Improving Lives

I recently came across a list of the lowest wage earners in the U.S.of A. and while many are relative no-brainers, or might be expected, one might be surprised by the insidious reach of non-living or slave wages being paid to many classes of worker. A giant step toward making the world a better place can be made by making sure that an honest day of work is rewarded by a living wage. sadly, there is still a slave class in our nation and we are loathe to do much about it. Millions of workers are dealt the terrible blow of being paid just enough to scrape by. We are told that this is necessary, yet those making vast profits from underpaying their laborers refuse to understand that their wealth has been made possible by exploitation and subjugation of real people, whose lives are made difficult by their lack of earning power.

Consumers can change the dynamic by spending their dollars carefully. Where we put our dollars can change the dynamics of the workplace and by not supporting certain "industries", we can eliminate this sort of exploitation in short order. The marketplace that will not tolerate underpaid workers will not continue to pay slave wages. Letting businesses know why you are not buying from them has even more impact, but the bottom line is that the ultra-wealthy will only understand the bottom line, no matter how hard we try to educate them about what is moral.

The List: (as I read it) Airport Workers, Big Box Store Employees, Casino Workers, Fast Food Workers, Grandma's Aide, Fishing Industry Workers, Truckers, Construction & Extraction (Lumber and Mining) Workers, Nail Salon Workers, Farm Workers, Housekeepers & Cleaners.

Finding ways to live without air travel is relatively easy, shopping at locally owned businesses that pay a living wage is also. Once one  understands that the odds at every casino are vastly in favor of the house, staying away from them should become easier as well. If you have money to throw away, why not give it to a charity that you have researched and know to do good works. The rewards that you will receive from helping others will be far better than the occasional pay out, no matter what casino you would go to. Ending our addiction to fast food is the single most important step that we can make as a culture to improve our health, staying away from these institutions is the only way to get them to go away. These first four are easy enough to just stay away from, but I would lump in with them the nail salon workers because not one of us "needs" toxic chemicals to be applied to our nails. Beyond the cost of exploiting the workers in this industry, contaminating the air with known carcinogens provides a double whammy for the workers and those who share the dose of chemicals through contaminated air.

The second half of the list requires more thought and awareness, but the individuals staggering under the weight of our current system are caught in the same trap as those who provide for our convenience and illusion of "the good life". Home health care aides, housekeepers and cleaners fall into the realm of "domestics". These people care for either our loved ones or us directly and rather than a cheap luxury, they are providing their life force to make our own lives a little easier or possible without institutionalization. The value of these services is immense, paying a living wage to have these types of care provided seems simple, but think about the day-to-day existence of those who travel from place to place on their own dime, to work an hour or two here and an hour or two there, without being able to afford insurance, without being able to take time off to meet their own needs or who are one car break down away from losing their only source of income. Like our current educational system, these crucial workers allow us to more fully participate in the job market. The dollars that we do pay them are a direct subsidy of our own employers. They open up time which can be put to increased production, increased profits for the ultra-wealthy and often are used to placate our own conscience because we cannot make time to care for ourselves or our loved ones. Respecting these kinds of service workers and remunerating their efforts appropriately is necessary not only for them but for our own lives as well.

Try this one on...catch a fish, clean it, fillet it, bring it to the kitchen ready to cook. Then tell me why it is not worth twenty dollars per pound. Get the picture? Digging into particulars of an industry that moves and changes with the seasons is even more difficult than analyzing businesses that exist in fixed locations, but it can be done. We all know that some of the fishes are a healthy part of a balanced diet, but learning exactly which ones they are and how they come to our table can be a challenge. Eating less fish may not put the exploiters out of business, but that choice may help depleted fish stocks to stabilize. The earth's oceans are becoming dangerously devoid of many species that humans have enjoyed for generations and fish farms are often even worse for both people and the planet.

Farm workers as well deserve more, for without them, we would starve. Low wages and difficult conditions are the rule rather than the exception for these workers. When I lived in the heart of corn country, de-tasseling was the best summer job that young people could get. We would wade through cornfields pulling the tassels our of entire rows of corn, sometimes a mile long, then skip a row or two and come back across the same field, assuring that cross pollination only went one way. This was part of how things were done in the old days for genetic manipulation. Any job that pays "well" for a child, safe and secure under a parent's roof and fed three square meals again on mommy and daddy's dime is probably slave wages for someone who has a list of bills to pay and possibly children to feed as well. Knowing where our food comes from can be almost as difficult as tracing the origin and history of our fish, but we must begin to understand what foods leave a damaging legacy of exploitation in their wake. Without knowing the farmer, or taking responsibility for understanding the food system that we rely on, we are playing a dangerous trust game which often results in hardships being foisted upon others.

