The federal government supports more U.S. low wage jobs than
McDonald's and Wal-Mart put together.
By Martha
Burk
McDonald’s really
stepped in it this summer when the fast food empire created a budget for its
underpaid employees to help them make ends meet on the low wages they bring
home after flipping burgers all week.
At first, the McBudget
didn’t include any money for food or gasoline, then it fixed that by telling
its full-time workers to get a second job. It allocated only $20 a month for
health insurance — less than half of what it costs to carry McDonald’s most
affordable coverage option.
The golden arches
deservedly came under fire and faced widespread ridicule.
That’s right. The
federal government supports more U.S. low‑wage jobs than McDonald’s and Walmart
put together, according to a recent report from Demos.
One reason why we
don’t hear much about it is that these exploited workers don’t get a paycheck
directly from the U.S. Treasury. They work for contractors — companies that are
paid with your tax dollars to staff government facilities and do
government-funded work around the country.
Contractors get big
bucks to make goods, like military uniforms, and provide services. These
companies do construction jobs, employ home health care workers, and are
responsible for cleaning government buildings.
Though the contracts
can total billions of dollars, frontline workers are paid at poverty levels.
After decades on the job, these workers may never get a raise that brings their
pay above our paltry minimum wage.
Guadalupe Rodriguez is
an example. She has worked for almost 20 years for a janitorial company at
Union Station, a federal property. She receives no benefits and has never made
more than the minimum. Workers who are undocumented, and there are some, are
paid in cash and cheated out of even that lowly sum.
These workers
exploited by companies raking in your tax dollars number about two million. On
top of that, there are at least one million underpaid farm workers taken advantage
of by Big Ag companies subsidized
with government handouts.
Well, some of these
underpaid federal contract workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to
take it anymore. Rolling strikes in Washington have been held this summer at
the Smithsonian Institution, Union Station, and the Ronald Reagan building. Led
by the union-backed Good Jobs Nation, the strikes are sure to spread to other cities
with large numbers of government-contracted workers.
The Demos report urges
President Barack Obama to issue an executive order that would mandate higher
wages and benefits as a condition of federal contracting, an already common
practice at the municipal level.
Better yet, why not
cut out the middlemen? Uncle Sam used to employ people directly, with decent
wages and benefits. Now those jobs are outsourced to corporations making big
profits on the backs of workers.
By allowing
contractors to pay low wages and no benefits, the federal government is forcing
us taxpayers to pick up the tab for the help these employees must have to make
ends meet — services like Medicaid, food stamps, and subsidized child care.
There’s no sane reason
why corporations should be allowed to benefit from billions of your tax dollars
to line their already overflowing pockets, all the while keeping your neighbors
in poverty.
Martha Burk is the
director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of
Women's Organizations (NCWO) and the author of the book Your Voice, Your Vote: The Savvy
Woman's Guide to Power, Politics, and the Change We Need. Follow Martha on
twitter @MarthaBurk. Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)
