The
first reading that came to my mind when watching Waging a Living was Kozol’s, Amazing Grace. One of Kozol’s major points is that when
people are in poverty, it is not due to the fact that they are stupid or
irrational. It is simply because they might
have had some bad luck and then the American system worked against them to
prevent them from rising above the poverty level. Similar to how Cliffie and his mom and Alice
Walker could not escape the poverty they lived in; the people in the film were
completely stuck.
Jean Reynolds (the CNA) and her
daughter Bridget were in a heartbreaking situation- Jean has several children
and Bridget is unable to help financially because she is dying of thyroid
cancer. They did not have access to
health care so Bridget’s doctors told her plain and simple, “Enjoy this
Christmas because it is probably going to be your last.” Thyroid cancer does not have to be a life-threatening cancer. However, it was threatening to Bridget because
she couldn’t afford the right treatment.
How could Bridget and Jean possibly save money when they are trying to
save Bridget’s life? What will happen to
the health of the other children when all of the money is being spent on bills
and on Bridget’s cancer? Bridget was not
receiving any form of preventative treatment or the doctors would have caught
the cancer in its early stages; Jean tells us that the illness is much too far
progressed for treatment that they could afford. Sure, this may seem like too much of a
specific case- major health problems like cancer certainly have a huge impact
on finances. But the movie stated that
18,000 Americans die a year because they lack health insurance. This entire group of people is probably
trying to save themselves while trying to make ends meet. Eventually, Bridget is provided with health
insurance which covers the rest of the children as well. The family moves into another home because
they were evicted out of theirs.
Although Bridget now has health, she is still very sick and Jean still
struggles because she only makes $11 an hour as a CNA. Jean does not have the time to go back to
school to be an RN. She is stuck in a
situation that provides her no advancement opportunity.
The story of Barbara Brooks was
inspiring. She was abused by both her
uncle and mother growing up so she went to live in a house with other
teenagers. She was then abused again by
the workers at the house. Several years
later, she ended up being a single parent of five. She worked at the house that she grew up in-
the one that she was abused in- because she loves the kids there and wants to
make a difference. Working at the house,
she was making $8.25 an hour so she decided to go back to school to get her
associates degree. Somehow, Barbara
juggled raising five kids, working full time, and going to college all at the
same time, which is truly admirable. She
then got a raise- $11 an hour. This is
where all of her hard work is supposed to pay off, right? Wrong.
Since Barbara made more at $11 an hour, she was no longer eligible for
food stamps or Medicaid. Her section 8
housing rent was also increased by $149.
Overall, Barbara made $450 more a month than she did working at the
house. However, she received $600 less
from government assistance. She said, “The
harder I work, the harder it gets.” It’s
agonizing to see a single mother work that hard to try to make her life better,
only to be pushed down by the system she is stuck in. She graduates with her associates and gets a
new job, making $12.10 an hour to start.
After ninety days, her boss loves her performance and offers her a raise
and full time status. Again, Barbara’s
assistance is cut and she has to work harder than ever before- simply because
she got an associate’s degree and performed well at work. She decides that in order to be successful,
she needs to go back to school to get her bachelor’s degree. She tells her boss that she can no longer
work full time.
Kozol
would claim that these women were placed in awful situations that they did NOT
cause- Jean’s daughter ended up with cancer and Barbara lived an extremely
rough childhood. However, when they try
to rise above the situation that they’ve been stuck in for years, they are
pushed down by the American system. For
Jean and Bridget, it is the health care system.
For Barbara, it is government assistance. So much for the American dream…
The
other material that came to mind when watching the film was Wolff’s, Capitalism Hits the Fan. He discusses how the productivity of workers
has risen and continues to rise every year.
Yet, since the seventies, workers have been paid the same wages despite
their hard work.
This
reminded me a lot of Jerry’s story. Jerry
was a security guard at a multi-milllion dollar building in San Francisco
making $12 an hour. Twelve dollars an
hour, Jerry claims, is like making $6.50 an hour anywhere else because living
in San Fransisco is so expensive. His
one-room studio apartment’s rent is $530 a month! He also pays child support but has not had
enough money to see his two children in nine years. Jerry’s union protests for a pay raise and
all of the security guards get one: a whopping $.75 raise. Still, this helps him save some money to
finally go see his kids (which, by the way, was a really heart-wrenching
moment- anyone else feel tears surface?).
Finally, Jerry and his boss have a disagreement and Jerry is fired. His union gets him a new job as a security
guard at a different building- making $10.25 an hour with a $.25 cent raise
every year. It would take Jerry EIGHT
YEARS to get back to the $12.75 he was making at his other security job. It made me wonder if Jerry would ever see his kids again. Then, a statistic came on the screen, which
is specifically what reminded me most of Dr. Wolff, “Real pay for male low-wage
workers is less than it was 30 years ago.”
As Wolff stated, during the 1970’s real wages for workers stopped
declining. Despite the fact that the company
that Jerry works for is becoming more and more profitable each year, Jerry
receives only a $.25 raise.
To wrap up my blog, I’ll throw out a statistic that the film
showed,
“Over half of Americans that started the last decade in
poverty, remained in poverty ten years later.”'
Mary Venitelli was
the only women in “Waging a Living” that
finally got out of the mess she was in.
However, she could not do it alone as the “American Dream” likes to
claim. Mary met a man that helped her
watch the kids while she worked extra hours as well as contribute financially
to her family. This means that out of
the four people the producers of Waging a Living interviewed, only one made it
past poverty- and she needed help in order to do so. This movie shows how individualism is a myth
and that, as Barbara Brooks stated, “There is no American dream.”