In our extremely mobile world, trucks handle the majority of goods that flow across the great super-slabs and city streets of our nation. It is not hard to see why the drivers of the millions of trucks that criss-cross our land would face exploitation and low-wages. Organizing drivers who are separated by both time and distance from one another is one of the reasons why they are so easily exploited. for every driver that is able to make a good living at the wheel, there are dozens who are subsidizing our way of life with their sacrifice. The advent of independent truckers has led to a downward wage spiral and as fuel costs rise (as well as the increased prices of everything from food to lodging, to clothing) their pay at the end of the day buys less and less. Again, knowing where things come from can be a great start in the process of finding our about the hardships that are foisted upon others for our "benefit". Buying local, keeping our needs simple and working to reward real people for the very real work that they do can help stem the flow of dollars to the exploiters that hold most of the marbles in this shell game of work for wages. Only one of the dozens of truckers I know are able to make ends meet by driving. The rest are desperate to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Employers know that truckers will do nearly anything for the feeling of freedom that comes from the open road stretching out ahead and it is this knowledge that allows them to drive down wages and reduce benefits.

Similarly, construction and extraction workers are most often the young men who think that they will be able to stay healthy and strong forever. The boom and bust cycles of these fields always attract the footloose and fancy free single, young,  mostly men. The wages seem high until you figure in the rampant drug and alcohol use, prostitution, gambling and other social costs that come with boom and bust cycles. Investigating the history of any area that has been home to these cycles will reveal a shady past rife with violence, graft, illicit activity and dissolution. We can see from space the non-stop activity around fracking sites, mines and the currently booming construction sites, where money cannot be made fast enough. What we cannot seem to fathom is what goes on when the other shoe falls. Thousands show up for hundreds of jobs and for every fortune that is made there are thousands of lives lost to injury, accident and addiction. Incarceration rates amongst those who were just trying to make a living are nearly as high as the frustration of giving your all for some other bugger's profit. There seems to be no end to the stories of folks spending their entire week's pay on a weekend-long party, only to have to live on baloney sandwiches until their next payday. This sort of exploitation is inexcusable in a world so full of abundance. This is not the least bit unbelievable or unusual considering the fact that we are subsidizing these industries with massive amounts of corporate welfare, turning our heads away when it comes to ecological damage and allowing the large corporations as well as the smaller operations to skate away with massive profits while bearing no responsibility for the damage and long term costs that they create that will last into the future.

The fact is that we cannot change all of these wrongs with one simple act. We need to begin to understand that every choice we make, whether it is shopping at a dollar store or a family-owned shop, buying gas or walking to the store, making food at home that we can take to work with us  patronizing a restaurant all have a decided affect on the planet and her people. If you were to save a nickel on a pair of shoelaces, how many years would it take to save a single dollar? Is it worth it to see your neighbors becoming more and more desperate? Years ago, there were several grocers in my neighborhood. One specialized in locally grown produce while another had an awesome meat department. A third had the inside track on cleaning supplies etc. Now, the closes grocery is over a mile away and if you want good prices the drive is five miles. Something is desperately wrong with an economic system that pits the people against one another simply based on price. The workers who bring us the way of life that we have become accustomed to must be treated fairly or we will forever be acting in silent complicity with a system that chews people up and spits the dry husks of their lives out without regret.

I, for one, will not stand for or abide by any system that raises up one class of people over another. I speak these words ad infinitum out of a sense of compassion for both the exploited and their exploiters. I want to express a knowledge and understanding that we are all one people and that the inequality we allow to divide us is for the sole benefit of people who could not care less whether we live or die is what leads to many of the problems that we must learn to face together. Silence is complicity. Action speaks louder than words. Please act. Let your heart be your guide. We have the power to make real and lasting change. Reward what is right with the world. Take great care to do what is best and share openly with everyone so that they can begin to understand that they are not alone and at war against one another for wages. There is plenty to go around if we just understand that the way it is now is not the way it has always been, nor is it inevitable that we should "value" some people, places and things more than others.