Opponents of raising the minimum wage to a living wage seem to be confused about what it actually means. And who benefits from it. Maybe it’s because they’ve been taken care of their whole lives. Maybe it’s because they’ve never had to struggle financially.
Regardless, it comes down to basic respect and understanding—two things minimum wage adversaries clearly lack.
A swarm of mostly conservative folks believe raising the minimum wage rewards people who are too lazy to go to school. They believe people just need to “work harder.”
Is that so?
Let’s look at Derrell Odom.
An Iraq War veteran and purple heart recipient, Derrell now works at KFC in Atlanta, Ga. It’s a job he enjoys, yet it’s a job he gets paid very little to do. Testifying at a wage board meeting, he spoke on how the paltry wage makes it almost impossible to get by.
“I don’t want my son to look at me like I’m something less because I have to work for $7.25 when I bust my butt every day, and I take pride in what I do,” Derrell told the board.
Is this someone who needs to work harder?
He served his country, and now he can’t even serve his own family.
Of course, the rumor mill has been pumping out a lot regarding Darrell since this video was posted in November 2015. Apparently, he was given a dishonorable discharge and was also convicted for assault and battery two separate times.
But here’s the deal. We have soldiers like Derrell serving overseas in incredibly violent situations that turn them into mentally unstable beings. We expect them to remain completely competent and able to focus. They come home, sometimes with little money and almost no security, and have to find a job to take care of themselves and their families.
That’s exactly what Darrell is trying to do.
People make mistakes. Sometimes, those mistakes are ones we as a society made for them. Yet they don’t deserve a second chance?
The fact is, people need to do those jobs, the kind that Darrell does 40, 50, 60 hours a week. We need people to serve our food, and clean our toilets, and pick up the trash. As long as we need those tasks to be completed, it’s our job as a society to pay people fairly to get them done.
It’s not a matter of “low-skill” versus “high-skill” jobs. I’m sick of hearing that shit. No one is asking for fast-food workers to make the same salary as brain surgeons.
What they want, and deserve, is respect. And raising the minimum wage to $12 or $15 an hour would do just that.
We can’t turn our workers into slaves, especially when they risked their lives to save ours.
Don’t We ask enough of our armed forces? And now we want to ask them to starve?
It’s estimated that approximately 1 million veterans work minimum wage jobs and would benefit by receiving a raise with a minimum wage increase.
And the reality is that 89 percent of those who would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase are age 20 or older, and 56 percent are women. They’re people who are doing whatever they can to live.
They’re the recent graduates who got stuck with high-interest loans and are forced to live in their parents’ basements. They’re the single mothers who got a raw deal when their husband lefts and now have to choose between paying rent and buying groceries to feed their kids.
Is this the America we want to live in? Is this the America that we’re proud of?
If you work, you should get paid. And get paid respectfully.
It really is that simple.