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https://theconversation.com/nickel-and-dimed-at-25-barbara-ehrenreichs-classic-reveals-the-high-cost-of-low-wage-work-275228>
"Last month, the
ABC reported “rental affordability has hit a new low in
Australia”. Already, low-wage workers in major cities face the burden of
commuting to jobs they can’t afford to live near.
A lovely relative on my partner’s side, who is in her 60s and has worked for
many years in aged care, told me last Christmas that women are joining her
low-wage workplace after leaving retail jobs, where they were frequently
verbally abused by customers. Signs displayed at many Australian retailers
suggest this has become a post-pandemic feature of these workplaces.
Verbal abuse was not an aspect of the late Barbara Ehrenreich’s time working at
Wal-Mart – one of a series of low-wage jobs she worked “undercover” in the
United States over three months in the late 1990s. This year, her
internationally bestselling classic about her experience,
Nickel and Dimed,
turns 25. As low-wage workers face worsening precarity and indignities, its
insights are more important than ever.
Ehrenreich, a journalist and activist, proposed her project over lunch with her
editor. (Well, sort of.) It was 1998, and as she ordered the salmon and field
greens, she pondered the consequences of the Clinton government’s 1996
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which required welfare
recipients to engage in compulsory work programs, or “workfare”.
The experience of receiving social security was transformed across the
Anglosphere in this period, including in Australia – where John Howard’s
government would soon embrace “targeted interventions” (or “mutual obligation”)
for welfare recipients.
Ehrenreich asked: how would people kicked off welfare rolls and into the bottom
of the labour market make it on US$6 or $7 an hour? A journalist ought to try
it for themselves, she suggested. The mission somehow became hers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
