Hidden Voices (Part 2 in a series)

One way I identify hidden voices is from the comments I receive through my work with Our Eyes Were Opened, Inc. One comment that I hear is: “If they’d just get a job, everything would be okay.”

Maybe we need to listen to why some people do not work. In order to get and keep a job, you have to have transportation, good health, adequate and safe childcare, and good people skills.

In the poverty simulation that I facilitate, I ask during the debriefing session how people who had a job in the simulation would now respond to that comment: “If they’d just get a job, everything would be okay.” The participants report that yes, they had a job but they didn’t earn enough to pay the family’s bills. Yes, they had a job but did not have enough time when they got off work to take care of all the family’s responsibilities or to supervise their children. Yes, they had a job but lost it because they did not have enough bus tickets to get to work. Yes, they had a job but were tardy because of issues out of their control and so their pay was reduced. Their already stressed budget could not absorb the ongoing costs of transportation tickets to continue the job.

The hourly self-sufficiency wage for one adult and one preschooler in 2016 in Greenville, SC, was $15.67/hour. I’ll remind you that minimum wage is $7.25/hour. The annual self-sufficiency wage for two adults with a preschooler and a school age child was $46,030. The self-sufficiency wage includes housing, child care, food, public and/or private transportation, health care (if the employer pays for health insurance), taxes and tax credits, miscellaneous things (figured at 10% of all other expenses), and emergency savings.

I’ll expand just a bit about transportation. Greenville pays $3.76 per capita for its public transportation system whereas Charleston pays $17.79 and Greensboro pays $40.70. Our low per capita expenditure is not a fact to be proud of. Transportation is a huge hurdle for employment.

Many people want to work but the required infrastructure to get and keep a job is just not there.

How We Think About Work

Because we have different funds of knowledge based on our age, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomics, education, experiences, etc., we often ascribe to others the solutions to a situation that would work for us. This often does not play out very well for us or for those we are trying to “help” because our funds of knowledge are different. Our assets, strengths, and experiences may be very different. What works for me, then, would not work for the other person. What works for her will not work for me.

For example, our work ethic grew out of our own personal history. Lee Schore from Center for Working Life in Oakland, California, developed questions that I adapted.

What work did your grandparents and parents do? Was there a work difference between the two generations? Did their work affect your own development?

What were the stated and unstated assumptions about work in your family?  Did your family talk about work? Did you understand what kind(s) of work your parent(s) did? How did this affect your own work development?

What kinds of work did the parents of your friends do? What kinds of work did members of your extended family do?  Did you experience pride or shame when comparing the different jobs that people you knew had. How did this affect your work development?   

How did your parents’ jobs affect the structure of your family? If things had been different, would your childhood have been affected? How did this affect your work development?

What is your own work history? What jobs did you like? What jobs did you hate? Why?

What are your attitudes about work? If you had an absolute choice, not related to earning money, what you most want to do? When you think of “worker,” what is your image?  

Before we resort to the comment, “If they’d just get a job, everything would be okay,” we might want to think about how our own ideas about work came about.