“Hey Hey, Ho Ho, These Poverty Wages Got to Go!” by Donna Simon
I’ve lost track of the number of times I have chanted that grammatically suspect phrase on a strike line or during a march. Like all civil action chants, it is designed to capture attention in a few short syllables. Another delightful and melodic one goes, “Hold the burgers, hold the fries—make our wages supersized!”
These chants aren’t just provoking—they are rooted in deep truths. According to the Harvard Business Review, the real value of American wages is stagnant: “Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year. In other words, though the economy has been growing, the primary way most people benefit from that growth has almost completely stalled.”[i]
Since the educated workers at the top of the wage scale have actually seen gains in their real income, the truth for workers at the bottom of the scale is even more stark: “wages have been declining or stagnant for the bottom half of the income distribution.”[ii]
As a Lutheran pastor in the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri, the health of the wage scale is important to me and to my parish. The physical and emotional health of people in our community is adversely affected by the low wage economy and the near-indentured-servitude of its workers.
These concerns have always been important to me, but they catapulted into my daily vision in the first half of 2013. Our congregation had begun to host Occupy KC as the weather turned cold in 2011. As the Occupy movement shifted and changed, the leaders of our local chapter began to turn their minds to real economic change at the grassroots level. Early in 2013, Occupy’s primary organizer, Mike Enriquez, met with me to share that they had a new name: Stand Up KC, and Stand Up KC was going to begin organizing restaurant workers.
I was quite excited by this news! I paid my way through my undergrad degree and twelve years of graduate school doing just about everything one could do in a restaurant: hosting, cooking, waiting tables, a little bookkeeping, and bartending (my favorite, and the experience I draw upon most as a parish pastor).
It turned out, however, that the restaurant workers Stand Up KC would be organizing wouldn’t be privileged people like me who worked in high end fish restaurants. They were organizing the folks at McDonald’s, Burger King, Popeye’s, and Taco Bell. As the work has unfolded, it has expanded to include homecare workers, gas station attendants, and child care workers.
The minimum wage for these workers is $7.25 per hour, where it has been for nine years. In April of 2019, this will become the longest period of stagnation since the minimum wage was instituted in 1938. The current minimum wage was instituted in 2007. Its buying power has eroded greatly since then.
A worker making minimum wage would make $15,080 working full time. As you probably know, though, hardly any low wage workers are able to work full time. They are usually working unscheduled hours, and are scheduled at the whim of managers. If they need time off for a child’s illness or a well-needed vacation, they take that time “off the clock.”
If you are used to a different sort of industry, you might think that workers were only making that low wage for a short period. Au contraire. The fast food industry in particular is notorious for keeping workers at a low rate of pay for a long period of time. I know workers who have not had raises for three or more years.
As a consequence, most of the low wage workers I know—and I know a whole bunch now—are either working two jobs or living in abject poverty. Or both. At a recent Story Slam event featuring Stand Up KC workers, Kendra[iii] shared a heart-wrenching story about having to take her one-year-old daughter to live in northern Illinois with her mother, because despite working two fast food jobs, Kendra could not keep a roof over their head and meet their basic needs. For almost a year, as Kendra describes it, she felt that her “heart had been ripped out.” They are back together, I’m happy to report, but I hope we can all agree that it is a travesty for an American worker with two jobs to be unable to provide for her child.
Another worker, Rochelle, shared the harrowing story of her battle with uterine fibroids—a battle which almost cost her her life. She began bleeding uncontrollably on an organizing trip to Iowa and had to be convinced to go to the hospital, as she (like most low wage workers) has no insurance. They gave her blood transfusions and got her stabilized. She had a follow-up appointment with an ob/gyn in Kansas City upon her return, but when she informed the front desk that she had no insurance, the receptionist left to pow-wow with the doctor. The doctor said that she could stay for the appointment as long as she paid the $282 office visit fee. Rochelle left.
A beloved worker died a couple years back from complications from diabetes that were easily treatable. Her roommates urged her to go to the doctor, but she had no insurance and knew she couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket.
I know dozens more stories like these, and that is a smidge of the tip of the iceberg. Our economy no longer works for the people who serve our fast food, care for our elderly and our children, and clean our schools and office buildings. A single mom with one child making minimum wage lives below the poverty line in the U.S. According to MIT, a living wage for that mom is $23.45 in Missouri.[iv] Imagine how high it is in the majority of states, which have an even higher cost of living.
Anticipating a common argument, I must pause here to stress the fact that most of the people working for minimum wage in this country are independent adults, many with children. The majority are not “teenagers flipping burgers” as proponents of a low minimum wage often claim. The average male fast food worker in the U.S. is twenty-eight years old. The average female is thirty-two. They work those jobs because those are the jobs out there. An April 2014 Time Magazine article noted that “most of the jobs gained since 2008 have been in lower-wage industries”[v] The low wage workers I have met are some of the strongest, smartest, funniest, most driven persons I have had the privilege to know. They are trying to do better for themselves and their families, but this low wage economy is working against them.
According to a demographic snapshot put together by the research folks at my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, over one third of the people in my parish have an annual household income of less than $15,000. A third of households, living well below the poverty line! In the richest nation in the world! As a pastor, I find that appalling. As a neighbor (I live in the parish), I find it sad and frustrating.
Every major religion has a set of teachings about work, including an admonition to pay workers a just wage. Ironically, it is often the elected officials whose faith claims are worn on their sleeves who have solidified an unjust system of wages which hold down whole segments of our population—parents, children, whole neighborhoods.
When Jesus sent seventy disciples into the countryside to prepare the way for him, he told them to receive all food, drink, and housing offered to them, “for the laborer deserves to be paid.” (Luke 10:7) Those who labor in our nation deserve for the fruits of their labor to benefit them, not only shareholders and CEO’s. Our cities are suffering from proliferation of jobs which pay poverty wages. And hey, hey, ho, ho, they’ve really got to go.
[i] Jay Shambaugh and Ryan Nunn, “Why Wages Aren’t Growing in America,” Harvard Business Review, October 24, 2017, accessed February 28, 2018. https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Pseudonym–I have changed the names of all workers referenced.
[iv] MIT Living Wage Calculator, Missouri, http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/29, accessed February 28, 2018.
[v] Charlotte Alter, “Report: Low-Pay Jobs Replace High-Pay Jobs since Recession,” Time Magazine, April 28, 2014, accessed February 28, 2018. http://time.com/79061/report-low-pay-jobs-replace-high-pay-jobs-since-recession/#
The Rev. Dr. Donna Simon serves as pastor of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church and Director for Evangelical Mission of the Central States Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In both capacities, she is focused upon mission, service, and justice for all persons.
Rev. Simon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University, a Master of Divinity from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, and a Doctor of Ministry from Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. She has served as a pastor in Kansas City for seventeen years, and is past Dean of ELCA congregations in Greater Kansas City and Lawrence, KS.
St. Mark Hope and Peace is engaging in a process of intentional renewal, seeking to engage with what God is doing in the midtown area of Kansas City and beyond. The congregation worships in a beautiful old stone church on Troost Avenue, but their ministry is located in many places. They have formed many fruitful ecumenical relationships, most particularly with St. James Catholic Church. Donna lives in the parish she serves with her wife, Colleen, and several cats and dogs.