The new face of the working poor
Postcard from Washington: Grandfather Ruben Jones struggles to live on $ 8 an hour
The new poster child for America’s working poor is no kid; he’s an older man named Ruben Jones. He is standing on a riser in the subbasement of the United States Capitol, flanked by Democrats Harry Reid of Nevada, majority leader in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi of California, minority leader in the House of Representatives, who between them enjoy an estimated net worth of more than $ 60 million US — possibly a LOT more — of which all but three or four or five little millions is Nancy’s.
Idling outside the domed colossus is a chartered bus with the phrase GIVE AMERICA A RAISE painted in bold letters alongside the figure $ 10.10. This is the sum that a faction of Congressional Democrats intends to legislate after Easter as this nation’s minimum wage, up from the current $ 7.25. In Canada, the provincial baselines are right around $ 10 Cdn even.
Assuming a 40- hour work week — though many American employers reduce that to fewer than 30 hours to avoid having to provide group health insurance — an hourly wage of $ 10.10 US rewards a man or woman with about $ 21,000 a year for roof, rags and sustenance, minus income and social security taxes, health insurance, commuting and child care expenses, and the unlimited campaign donations to Reid and Pelosi that the Supreme Court now allows. Republicans reject the communistic taint of a guaranteed wage entirely and vow to gulag the bill.
Back in the sub- basement, after Reid (“I never worked for minimum wage — I worked for LESS than minimum wage”) and Pelosi (“to watch Harry Reid work is to watch a master at work”) and Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez (“the opportunity quilt is fraying”) have their say, the grey and lanky Jones steps to the microphone.
He tells us that he has been working for the past five years at two Maryland locations of a chain of buffet restaurants called Golden Corral for $ 8 an hour or less, that he never has received a raise in pay in all that time, that he is too impoverished to visit his own grandchildren who live two hours from here, that he once had to walk for hours in the midnight rain after missing the last Metro train homeward, and that he still lives with his mother because he can’t afford an apartment of his own. Then Ruben Jones begins to sob.
“I’m not doing it just for me,” he says. “I’m doing it for everyone.”
“Tell it!” shouts a woman in the audience, which is papered with several dozen members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees in matching T- shirts of St. Patrick’s Day green.
Within hours, a video of Jones’s lament tops the home page of the website of the AFLCIO, with accompanying text from the giant labour organization that reads:
“Ruben Jones is a man closer to the age where he should be thinking about retirement, contrary to the ‘ teens who don’t need the money’ stereotype of minimum wage workers.”
On the same day, a Democratic Congressman named Jim Moran from Virginia gives a newspaper interview in which he moans that “I think the American people should know that the members of Congress are underpaid. Our pay has been frozen for three years and we’re planning on freezing it a fourth year. … A lot of members can’t even afford to live decently in Washington.”
When Sunday comes, I motor over for lunch at Golden Corral in the hope of meeting Ruben Jones in person. The place is jammed with the after- church crowd, hungering for more than spiritual comfort. A server whom I will call LaTasha greets me with the news that, yes, Ruben used to work here at the Largo, Md., location, but he has been out for months with back problems.
LaTasha summons a manager named Howard. This man watches the AFL- CIO video on my smartphone with interest, especially the part in which Jones claims to be earning $ 8 an hour with nary a raise.
“He makes more than that,” the manager says flatly, and files off to carve a tender roast.
When her boss departs, LaTasha tells me that she is paid only $ 3.63 per hour, which is the legal minimum here for workers who can expect tips. That’s a $ 20 bill, gross, for seven hours on her feet in an apron and a smile, plus whatever a dinner guest chooses to gift his server at a diner where you serve yourself.
When Congress returns from its well- earned paschal hiatus, it will begin yet another cat fight — this time, over how little a worker has to be paid. Ten dollars and 10 cents, Harry and Nancy acknowledge, has almost no chance of passage.
Watching closely will be millions from the sub- basement of subsistence in the richest country in the world.