As the saying goes, "It's not difficult to work hard." "But can hard work improve your life?" In the United States, millions of low-income workers work all day long for the lowest hourly wage, living without a home, sick to work, and oppressed. Why is their survival so difficult, and can they succeed?
In the book "My Life at the Bottom", the author of this book, Barbara Allenrick, sneaked into the bottom society, became a low-income laborer, circulated in many cities and industries, experienced the work of waiters, house attendants, nurses, maids, salesmen, etc., and came into contact with colleagues and bosses from various backgrounds.
Through these personal experiences, she not only vividly shows the survival reality, challenges and struggles of low-level workers in terms of income, housing, medical care, employment relations, etc., but also explores the deep causes of poverty.
1. Housing difficulties: hard work, but no place to live
Author Barbara's first stop to experience life at the bottom is Florida. Through haitou's resume, Barbara got a job as a waitress at a place called "Fireside Restaurant." At first, she thought she could get a salary of $7 an hour, but when she actually started working, she found out that the boss's actual base salary was only $2 an hour, because the boss thought that the waiter could make a tip.
However, after a week of work, Barbara nodded her income and realized that even if she counted the tip, her hourly salary was only $5. With this little money, where can you afford to rent a house? Cheap rent, also $500 a month. No way, Barbara had to pay out of her own pocket.
Barbara is here to experience life, but her colleagues, the really low-income people, have no savings, how do they rent a house?
For example, a colleague of Barbara', Joan, although she dresses exquisitely and fashionably every day, she is a typical slum girl. Joan found herself a no-money place to stay in a shopping mall near where she worked— an abandoned van.
This girl sleeps in the car at night, gets up in the morning, and then rubs the bathroom with her colleague who lives nearby, washes and dresses, and then goes to work in a bright way.
Another female colleague. Originally, I shared a hotel with a male friend for $500 a month. Who would have thought that this person was a dressed beast, harassing her at both ends for three days, and inching forward step by step. In desperation, Gail had to flee to a motel, and the room rate ended daily, $60 a day.
60 a day 1800 a month, why not rent a room alone? It's cheap and you don't have to worry about being harassed by men. The answer is cruel, because renting a house has to pay a deposit in addition to rent, and this money Can't be paid.
Who is to blame for not being able to afford a house? Is it because the low-level workers are not skilled, the wages are low, and they can't pay the deposit? On closer examination, I am afraid that it is still related to the improper land planning of the US government.
In the United States, the government allows real estate developers to frantically build buildings in the heart of the city. Developers build real estate, built high-end communities with swimming pools and golf courses, attracting rich people at the same time, but also pulling up the city center house prices. In this way, if the poor want to make a living here, you have to pay expensive rent.
The more central the city, the more prosperous it is, the more jobs are gathered, and the more options there are, which is understandable. But unlike us, the public transportation system in the United States is very underdeveloped, many cities do not have subways, there are few bus lines, and people mainly rely on cars to travel. In the low-income class, there are a small number of people with cars. Therefore, once you are looking for a job in the city center, you can only choose to live here and pay for the high rent.
It can be said that housing costs are a big mountain on the shoulders of the bottom people in the United States. But there is so much more to poverty than this one, there is one – huge medical bills.
2. Lack of health insurance: More worried about losing your job than getting sick
In China, the state mandates that enterprises provide medical insurance to their employees, greatly reducing the medical burden. But in the United States in the 20th century, their sense of health insurance was not strong. During her time at Barbara, most of the people she came into contact with at the bottom did not have health insurance.
In Maine, Barbara took a job as a maid. During this time, her immediate boss was pregnant, coupled with the intensity of work, malnutrition, and a bit of weakness. One day, when Holly was cleaning the room, she accidentally stumbled and fell, her arms and feet were sprained, and she couldn't lift them.
At this time, What He Li was most worried about was not whether she or the children in her belly were important, but she was afraid of being fired by her boss after getting sick. So she insisted on getting her job done. A woman with a big belly, injured hands and feet, and continued to do physical work, the other maids were cold-eyed, completely unintended to help. In the end, Barbara couldn't stand it and helped Heli finish the work.
It turns out that the world at the bottom doesn't have as much warmth. Everyone has a hard time and can't afford to lose anything. Employees are reluctant to help each other, fearing that someone will squeeze them out. Later, under Barbara's coordination, Ho Li was given paid sick leave, and Barbara was favored by her boss. However, instead of thanking Barbara, Holly felt that Barbara had robbed her boss of her attention.
After a period of observation, Barbara found that the employer's squeezing not only drained the employee's physical strength, but also drained the employee's spirit. While they overdraw their bodies, they also lost the ability to resist.
They just want to honestly complete the tasks assigned by their bosses so that they can have food to eat. If the boss is in a good mood one day, praise and care, it is enough to make them excited for half a day.
After all, in the end, they do not have any chips in their hands, and they cannot defend their rights and interests in the employment relationship and demand better treatment.
3. Employer oppression: cold-blooded and ruthless, only seeking to maximize profits
Marx once said: "Capitalists are exploiters who eat people and do not spit bones." Barbara found that the company would take various measures to squeeze as many employees as possible.
