Series gets to the truth about wages
Region spends billions on jobs that leave people in poverty.
Readers are getting a fascinating peek behind Orlando’s economic curtain with the “Laborland” series that tells the stories of low-wage workers who make tourists’ dreams come true by day and yet struggle to pay their own bills at night.
A clear takeaway: Helping visitors make memories is nice, but it doesn’t pay the rent.
The series has already been read by hundreds of thousands of people all over America.
Still, some are critics.
In fact, some have casually dismissed the series as one big sob story about lazy low-wage workers who should just get another job.
“No one is forcing them to work there,” barked one Twitter user.
“If you don’t like your job, get an education and get a new one,” carped another.
With all due respect: These people miss the point.
This series isn’t about sob stories. It’s about this region’s economy.
It’s not asking you to shed tears for people who work low-wage jobs. It’s asking why this community continues to spend so much time and taxpayer money cultivating these low-wage jobs in the first place.
Other communities lure jobs in medicine and technology.
Central Florida spends billions — yes, billions — of tax dollars creating jobs that leave people in poverty or living on the edge. So, here’s the reality for the
“Just get a new job!” crowd: Even if every single low-wage tourism worker in Orlando went to medical school and became a doctor, this community would still have 120,000 hotel rooms that need cleaning every day.
We’d still have hundreds of
acres of parking lots that need attending and mountains of burgers that need flipping.
We’re a community that runs on the backs of people who scrub toilets and bus tables for a living.
And because of that, we rank dead last for median wages among America’s 50 largest metros.
We are the only major metro in America where one out of every four jobs pays $11.08 an hour or less.
All this in a community that is no longer a cheap cost-of-living deal and is, in fact, the absolute worst for affordable housing.
And please don’t delude yourself into thinking all those low-paying jobs are going to college kids or temporary first-time job holders.
That’s a popular myth touted by people who want to excuse away our lowwage economy.
You don’t get to 300,000 jobs with just college kids.
Many of those who work in Orlando’s most dominant industry have families.
Take, for example, the mother featured in the first part of reporter Chabeli Herrera’s excellent series.
Gabby Alcantara-Anderson so impressed her bosses at Disney that, she received a “hero” award for performing CPR on a Disney customer in 2014.
Yet four years later, in 2018, Alcantara-Anderson was making just $11.50/hour.
Think about that for a moment.
That was the salary for a top employee at the No. 1 business in Orlando’s No. 1 industry.
That’s this community’s model. And that’s the problem.
Every year, Orange County spends more than $280 million in hotel taxes to keep growing tourism, mainly through marketing and constant additions to the convention center.
That spending absolutely dwarfs the $3 million the county spent trying to attract high-wage jobs. And we reap what we sow.
Over the past six years, metro Orlando added 6,000 software-development jobs that paid $100,000 — and 31,000 food-service jobs that pay $21,000.
As I said before: It’s 6,000 steps forward; 31,000 steps back.
We see evidence of this every day. Tuesday’s paper carried a another basic story: “Disney World hotel set to expand to 604 rooms in 2021.”
Who do you think will work at that hotel?
Not software developers. I’m not sure government should ever use tax dollars to subsidize one industry over another. But I’m darn sure that, if we do, we should focus on the highwage ones.
Debates over higher minimum wages miss that point. While I agree that anyone who works a fulltime job should be able to provide for their family, our goal shouldn’t be to have a slightly higher-paid army of low-wage workers … it should be to have a vast army of high-wage earners.
It was a big deal for Disney and Universal to promise to raise wages. Alcantara-Anderson is now up to $14.75. And both parks say starting wages for all employees will be $15 within a few years.
But $15 isn’t enough to buy a home and save for college and retirement. It’s barely enough to survive. We need better jobs, not just higher minimums.
Obviously some tourism jobs pay well and provide opportunities for advancement. But the numbers don’t lie. We’re dead-last in wages for a reason.
Half a century after tourism put us on the map, the industry still pays low and still asks for taxpayer subsidies.
Just recently, Orange County commissioners voted to boost Visit Orlando’s subsidies to record levels and to spend another $600 million to again expand the 7-million-square-foot convention center.
And next week, commissioners are scheduled to discuss spending $125 million on a road that primarily benefits Universal … and more theme-park jobs.
And some of you are mad at the workers?
Here’s a suggestion as you finish reading the “Laborland” series:
Direct your frustration toward the elected officials who keep spending your tax dollars to generate more low-paying jobs … not at the low-wage workers who fill them.