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!

Shopping for American workers.

More and more jobs (particularly manufacturing jobs) are being shipped overseas to countries where working conditions can be disgusting at best, criminal at worst. But there’s another problem with the way we all tend to shop: we’re hurting hard-working Americans, those with the bluest of collars. And this is particular evident in my corner of Western New York.

Maybe you’d like to get a big-time jump on your Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa shopping. Maybe you forgot all about Mother’s Day, and you’d like to make up for it in a jiffy (and not this kind of Jiffy). Maybe you’re snagging some new duds for the summer. Maybe you’re a union worker yourself, worried your gig might go the way of China.

So what can you do? We can buy American-made stuff. This, unfortunately, sounds easier said than done, because if you’re like me and tend to shop at places like Kohls or Target, the odds of finding much made here in the Red, White, and Blue are about as good as winning a whole mess of coin on a slot machine at the Seneca Niagara Casino. In other words, you’ll find some, but not a whole heck of a lot.

But at Progressive Wednesday, we’re all about making progressivism simple, and we’re all about helping you help this country. And we believe we’ve found you some answers to the sometimes tricky question of how to best lend a hand to America’s hardest working or those out-of-work folks pining for a chance to earn a decent paycheck once again.

So, here goes:

1. First up is Shop Union Made, a website with a vast array of resources to help us all support American union workers protect the security of their jobs, and therefore, their families. The site offers up categories readers can search to help find stores and companies that employ union workers, and Shop Union Made covers everything from clothing to tools, food to finances, travel to books. Basically, they’ve got it all, baby. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, consumer spending on everyday stuff adds up to 68 percent of all wealth created each year in the U. S. of A. It’s time more of that moolah stayed right here. You can learn more about the importance of supporting U.S. workers by clicking this sentence.
2. No Sweat Apparel is an online shopping stop where we can buy guaranteed sweatshop-free made in the U.S., Canada, and the developing world. By using this site, you can be sure you’re protecting the rights of workers who make what you buy. You needn’t just buy online, though — there are a bevy of local retailers hocking no-sweat goods.
3. Because I walk a lot, and because I’m not a dress shoes kind of guy, I go through sneakers pretty quickly. Unfortunately, most of the sneakers sold here are sewn together by child workers in other countries. Through a company called Pangea, I’ve been able to find New Balance footwear made in America. Pangea also sells a variety of other items — from cosmetics to belts. I’ve shopped with them in the past, and can vouch for them as a speedy and honest privately-owned company.

So help your fellow Americans out, and, well, go shop, daddy-o.

Photo by this picture-clicker.

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Editor’s note: We’ve covered the needs of hard-working families on a previous Wednesday. Just click this sentence to learn other ways you can help those American’s who slug, like you, through the 9-5 for the rest of us.

The Nitty-Gritty from the Twin Cities: Shortest Social Security Article Ever

Social Security was not founded as a retirement program. It was a New Deal program meant to fight poverty.

Back in the day, people worked until they couldn't work any more (read: frail, sick, dead, etc.). Most (if any) had no pension, and the idea of saving for retirement didn't exist at that point, so the elderly were often in dire straits. Indeed, the official name of the Social Security program is OASDI: Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance.

This is an important distinction. Because if you see Social Security as merely a retirement account, then it becomes tempting to say that it's not doing the job compared to other options. However, if you recognize that it's a safety net on a number of fronts– payments to the disabled, widows, orphaned children, as well as a source of modest retirement income to keep people out of poverty — then it gets a bit harder to argue about dismantling it, either outright or through Trojan Horses like “private accounts.–

One other thing, though, regarding private accounts: we already have them. They're called Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs); they're optional, and a great way to put money away on a tax-advantaged basis. So, if you want private accounts, fund your IRA. If you want to dismantle Social Security, at least have the gumption to say it, and don't pretend you're “reforming– it.

Monday Morning Motherhood: West Side Story (Without the Dancing)

There’s a war going on. Not the debacle in the Middle East you may be thinking of, but an entirely weaponless one. I think of it more as a scuffle than a war. It’s nearly the Jets against the Sharks, and if Rita Moreno showed up singing, I would not be at all surprised. These are the “Mommy Wars– : the stay-at-home moms versus the work-outside-the-home moms. It’s a much-debated subject, and there’s some dirty fightin’ going on out there because of it. Phyllis Schlafly and Betty Friedan are gonna throw down any minute now.

