The economy as it is now runs on exploiting all workers at the bottom- we desperately need new systems with new incentives- I used to work at a human service agency and know this issue. Pay is also low because society doesn’t care about the people these women care for. Society believes people with intellectual/developmental disabilities are unproductive etc. if we solved for everyone’s wellbeing- if wellbeing of workers/clients/families was the incentive- we’d have different systems.
Employers don’t pay these people because they don’t respect the work these people do, but what is unsaid is they actually don’t respect the people their employees serve. People with disabilities, mental illness, and the poor generally are often see as annoyances, and best ignored if at all possible. People doing this work are looked at as having no valuable skills, just an ability to endure the hard work it takes to serve people who can have a variety of disadvantages. The workers understand developing a relationship with those they care for is crucial. Developing a relationship in a social service setting is a skill that has gone unrecognized for decades. A reason this injustice is decades old is because this country continues to only value individuals according to what they can contribute financially and economically, not in the capacity for concern and compassion.
Vulnerable workers such as these workers in health and personal care should be entitled to interest arbitration on impasse in bargaining. Equivalent workers in Canada have this right. The interest arbitration outcomes typically mirror the comparative standard across the industry for similar work, which would have the effect of improving these workers' wages and terms of employment.
Here’s where common sense feminist thought and labor intersect: bosses won’t pay nothing more than starvation wages for women’s work because their mamas did that work for free and that’s all it’s worth to them. Hate hate hate!
I think I've said before here that the most I've ever gotten paid out of all my direct care work was as a veterinary technician. The least was taking care of residents with dementia and related conditions. When I worked with preschoolers the pay was less than the veterinary work but the child to staff ratio reflected the age of each classroom and was pretty strictly enforced. With the memory care units there was essentially no enforced resident to staff ratio (there was a number but it wasn't followed and there was really nothing you could do about it). Doing the work wasn't even what sucked about any of those jobs. It was seeing how little value what you did had to anyone else. The individuals you're caring for appreciate you to the extent that they're capable of understanding where they are and why you're there. Even people who I did not especially enjoy taking care of for whatever reason, it's physical, intimate, necessary work. Absolutely gender plays a very large role here but racism plays an equally large role. It takes both on top of the cultural dismissal of empathy as a positive trait.
Thank you for writing about this. The ruthless garbage that are now working to destroy this country don't care about anybody who can't stuff their pockets with money, no matter how much they talk about "God". Your article rips off the golden robe and shames the rot underneath.
I’ve never made twenty dollars an hour in my life unless I was waiting tables or bartending 🤷♀️
Traditionally, support staff is a low paying position. If it were up to me I’d pay her forty dollars an hour. The work she does is important in my opinion, even if the paying institution doesn’t.
My mother was very sick with cancer and was fortunate enough (I should say, I was fortunate enough, since I was the one needing the help in caring for her) to be able to afford to hire caregivers. They were paid $25/hour and treated like valued members of the household. And this was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO in Portland, OR which has (or had) substantially lower costs of living compared to NY. The two women were invaluable and both became true friends to both my mother and me. I'm sure that whoever is on the other side of the negotiating table would want competent and compassionate care for themselves when the need arises.
This is a very long winded way of saying that it is criminal that these workers are being payed a fraction of their worth. I wish I believed in some sort of afterlife where they would be rewarded, but I can only hope that their own sense of self-worth is some compensation. I have remained friends with my mother's caregivers to this day and you certainly cannot put a price on friendship.
Unconscionable. If these women were paid in terms of the value they bring society, their salaries would rival that of any young Wall Street entry level hire. Instead they're stuck fighting for the bare minimum to survive. I remember taking an entry level economics course in high school and the teacher commenting that the reason people in our society were paid so differently was due to the rarity of the skills they possessed, so that someone with a once in a generation talent like Michael Jordan would understandably be paid more than your average school teacher, like him. I accepted that as fact then, but over time the fallacy of this argument became too obvious to ignore. There's tons of young people who enter finance, or tech, and relatively few who choose social work or care work, and yet how many of them would be able to last 20 years in the job outlined here, as these women have done? What I finally realized is that the people who earn the most in our society are the ones who earn the most wealth for the already wealthy. That's it. Michael Jordan earned a lot more than my teacher because he made a lot of wealthy people even wealthier and my Econ teacher made less because he did not. No talent, or skill, or perceived societal value justifies this exploitative system we live under. I wish these ladies all the best with their contract negotiations, and hope they receive every dollar they ask for.
A year or three ago, Hamilton wrote about the need for a $15 minimum wage to which I said that energy should go into a mandatory living wage since $15/hr isn’t that. Hamilton corrected me to the extent of noting that in approximately half the country, $15 *is* a living wage and in the course of which I came out the bad guy.
Yet here we now are with this post…
I suppose I should note (and ask for abuse) that the problem discussed in today’s post doesn’t get resolved til sufficient progressive types get elected and the federal no longer corrupted. You know, horse before cart.
The economy as it is now runs on exploiting all workers at the bottom- we desperately need new systems with new incentives- I used to work at a human service agency and know this issue. Pay is also low because society doesn’t care about the people these women care for. Society believes people with intellectual/developmental disabilities are unproductive etc. if we solved for everyone’s wellbeing- if wellbeing of workers/clients/families was the incentive- we’d have different systems.
