be most kindly described as “learning experiences.–

Partly because of these variegated occupations and partly because of where we've been lucky enough to end up in our careers, we have intense sympathy for hard-working families. We know first-hand how hard it can be to sweat all day and feel depressed by the lack of digits in our paychecks, to watch the walls of a cubicle, to live below the poverty line and live payday to payday, to run up credit card debt to make ends meet, to lack health care and have to struggle through illness because we couldn't afford a doctor's visit. Now that we're in better financial positions, we want to do more to help the kind of people we used to call co-workers, the kind of people we still think of as friends.

Work is something Americans think of as the most identifying quality of a person after their name, and yet we tend to treat our hardest working Americans as lesser citizens, as if their low-paying jobs are their own fault. It's a myth that working harder will necessarily make you more money: we know folks who've slaved away at 60-hour-per-week jobs with no advancement. It's a myth that a higher education means a better paying gig: we know PhDs who work in bookstores. There's a myth in America that we live in a meritocracy. We don't.

The American Dream shouldn't be work. The American Dream shouldn't be to make ends meet. The American Dream should be pleasure in all its permutations like spending time with your friends and family, doing things that strengthen, stimulate, and lift our bodies, minds and spirits.

We owe it to one another to care more about how we all make a living. It's that last word, “living,– that we seem to forget.

Photo thanks to this hard worker.

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Make Progress:

The Declaration of Independence reaffirms that we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it's hard to pursue happiness when you lack health care, when you run up ridiculous dept to survive, when you can barely pay for meals, when you can't see an end in sight for a desk job that you despise. It's hard to pursue happiness when you bring work home with you, literally and mentally. Work is hard for all of us, nurses to farmers, temp workers to truck drivers, pastors and cops and folks who man the factory belts.

Dear readers, work is one of the few things that unites us all as people and states. It's about time we made some 9-to-5 progress.

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Doing Work for Hard-Working Families: Change

Change:

We don't mean change like nickels and dimes, and we don't mean change like when you trade in your business casual for actual casual. We mean in the ways you spend your Washingtons, Lincolns, Hamiltons, and the ever-popular Benjamins (from what we hear, it's “all about– the latter). Money, in America, is power, so with some slight alterations in the way we redistribute our paychecks, we can all empower American workers all the more.

*

1. On a recent trip to Topps (one of the two major grocery store changes in Western New York), I was about to use the self-serve checkout to purchase toilet paper, Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, and an avocado (I know, I know– ¦ weird) when Jeremy, an old friend of mine, saw me, waved, then yelled, “Hey Zambito, you're taking someone's job away.–

He was right. So here's our advice: use real, live, human cashiers at grocery stores instead of the self-serve checkouts with the creepy, HAL-like voice telling you what to do. By taking this simple action, you keep more people employed. Yes, many of today's cashiers are teenagers, but the majority are not and need all the support we can give them. The extra few minutes you spend in a line waiting helps put cash in someone's pockets. Plus, I mean, when else can you scan the tabloids and not feel dirty about it?

*

2. The notion of a 15% gratuity is a social custom in the United States, and by no means requisite. Most restaurant servers work off tips, because the federal minimum wage for servers is $2.13 an hour (you read that right). This 15% nonsense seems unjust.

A server in a diner probably works harder than a server in a fancy, schmancy ristorante, and yet receive less in tips simply because the food costs less. So, since tipping, as archaic as it is, isn't going anywhere anytime soon, we'd like to offer up this little tidbit of progress: add two bucks.

Figure out whatever tip you think the person “deserves,– and then add two bucks. Not only will you make someone's day (since a surprising number of people tip far less than 15% if they tip at all) and you'll help that person, coincidentally enough, eat.

*

3. Count with me, people: 1, 2, 3, 4. Below you'll find four companies that treat American workers right, and get our PW seal of approval. These companies aren't perfect. Let's call them “more perfect– than most others. So, if and when you can, try plunking down your hard-earned money with these companies.

1. eBay – Yes, eBay. They offer health insurance for PowerSellers and their employees. eBay let's its employees use health care debit cards to tap into their FSAs. By buying off eBay, you get to help out the smallest of business (the sellers). As an added bonus, the head honchos at eBay donate generously to charities and respect the environment.
2. Southwest – This progressive airline has dolled out hefty signing bonuses to baggage handlers and provisions agents. They support changing the mandatory retirement age of airline pilots. Southwest has the highest paid pilots in the industry (I don't know about you, but I want my pilots– ¦ I don't know– ¦ happy?). They also build strong relationships with front-line employees and among front-line employees.
3. Costco – As of 2005, “Costco [paid] its full-time workers an average of more than $16 an hour, while also picking up 92 percent of the cost of employees’ health-insurance premiums– and “82 percent of Costco workers are covered– by the plan. And check this out: “after four years with [Costco], a cashier can earn around $44,000, including bonuses.– Enough said.
4. New Balance — This company, I promise you, sells many sneakers made right here in the U.S. of A. (that means America). Take that Nike!