The jobs with the
lowest median pay in the U.S.? Food and beverage server, waiter, cashier, bartender, agricultural worker, food preparation worker, child care worker, maid or housecleaning worker, laundry and dry-cleaning worker. Which is to say, almost every time you go into a food or retail establishment, you are coming into contact with workers who barely make enough to live on. When you eat, you are eating food that came to you via the labor of people who barely make enough to live on. Yet low-wage workers are virtually unrepresented in our policy and politics and invisible in popular culture.
A fair day's wage
- If your employer is ignoring evidence that your job will lead to traumatic brain injury, by definition there's no way you're getting a fair day's wage. And speaking of football, members of the Atlanta Falcons are participating in a voter registration event with the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council on Wednesday.
- After the Castlewood Country Club locked out its workers, jpmassar writes, "Still No Health Care. Still No Job. But 907 Days Later, One Vindicating Court Decision."
- More unemployment stories collected by Gawker's Hamilton Nolan.
- Laundry workers on Long Island join a union after a year of organizing.
The War on Education
Legislation, state, local, and otherwise