7 Days @ Minimum Wage: ‘I Look at My Paycheck and I Want to Cry’

by James Parks, Oct 24, 2006

Erin would like to go to college and she’d like to move out of her parent’s house, but because she makes just a little more than minimum wage, she’s trapped in a dead-end job with no immediate hope of getting out.

Erin tells her story on the second installment of the video blog (vlog) “7 Days @ Minimum Wage” (clip at left):

You have to work a lot of hours to make a decent amount of money. I work so hard every day.

I don’t know how people who have families and work these jobs support their families. I don’t know what I would do if I had a family. I guess we’d have to live with my parents.

“7 Days @ Minimum Wage,” sponsored by the AFL-CIO and ACORN, is taking place Oct. 23–30 at http://sevendaysatminimumwage.org/ and at YouTube.com. It features interviews with seven workers describing life at or near the federal minimum wage, which has not been raised from $5.15 an hour since 1997.

The vlog’s host, comedienne Roseanne Barr, says “Americans should be ashamed that in the richest country on Earth the purchasing power of the minimum wage has dropped 20 percent since 1951” leaving thousands of working families scrambling to put food on the table and roofs over their heads.

The AFL-CIO union movement has spearheaded America Needs a Raise campaign to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level. The campaign has provided momentum to put the issue of raising the minimum wage on the Nov. 7 ballot in six states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. (Congress will be in session for a few days after Nov. 7. Tell your lawmakers: It’s time for a real vote to raise the minimum wage. Send an e-mail here.) 

Erin speaks volumes for the 15 million who work hard every day and get little for it when tears fill her eyes and she says simply:

I look at my paycheck and I want to cry.

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