It’s morning.
Laura yawns and hits the snooze button on her alarm clock before rolling back over and catching another five minutes of rest before her day begins.
Laura has a full-time job as a waitress in a local diner. After she gets up and gets dressed, Laura exits her small apartment (she would have preferred a larger one, but the $2.13 minimum wage for waitresses doesn’t allow for much wiggle room, even with tips included) and walks down the street in the light of dawn.
She will spend the rest of her day pouring coffee, putting on a smile and relying on the kindness of others for whatever money she needs to live.
Laura’s story is a work of fiction, but Laura’s experience as a waitress is an experience that many Murray State students can relate to.
Even if you aren’t in Laura’s position and are making slightly more than she is (say $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage), chances are you are having a hard time making ends meet. A full-time employee working a minimum wage job only makes $15,080 per year. There are no states in the union where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a two bedroom apartment.
Congress voted to raise the minimum wage in 2007 from an abysmally low $5.85 an hour to $7.25 and hasn’t acted on another increase since then. Prior to the 2007 raise, the minimum wage had not been raised in a decade. The story is bleaker for waiters and waitresses – Congress hasn’t bothered to raise their wages in 22 years. Industry lobbying is the ultimate culprit for why Congress has dragged its feet on raising the minimum wage.
Jim Skinner, the former CEO of McDonald’s, made $8.75 million last year (580 times the annual pay of one of his employees) and helped bankroll efforts to keep the minimum wage down because it might cost him a bit of his $82.3 million retirement package. Had the minimum wage kept up with the cost of living, it would be around $10.58 per hour hour today, a whole three dollars higher than the current minimum wage.
I’ve worked in fast food since I graduated high school. When people degrade my co-workers to their face or behind their back, when they belittle the work they do, I think about what that says about us as a people. I think about the single dad who has to work two jobs to make ends meet. I think about the mom who has to choose between paying for gas to get to work and buying diapers and baby food. I think about the students who already don’t make enough and get their hours cut and then have to come up with money to pay for tuition, books, housing – you name it.
The President came out in favor of a higher minimum wage in his State of the Union Speech on Tuesday. His proposal, $9 an hour still isn’t enough to live on – but it’s a start. Sixty seven percent of Americans are with the President on a higher minimum wage. If there is any policy that has a chance of passing the House, it is this one. The people at the bottom of the totem pole need a raise and it’s up to us to make sure that it happens. Call your representatives and tell them that you support raising the minimum wage – if not for yourself then for your friends or family members. Do it for your country – because in the richest nation on the Earth, no person that works for a living should live in poverty.
Column by Devin Griggs, opinion editor. Devin serves as vice president of finances for the Murray State College Democrats.