It's funny because non-productive workers are the highest paid in this culture
Haha! Indeed. I guess it depends on who controls the narrative-
It's a vast paper doll chain... With lots of Patagonia vests
Employers don’t pay these people because they don’t respect the work these people do, but what is unsaid is they actually don’t respect the people their employees serve. People with disabilities, mental illness, and the poor generally are often see as annoyances, and best ignored if at all possible. People doing this work are looked at as having no valuable skills, just an ability to endure the hard work it takes to serve people who can have a variety of disadvantages. The workers understand developing a relationship with those they care for is crucial. Developing a relationship in a social service setting is a skill that has gone unrecognized for decades. A reason this injustice is decades old is because this country continues to only value individuals according to what they can contribute financially and economically, not in the capacity for concern and compassion.
All of this, exactly 💯
Vulnerable workers such as these workers in health and personal care should be entitled to interest arbitration on impasse in bargaining. Equivalent workers in Canada have this right. The interest arbitration outcomes typically mirror the comparative standard across the industry for similar work, which would have the effect of improving these workers' wages and terms of employment.
Dear god, under $20/hour in New York City. That's borderline criminal.
Here’s where common sense feminist thought and labor intersect: bosses won’t pay nothing more than starvation wages for women’s work because their mamas did that work for free and that’s all it’s worth to them. Hate hate hate!
I appreciate all those who took the time to comment on our predicament,it's not easy.
Thank you for speaking to me Mona!
I think I've said before here that the most I've ever gotten paid out of all my direct care work was as a veterinary technician. The least was taking care of residents with dementia and related conditions. When I worked with preschoolers the pay was less than the veterinary work but the child to staff ratio reflected the age of each classroom and was pretty strictly enforced. With the memory care units there was essentially no enforced resident to staff ratio (there was a number but it wasn't followed and there was really nothing you could do about it). Doing the work wasn't even what sucked about any of those jobs. It was seeing how little value what you did had to anyone else. The individuals you're caring for appreciate you to the extent that they're capable of understanding where they are and why you're there. Even people who I did not especially enjoy taking care of for whatever reason, it's physical, intimate, necessary work. Absolutely gender plays a very large role here but racism plays an equally large role. It takes both on top of the cultural dismissal of empathy as a positive trait.
Thank you for writing about this. The ruthless garbage that are now working to destroy this country don't care about anybody who can't stuff their pockets with money, no matter how much they talk about "God". Your article rips off the golden robe and shames the rot underneath.
I’ve never made twenty dollars an hour in my life unless I was waiting tables or bartending 🤷♀️
Traditionally, support staff is a low paying position. If it were up to me I’d pay her forty dollars an hour. The work she does is important in my opinion, even if the paying institution doesn’t.
Same. It's like pink collar plus blue collar = well purple collar obviously but zero respect and no pay
Thank you for sharing their story. I hope they are able to negotiate higher pay at least. It's clear the workplace does not respect what they do.
Thanks for this
My mother was very sick with cancer and was fortunate enough (I should say, I was fortunate enough, since I was the one needing the help in caring for her) to be able to afford to hire caregivers. They were paid $25/hour and treated like valued members of the household. And this was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO in Portland, OR which has (or had) substantially lower costs of living compared to NY. The two women were invaluable and both became true friends to both my mother and me. I'm sure that whoever is on the other side of the negotiating table would want competent and compassionate care for themselves when the need arises.
This is a very long winded way of saying that it is criminal that these workers are being payed a fraction of their worth. I wish I believed in some sort of afterlife where they would be rewarded, but I can only hope that their own sense of self-worth is some compensation. I have remained friends with my mother's caregivers to this day and you certainly cannot put a price on friendship.
Unconscionable. If these women were paid in terms of the value they bring society, their salaries would rival that of any young Wall Street entry level hire. Instead they're stuck fighting for the bare minimum to survive. I remember taking an entry level economics course in high school and the teacher commenting that the reason people in our society were paid so differently was due to the rarity of the skills they possessed, so that someone with a once in a generation talent like Michael Jordan would understandably be paid more than your average school teacher, like him. I accepted that as fact then, but over time the fallacy of this argument became too obvious to ignore. There's tons of young people who enter finance, or tech, and relatively few who choose social work or care work, and yet how many of them would be able to last 20 years in the job outlined here, as these women have done? What I finally realized is that the people who earn the most in our society are the ones who earn the most wealth for the already wealthy. That's it. Michael Jordan earned a lot more than my teacher because he made a lot of wealthy people even wealthier and my Econ teacher made less because he did not. No talent, or skill, or perceived societal value justifies this exploitative system we live under. I wish these ladies all the best with their contract negotiations, and hope they receive every dollar they ask for.
A year or three ago, Hamilton wrote about the need for a $15 minimum wage to which I said that energy should go into a mandatory living wage since $15/hr isn’t that. Hamilton corrected me to the extent of noting that in approximately half the country, $15 *is* a living wage and in the course of which I came out the bad guy.
Yet here we now are with this post…
I suppose I should note (and ask for abuse) that the problem discussed in today’s post doesn’t get resolved til sufficient progressive types get elected and the federal no longer corrupted. You know, horse before cart.