low wage life: julia mink

For my entire life, my family has had housekeepers clean our house every other week. Until recently, I found out that this group of women was “living the low wage life.” Usually about two or three women came; there boss escorted them in and collected the check from my mother. They usually spoke very little English which made it hard to communicate the day’s work. In The Working Poor, David K. Shipler states that “they” (immigrants) “feed and clothe and comfort the Americans they wish to emulate” (77). Several ethnic groups come to America looking for the “dream.” They think they will have better lives: opportunity, community, and occupation. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, applies for a job at the Merry Maids cleaning service. In her interview, the boss tells her that she will make between “$200 and $250 a week for an average of fours’ work” (60). She tells Ehrenreich not to do the math, but she does anyways. She figures out that this is only about “$5 to $6 dollars an hour” for “heavy labor” (60). In California, good-looking teenagers can be paid about $8.25 an hour to “model” (stand in the front of the store and smile) at Hollister Co. or Abercrombie. Compared to cleaning an entire house, this seems to be a pretty easy job. On top of that, it pays more. And on top of that, most employees are not living off of this wage, as most housekeepers are. “Those who lack fluency in English, proper immigration papers, or advanced skills… are imprisoned in an archipelago of scattered zones of cheap labor that promote the country’s interests” (91, Shipler). People of different ethnicity seem to have the hardest time living the low wage life.