Some companies are not satisfied with the work efficiency of employees, and will directly change the hourly wage to piece wage, further squeezing them. For example, Barbara, who works as a waitress at Jerry's restaurant, hears that the company has a hotel that costs $7 an hour and decides to move on to work as a room clerk. As a result, a few days later, the boss felt that it was not cost-effective to pay an hourly wage, and changed it to the number of rooms cleaned to calculate the salary. As a result, Barbara's hourly salary is just over $5, and it is better to work as a waiter in a restaurant.
There are also companies that ostensibly adhere to the 8-hour workday, but the actual working hours of employees are far more than that. When Barbara used to work as a maid, the company asked them to meet at 7:30 in the morning and send them to their employer's house for cleaning.
You know, the collection is not just a light person, but also to prepare water and tools for cleaning. As a result, many employees have to come to the company at seven o'clock to prepare, but the boss feels that the preparation stage is not a job, so the salary is not calculated at eight o'clock.
What's more, companies even deprive employees of their freedom to go to the toilet, and they stipulate that employees can only go to the toilet every 6 hours. Some employees couldn't help but pee in their pants.
In short, in order not to pay overtime, the boss is trying his best to squeeze the employees, eager to let them work non-stop for 8 hours, as if this can be worthy of their own wages.
In this inhumane way of management, there are even people who call it "pressure management", saying that pressure can stimulate people's maximum potential, and only in this way can they make progress. Barbara had thought that small companies would exploit employees in such a way, but to her surprise, so did the so-called regular large companies.
In Minnesota, her third stop into the underclass, Barbara worked for a time as a sales clerk at Walmart, which was known for its preferential treatment of employees.
During the induction training, HR constantly emphasizes a rule to employees, that is, they cannot "steal time". It means that the boss has paid for your 8 hours of time, and if you have a minute that is not working hard for the boss, you are stealing time.
Therefore, the working hours are 8 hours, and the employees actually stay in the company for more than 9 hours. One hour is lunchtime, not a salary. And if there is an urgent matter that needs to be dealt with during this 1 hour, the employee must be present immediately. In addition, employees only have two opportunities to go to the toilet every day, 15 minutes each time. This means that employees must plan in advance even if they drink water, and regularly quantify it, otherwise they can only consider themselves unlucky.
4. The way out is difficult to find: there are many obstacles, and the people at the bottom are powerless to change their fate
Ji ji scholar Xue Zhaofeng once shared a story of studying abroad on his own. He said that when he first went out, he was not sure if there was a scholarship or not, and he was ready to work. But his friend, who had already gone abroad, advised him to go to school even if he borrowed money, because once he started working, such as washing dishes, it was difficult to have the energy to study.
In fact, the bottom of the population is facing such a dilemma. After a hard day's work, they just want to relax, sleep, play games, brush their phones, drink, and it is difficult to have time and energy to improve themselves.
So why aren't these people looking for a better job? At the beginning, Barbara also felt that there were so many job opportunities outside, why did many people stick to a company and not go? Later, with the in-depth understanding of the low-income class, Barbara gradually understood the reasons for this:
First of all, a lot of people don't have a means of transportation.
As we mentioned earlier, the public transportation system in the United States is not developed, and it is basically by car to get out. The main reason why Barbara can experience all kinds of low-level work in different cities is that she has a car. For people who do not have a car, when looking for a job, they will be limited by the location and cannot be replaced at will.
Second, they know very few application channels.
Barbara's colleagues looking for a job only look at the recruitment notices posted at the door of the company or the store, and they have no idea that they can also check the job information in the newspaper and on the website.
Also, the cost of changing jobs is too great.
Barbara found that all of these jobs had a default rule: The boss withheld the employee's first week's salary. The boss set this rule to reduce employee turnover. As a result, if employees do not have a certain amount of savings, it is difficult to support themselves during the transition period of changing jobs. Even to the point of being unbearable and wanting to resign, many people will retreat because they do not have working capital and have to continue to grievance themselves.
Finally, employees must prove that they are not drug users before they can officially join the workforce. How to prove it? Submit urine and undergo a drug test. Before Barbara joined Walmart, she was asked to undergo a drug test. In order to prevent counterfeiting, the staff of the drug testing agency will stare at the employees entering the toilet, and it is said that some institutions even require that the toilet door cannot be closed. As long as you change jobs, privacy has to be violated once.
All in all, under the restrictions of various conditions, the road to improving the lives of low-income people is difficult, they have limited insight, no time and energy to learn and improve, lack of cost of trial and error, and all they can do is helplessly maintain the status quo and struggle to survive.
It is worth mentioning that this book describes the life of the bottom people in the United States at the end of the 20th century.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and other companies have developed into world technology giants during this period, promoting the great progress of the Us Internet industry and making the United States enter a period of rapid development. But it was also during this period that the people at the bottom gradually disappeared. On the Internet and in the media, there seems to be a scene of prosperity everywhere, and the poor, who have become the shadows behind the prosperity, are ignored and forgotten.
Edited | Liangshan
Typography | Liangshan
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