And more so than in years past, the focus is on retail workers as more stores open on Thanksgiving Day, requiring many more to work on the holiday. Even if they have the option of staying home, those still stuck at the bottom economic rung long after the recession’s end have little choice but to take on extra shifts.
Food stamps have been cut for some, and many were stung by the payroll tax increase. Even their own companies have set up food drives to aid low-paid employees at individual stores or created help lines advising them how to stretch their food dollars and apply for public assistance.
Chardé Nabors, a mother of two who works as a $9-an-hour cashier at Sears in the Chicago Loop, feels left behind by the holiday festivities, partly because she was scheduled to work from 7:30 p.m. Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. Friday. “I’m here watching shoppers buy all these items, and I’m working to help these people, and I can’t even buy my children the same products,” said Ms. Nabors, whose 3-year-old son wants a Spider-Man doll she cannot afford.
For retail workers nationwide, who earn a median pay of about $9.60 an hour, or less than $20,000 a year, holiday shopping sprees are most often enjoyed by customers on the opposite side of the counter.
On Black Friday, workers at Walmart and their union allies plan to stage protests at some 1,500 Walmart stores to demand higher pay. Moreover, many lawmakers, seeing the squeeze on incomes nationwide, are pushing an idea that they say could give a much-needed boost to retailers’ languishing sales: increasing the minimum wage.
The idea has been picking up momentum, with several new developments in the last month.
The Massachusetts State Senate approved a measure last week that would increase that state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour, far more than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum. Hoping to reduce low-wage workers’ dependence on government aid, a conservative billionaire in California, Ronald Unz, is backing a referendum to raise his state’s minimum wage to $12 — even more than the $10 minimum that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in September. And on Tuesday, officials in Washington State announced that voters in SeaTac, a Seattle suburb, had approved a referendum to establish a $15-an-hour minimum wage for the 6,500 workers at the international airport there. Also this week in Maryland, the Montgomery and Prince George’s county councils voted to raise the minimum to $11.50 an hour by 2017.
Earlier this month, White House officials said they would back a bill in Congress that calls for raising the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour over two years, although opposition within the Republican-controlled House makes passage unlikely anytime soon. Major retailers and fast-food companies have opposed an increase, saying it would force them to raise prices and reduce worker numbers.
Median pay for the nation’s 3.4 million fast-food workers stands at $8.80 an hour. For Tenesha Hueston, a shift manager at a Burger King in Durham, N.C., a $10.10 minimum wage would be a godsend for her Christmas shopping. She says her pay — $7.75 an hour —is too meager for her to buy the gifts her children are hankering for: a bicycle for her 5-year-old son and a Leapfrog Tablet learning toy for her 4-year-old daughter. Ms. Hueston, 36 and recently divorced, does housecleaning on the side, and moved back into her father’s house with her children last spring when Burger King reduced her weekly hours.
With a higher wage, Ms. Hueston said, “I’d be able to buy things. Maybe I’d be able to move out of my father’s house. Maybe I could get off food stamps. Maybe I could start giving back to the economy.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/business/on-registers-other-side-little-money-to-spend.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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