Wage Slaves: Not Getting By in America

Inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich's eye-opening bestseller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (an excellent undercover exposé in which journalist Ehrenreich took several entry-level jobs in the service sector to see whether low wage jobs truly allow people to make financial ends meet), this entry in A&E's Investigative Reports, hosted by somber-voiced Bill Kurtis, examines the contemporary situations of five men and women who are among the 25% of Americans drawing an hourly wage between seven and eight dollars. From divorced mother of two, Sandra, who pulls down $233 in take home pay every two weeks--yet doesn't think of herself as poor (which, according to her, is a state of mind), but rather broke--to Robert, a single dad with custody of three kids, whose commission-based job as a Las Vegas limo taxi driver is wholly dependent on a healthy tourist trade (in shambles after 9/11), all five of the interviewees profiled seem to be what we used to call decent, upstanding Americans, working long hours and fighting to keep their families intact and afloat. Just as interesting as the main stories, if not more so, are the incisive comments interspersed throughout from Ehrenreich and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, among others, on the relative stability of entry-level wages over the past 20 years compared to the rocketing costs of housing, daycare, and healthcare; the relationship between the minimum wage law and the expanding exportation of jobs overseas; and some of the good and bad results of the Clinton administration's "end of welfare as we know it." If you can overlook the stupefying amount of repetition (due to the commercial-break-reiteration formula and the fact this was originally a two-part program), there's substantial food for thought here on the current state of low-paid service workers in contemporary America. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)