Low-Wage Proposal - Michael Adair

Michael Adair

Prof. Bousquet

English Writing in New Media

Research Paper Proposal

10/4/2009

Working Two Low-Wage Jobs

I would like to write my research paper on those individuals that work two low-wage jobs in order to support themselves or their family. I feel as though I have a strong personal connection to this topic due to the fact that not only did I work for 4 years in a low-wage position alongside of several co-workers (some of whom I became close to) who were working two jobs, but also because over the summer I sometimes was working two jobs at the same time. Albeit I had very different motives for working two jobs, but the experience was one I will never forget. Barbara Ehrenreich (Ehrenreich, 41-49) speaks first hand about having two jobs at the same time. She spoke of the difficulty on the worker for working two jobs, and her first hand experience made her argument that much stronger, because she had actually lived it. However, she quickly quit the jobs right after this because it was so hard to deal with. She was doing all of this because she was exploring whether or not it was possible to live off one low-wage job (Ehrenreich, 1), which she found she needed to get another job to help support herself. Now imagine this: a single mother working two jobs in order to support her children and provide a better life for them so that they will not have to work low-wage jobs for the rest of their life. Shipler expresses this problem through examples of Christie and Caroline (Shipler, 39-76). Also, I’d like to explore the effects upon the children of never having their mother/father at home because they are constantly working to provide a better life for their children. Shipler also discusses the poor financial decisions that people have, rich and poor, and the idea that financial planning should be taught in schools (Shipler, 22) which would be an interesting idea to explore. Overall, I think my topic is worthwhile of researching, and I already have some solid ideas/examples from the three books we have read so far.