Okay, that’s probably not going to happen (if for no other reason than Friedan’s death). But, the attention the media has given the “Mommy Wars– is undeniable. (See for yourself, here, here, here, and here.) Most of the major news outlets have run stories on it, books have been written, studies conducted, and opinions rendered. This has fueled the fire and caused strife amongst the ranks of those fighting. Since I’m out of war analogies, I’ll get on with it. Wait, trenches. I should put something about trenches, right? Okay, getting on with it.

A study done by the NIH was just released that showed both positive and negative aspects of children being in day care. Children who received quality care before entering kindergarten had higher vocabulary skills by 5^th grade, but children who spent more time in daycare had more behavior problems reported by their 6^th grade teachers. Of course, as is the tendency of the media, the negative aspects of the study received more attention than the positive. However, this is my favorite quote from an article on this study (the quote, of course, is buried at the end of the piece):

The authors emphasized that the children’s behavior was within a normal range and that it would be impossible to go into a classroom, and with no additional information, pick out those who had been in child care.

Research also showed that it was the quality of care that mattered, and that parental influence had the most effect on children. Whether you work in an office or stay at home, your parenting is what has the biggest impact. It’s the time you spend with your child matters, whether you stay at home or go to work everyday.

A book about this debated was released in 2006 called, coincidentally enough, Mommy Wars, edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner. It’s chock full o' anecdotes and stories from mothers about why they chose to stay home, or why they chose to have a career. I admit, it’s a good read. The stories are witty and offer insight into each side. However, the vast majority of the stories featured are from moms who had a choice if they wanted to stay home fulltime with their children, have a career, or work part time, a choice most women in this country don’t have.

An estimated 63% of mothers with small children work outside the home, and the majority of these women do it because they have to, to financially make ends meet. Conversely, many women stay home because they can’t afford to work: any salary brought in would immediately be eaten up by the high cost of child care, transportation, and other work-related expenses. Take, for example, my sister and I.

I go to work everyday, mostly for financial reasons. As a single mother and the sole bread-winner, I don’t exactly have a choice, but I’m lucky in that I love my job. Admittedly, I could spend a little less time there–my daughter is good friends with the night-time cleaning lady, I’ve spent so many evenings working. But, I enjoy my work, and my daughter loves her daycare. She thrives on it–her vocabulary is astounding, and her interaction with the other children has definitely helped her become an outgoing and social person. The time we spend together, as mom and Gracie, is important, and I try to make the most of it. I feel, and hope, that I’m a good mom, not just despite the fact I work everyday and put my daughter in daycare, but perhaps because of it. Our situation works for us, and we do what we have to do.

My sister Sarah was working on her second Master’s degree when she became pregnant with her first child. Her first Master’s is in nursing, and her second would have been in epidemiology. She had also previously worked for the NIH, doing research on pancreatic cancer. Her husband, now an attorney at the FTC, was working at a law firm in Washington, D.C. Once their first son was born, she did some freelancing, and then went back to work. Then came their second son. She could no longer afford to work. The cost of having two children in daycare in Washington, D.C is so ridiculously high, they would lose money if she worked. So the woman with two Master’s degrees and a B.S. in cell molecular biology stays home with her kids because she can’t afford to work, and I, the girl who left college to become an unwed mother, go to the office everyday. Life cracks me up sometimes.

The point of all this? I have no idea. The “Mommy Wars– are raging across the nation, and we’re all losing. Who the hell are we to tell other people how to live? Unless we’re talking about abuse or a child being placed in harm’s way, don’t parents have the right to raise their own children without having to defend every action? Lets get out of these trenches (see, trenches!!), wave our respective white flags, and get back to what we are: parents.

The main thing we need to remember is that what matters is quality parenting, however you chose to practice it. The “Mommy Wars– has no winners, only victims that are made to feel guilty because of the choices they make. So, in short: back off, would you please? I’m trying here.

Rowe is me.

I’m not what you’d call “Fan Numero Uno of le Buy de Best.” Why? Because no other fool but me would mix English, Spanish, and French into such an awful language melting pot of goop. (By the way, I call this new amalgam language Spenglench.)

But seriously, Best Buy, while treating some right, has treated me a little wrong. If you’ll humor me, allow me share a little tale.

My VCR broke down about a year ago, and, you know, I’ve got a closet full of video tapes (and not that kind of video tapes, you perv). So, I’m checking out and, as Circuit City as my witness, the clerk said: “Why the hell are you buying this? Don’t you watch DVDs?” I finished my purchase, but my rage lingered around like a rash on one’s unspeakables. So, the next day, I returned the sucker.

