Nickle And Dimed

In her book, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to "go undercover" as a lower class, minimum wage worker. She takes positions as a waitress, maid, and walmart employee during her time in all three cities. As a waitress she had a hard time keeping up with paying her rent, so she had to get another job as a waitress at another restaurant, so she was literally going from job to job to sleep to job. Not only was it taxing, it was barely getting her by; she and her coworkers were not paid enough, besides they also had to share their tips with the bus boys and kitchen workers. She worked for a housecleaning service as well as a hotel in a maid position, again she was barely making ends meet. She and her coworkers were not getting paid fairly here either, especially with the amount of work they must do, and at the housecleaning service they were not treated very well at all. Walmart seemed to be the best of the three jobs, although even there they were not looked after as well as they should have been. Since then walmart has put several policies in place to make it a much better place to work, but there were still difficulties, such as immediate superiors who were not so friendly. And even there, it was difficult for her not to dip into her emergency money, and while she could escape that lifestyle, many people are stuck there simply because they barely make enough to get by. Just normal costs of clothing and basic necessities took a large amount of her pay, as she explains in the evaluation; however she does see that wages are going up, and they have up to date also. She also believes that this class of workers are not dignified enough, they do much to hard of labor to be looked down on, especially at their wages.

Question 14: No, it is not fair that these people work so hard and don't get rewarded for it, no matter how "easy" the job. An increase in salary could help make up for this a little bit, but it is more of something that should be taken care of by the company, and they should get more pay regardless. So yes they are separate problems, and both should be covered with the company that is employing them.