by Mike Hall, Aug 29, 2006

Working poor “ought to be an oxymoron.”

So says filmmaker Roger Weisberg, whose documentary “Waging a Living” airs tonight on PBS’ P.O.V. series (check your local listings).

“Waging a Living” documents the hard work and struggles of four of the estimated 30 million U.S. workers whose incomes fall below the federal poverty level for a family of four. Says Weisberg in an interview on the PBS website:

The idea that you can work full time and still be poor in this society is a real crime. And the numbers of working poor have risen so dramatically. Since 1977, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of people working full time who are still poor.

…I want to show that it’s different for folks on the bottom of that income ladder, and in many ways the situation now is different than it was years ago. My film is not really about all of the reasons the situation has changed over time: it’s not about globalization; it’s not about the transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy; it’s not about the diminished power of labor unions today. What Waging a Living is really about is the impact that those forces are having on low-wage workers today.

The camera follows Jean Reynolds, a 51-year-old certified nursing assistant in Keansburg, N.J. She earns $11 an hour with no health insurance. She also supports three children, including her eldest daughter, who suffers from cancer, and her four children. Says Reynolds:

I’ve worked hard all my life and I’m still stuck. There is no American dream anymore.

Barbara Brooks is a single mother of five in Freeport, N.Y., who earns $8.25 an hour as a counselor at a juvenile detention home. She works hard to win promotions on the job only to find she loses more in government assistance than she earns with the extra pay. She says that she feels like her life is “hustling backwards.”

A recently divorced mother of three, Mary Venittelli was uprooted from her Southern New Jersey middle class life and now earns $2.13 an hour plus tips as a waitress. Some nights her tips barely cover the cost of the babysitter. She lost her car and may lose her home.

Jerry Longoria is a San Francisco security guard. He earns $12 an hour, pays $530 a month for a tiny single room in a lousy neighborhood and sends monthly child support payments back to North Carolina where his two children live with his ex-wife.

Filmmaker Weisberg says:

It’s easy to take for granted the janitors and security guards in the offices where we work, the waiters and bus boys in the restaurants where we eat, and the nurses and caregivers in the facilities where we place our children and elderly. I wanted to bring viewers inside the daily grind of the nameless people we encounter every day who struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck. My goal was to get people to take a new look at the prevailing American myth that hard work alone can overcome poverty.

One way Congress and the state legislatures can help is by raising the minimum wage. The AFL-CIO’s America Needs a Raise campaign has mobilized tens of thousands of union and community activist to fight for minimum wage increases on the state and federal levels. In addition, the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions and community allies have won, and are working to win living wages laws in cities and towns around the country.  

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