For low-wage contract workers, minimum wage order not enough
FOUR days a week, at 4.45 in the morning, Jessenia Vega pulls her hair back into a tight bun, leaves the small room she rents in an apartment in Hyattsville, Maryland, and catches a bus. The bus connects to a Metro line that leaves at 5.08. A little before 5.45, she eventually arrives at the Pentagon, goes through security, puts on her uniform, and starts ringing up Egg McMuffins and hash browns at the Defense Department’s inhouse McDonalds.
Vega, 31, has asked her bosses to be transferred somewhere closer to where she lives — because she can’t afford to live anywhere else on US$10.30 (RM34) an hour with no healthcare benefits or paid time off. Each month, she sends as much money as she can home to Puerto Rico to help with her mother’s dialysis treatments. Since she started in July 2013, however, management hasn’t let her move closer to home.
Lately, Vega has been involved in a campaign that she believes could change the conditions facing her — and thousands of other federal contractors — for the better.
On Monday, Good Jobs Nation, the labour-backed campaign that has organised nine strikes of contract workers in Washingtonarea federal buildings, released a new report demanding that President Barack Obama use his executive authority to require that agencies take workers’ pay and benefits into account when deciding how to award the US$460 billion in annual contracts.
For example, the government might reward companies that allow workers to unionise or have a committee to negotiate with management, or that pay at least US$15 an hour and offer solid health benefits.
Vega is speaking out to elevate the issue. Earlier, in January, she and several dozen other workers skipped their shifts and gathered outside the secure military complex, waving signs protesting low wages and poor benefits. Her sister told her she was proud of her demonstrating. “She says if she were here, she would come, too,” Vega said.
If she were paid better, Vega said, she could get a car, which would expand her options. But it’s more than money; it’s about receiving respect from her employer and her bosses. “I would love to have better coworkers, like how the managers treat us,” she said, explaining that superiors don’t care what she thinks.
The calls for Obama to take more action come after he signed an executive order earlier this year boosting the minimum wage for federal contractors to US$10.10 an hour from US$7.25 an hour and signed another requiring firms to disclose past labor law violations in contract applications and potentially penalise them for such violations. The wage order affected 200,000 workers. Now Good Jobs Nation — a project of the Change to Win coalition, backed by unions, such as the Teamsters and the SEIU — is working to build on successes.
“The President’s recent executive orders to boost the minimum wage and prevent labor law violations on federal contracts start to address the problem,” reads the short report that makes the case for two new executive orders. “But America’s workers need more than the minimum to have a shot at the American Dream.” The group said it will follow up with more strikes to drive the point home.
McDonald’s did not respond to a request for comment. — WPBloomberg