But (and this is an elephant-sized one), Best Buy might be changing my mind. They’ve developed a new work program called Rowe (results-only work environment), which was highlighted in a recent issue of Business 2.0. And this ain’t your old man’s flextime program. Rowe works (no pun intended) like this:

The boss has no say in scheduling and can judge employees only on tasks successfully completed — even if none were done in the office.

And under this system, currently used by Best Buy for 60% of the folks working in the corporate headquarters “employee productivity has increased an average of 35 percent in departments covered by the program.”

And they’ve got plans to use Rowe in their stores as well. Makes sense to me. I’ve had at least four jobs where I spent a good part of my day creating the illusion of work, or simply taking so many bathroom breaks that, even though I was pretending, I started to wonder if I had a potty problem.

I could see a bit of trouble brewing — the tasks could simply rise and rise some more, demanding more and not an equal amount of work from employees. Still, it’s an intriguing bit of work policy, one that could truly benefit workers and employers.

So let’s keep our fingers and VHS tapes crossed, mon good amigos.

Photo by this work-a-holic.

Monday Morning Motherhood: Shortage

Many of you may have noticed some of the recent Monday Morning Motherhood columns have been delayed. One of the reasons cited was severe medical problems. Yup, those would be mine. This week's column will take a slightly different approach. Instead of focusing on parenting, I'd like to talk about the state of health care. Not health insurance, which I will cover later, but health care in the form of those who give us care when we're ill, most notably, nurses.

In the past month, I've been admitted to the hospital 3, count – ˜em, 3 times. This doesn't include the two other emergency room visits I had to make. I like to think I've involuntarily become a hospital connoisseur of sorts, able to determine the age of a bowl of Jello with just one bite. To make a long story short, it wasn't until the third hospital admittance, which took place at different hospital than the first two, that they finally figure out what was the matter. Two wrong diagnoses and several weeks of pretty bad pain occurred before I received some answers and a necessary surgery. Only now, after over a month of dealing with all this, have I received the full medical care and treatment needed to facilitate my recovery. And what was the main conduit to my needs in the hospital? The nurses.

There is no question that in hospitals from sea to shining sea, nurses are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid. When you head to an emergency room, the first person you see is a triage nurse. When you're finally taken back to a bed, the person you are going to have the most interaction with is a nurse. Once or twice you'll see the doctor, but mostly, the nurse is going to be giving the majority of your care. They're the ones who obtain all the information about your illness, take your vital signs, administer medication, and are the ones who check in on you. This is also true if you are unfortunate enough to be admitted to the hospital. These nurses serve all of the patients, and like cups at a kegger, there just aren't enough LPNs and RNs to go around. Because of this, patient care suffers. Patients can feel that they're being ignored, that their nurses are rude and cranky (my own personal experience), and that their needs are not being met (which in many cases is true — again, speaking from personal experience).

By 2010 it is estimated that there will be 20% less nurses than needed. This is an enormous gap. In 2000 the demand for nurses was 2 million, while the actual supply of nurses was 1.89 million. That's a 6% gap, or a shortage of 110,000 nurses. Imagine what a 20% gap would do to the quality of care patients receive? The thought of it is shocking.

In August of 2002, President Bush signed the Nurse Reinvestment Act into law. The Nurse Reinvestment Act (H.R.3487), is designed to encourage people to enter and remain in nursing careers, thus helping to alleviate the nation’s growing nursing shortage. This law establishes scholarships, loan repayments, retention grants, career ladders, geriatric training grants, and loan cancellation for nursing faculty. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

So, in short, be nice to your nurses. While you're in pain, frustrated, and awaiting assistance, it's very, very difficult. You're ill and need attention. They're doing their best though. It's not an easy profession. They deal with things on a daily basis that we wouldn't want to encounter — extremely long hours (working an average shift over 12 ½ hours ain't exactly gonna put you in the grandest of moods), uncooperative patients, arrogant and unappreciative doctors, and, you know, bed pans. The average pay rate for an LPN in a hospital is $36,700. Not nearly enough for the amount of work that is expected of them.

That said, if you feel that you're not getting the care you deserve, you absolutely have the right to speak up. However, even when you're fighting the temptation to scream expletives and walk out the door, please try to be patient. As frustrating as it is, they really are trying.

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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