Shawn Henfling tells the story of what made him finally understand the problem with current minimum wage laws.
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My first job paid slightly more than minimum wage. By slightly, I mean a nickel. Back in 1994, the minimum wage was 4.25 an hour. I was a freshman in high school and worked at the local McDonald’s restaurant. As a teen, I frequently looked down upon the people toiling away with me while trying desperately to support themselves or their families on similar wages. I was a self centered and egotistical teen who lacked the worldview or understanding to realize that they deserved better. To me, it was just a job to get by until I could graduate and “get a real job.”
While enrolled in college, I found myself working at WalMart. I joked so often about someday finding “a real job” that it ceased to be funny. I didn’t realize that for many of my coworkers, it never was funny. They were struggling every day with the shame and stigma of accepting assistance from the government because they just couldn’t make ends meet. They worked hard. Frankly, they worked harder than I work now and I make far more money. They weren’t lazy or entitled. They were just doing the best they could.
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My job was to push, cajole, threaten and motivate low wage employees to function at a high level for little reward.
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Fast forward a few more years and that fake job I had somehow turned into a real one. WalMart saw fit to hire me on as an Assistant Manager. My job was to push, cajole, threaten and motivate low wage employees to function at a high level for little reward. Every day I went to work and I bought into the propaganda we were fed. “There is plenty of room for advancement if you work hard. We treat our employees well enough that they don’t need union representation.” I believed it so much that I preached the same thing to others. I was still too wrapped up in myself to truly see what was going on.
A few more years and I was managing Tractor Supply Co. stores. The job was good, paid reasonably well and I was master of my own domain. I had spent so much of my life in retail that low wages and unreasonable demands were things I simply expected. Sometime during my tenure my views began to change. I was connected on a more personal level with my employees. I struggled to pay them as well as I could while still meeting the budgetary goals set by my employer. We all worked hard. It was the culture and every week I lamented how little I could “afford” to pay them.
I am still ashamed of the way I toyed with their lives to help the company stock rise a few cents.
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I often listened stone faced as they’d speak of financial troubles or doing without small comforts in life to provide for a child. I won’t get into details, but suffice to say at the end of the year I could have paid them all a living wage and still made the shareholders a small fortune. I left that company because the payroll constraints became too much. I simply couldn’t operate a successful business with the meager wages I was expected to pay. To them, paying someone 9 or 10 dollars was “good money”. I am still ashamed of the way I toyed with their lives to help the company stock rise a few cents. We weren’t people, we were pawns in a Wall Street Monopoly game.
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All of those jobs suffered from enormous amounts of turnover, low employee morale and difficult relationships between supervisors and employees. Our low wages had a great deal to do with it. They worked hard. All of them. Teenagers, single moms and dads alike. I had educated men and women working for me, some with skills far outweighing my own. The jobs were often demeaning but we all did them. Government assistance wasn’t something they bragged about or flashed around. If it were mentioned at all it was in hushed tones with shamed voices. They were proud people doing what they had to do in order to get by.
These are people we are talking about, not commodities to be bought, sold and traded.
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Which brings us to the present. The arguments for and against raising the minimum wage play on day after day. There are lies, half truths and facts so often intermingled with one another that it becomes difficult to tell them apart. Here’s the reality. The minimum wage was created to be a living wage, money enough that a full time job should be enough to get people by and to live comfortably. It isn’t just teenagers and college students trying to earn spending money. These are people we are talking about, not commodities to be bought, sold and traded. People engaged in a daily struggle to do nothing more than exist.
Civilized societies lift up their most vulnerable and do so by allowing them to keep their dignity. It isn’t a liberal argument or a bunch of lazy good for nothings protesting for unreasonably high wages. This is about people and their right to live. This is about which is more important: the corporate elite or the people they step on to squeeze a few more cents onto the value of their stocks. People that work a full time job shouldn’t have to accept government assistance or wonder where their next meal is coming from. It’s just that simple.
Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker/flickr