"What's happening in the world's richest, most powerful country when so many families seem to be struggling?"
That's what Business Week magazine wanted to know a couple years ago. And it wasn't talking about homeless families, but households that had at least one adult working full time.
In 2004, some 28 million Americans --- a quarter of the nation's workforce between 18 and 64 --- earned less than $9.04 an hour. At the end of a year, that adds up to $18,800, the federal government's stringent poverty line for a family of four.
That sad statistic hasn't changed much.
A national study by the Working Poor Families Project, which spent three years in 15 states studying the conditions of low-income working families, reports that one-out-of-four working families in the U.S. currently earn wages so low they're having a difficult time surviving financially.
"These are families with responsible, hard-working breadwinners who want to get ahead but hold down low-paying jobs with inadequate steps to ensure that these workers can make ends meet and build a future for their families, no matter how determined they are to be self-sufficient," the report emphasizes.
Locally, the picture appears even bleaker.
In its recently released "City at a Crossroads: Poverty, Jobs and the Future of Los Angeles," the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy reports that almost 3.9 million people in Los Angeles County --- 39 percent of all residents --- qualify for government anti-poverty assistance, with the "vast majority" living in working households.
And while the number of families receiving welfare benefits has declined because of federal welfare reform legislation, more and more workers are being forced into a low-wage labor market to fend for themselves.
In fact, six of the top 10 occupations projected to have the most openings in Southern California over the next half-dozen years pay less than $10 an hour. As a result, even full-time workers will have to continue to rely on government programs to meet their families' basic needs.
The top ten projected jobs include retail salespersons who currently make $9.77 an hour; food preparation service workers, $8.03 an hour; cashiers, $8.41 an hour; and security guards, $9.53 an hour.
The publication briefly profiles Juanita Burroughs, one of the more than 50,000 security officers in Los Angeles County. After 18 years in security, the middle-aged woman can only afford to live in a single-room occupancy hotel on skid row. "I like when I get to help people, but I don't like risking my life for $8.50 an hour," she says.
As its title clearly indicates, the LAANE report stresses that the county is at a crossroads. With a rapidly shrinking middle class and millions of families living in or near poverty without adequate health care, housing and nutrition, the Southland could become not only the nation's homeless capital but also its poverty epicenter for working families and individuals.
But the grassroots research and advocacy organization also notes that as one of the world's great metropolises, the city and county can be models for urban innovation in the 21st Century. It cites the crucial role local government can play in restoring good jobs and economic opportunity to Southern California.
"Rising deprivation and inequality are not merely moral dilemmas," the release points out, "they jeopardize the aspirations of all Angelenos to live in security and prosperity."
Why working Angelenos are poor
In 1993, Madeline Janis-Aparicio cofounded the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which has become an authority on issues affecting the working poor as well as a leader in the fight against working poverty.
Among its storied accomplishments, LAANE led the historic 1997 campaign to pass the City of Los Angeles' living wage ordinance, which has become a national model. The organization also joined with a coalition of unions and clergy to form Respect at LAX to improve wages and working conditions for thousands of airport employees. And in 2004, it led the fight in defeating Wal-Mart's initiative campaign to build a superstore in Inglewood.
Under her stewardship as executive director, the nonprofit has combined research, organizing and legislative advocacy in spearheading many campaigns to improve wages, benefits and conditions in Los Angeles County for thousands of blue- and white-collar workers.
But the fight continues for the single mother of three children and UCLA Law School graduate.
"I would say in terms of challenges faced by the working poor, things have mostly gotten worse," Janis-Aparicio says, sitting behind a desk in her glass-front LAANE office near downtown Los Angeles. "And why is that? It's because rents in the poorest communities have gone up so high in the last six years, people can no longer afford to live in even the traditionally lowest income communities like Pico Union or South L.A. or East L.A."
Meanwhile, the poor are pushed out of their central city apartments, which are being converted to tony lofts and studios. The result for the working poor is that more and more families are having to share tiny quarters wherever they can find them.
Another major factor is the growth in the number of low-wage service industry jobs, according to Janis-Aparicio. She says employers are taking advantage of the large pool of immigrant labor to exploit workers and pay poor wages. Along with this goes the de-industrialization of large parts of Los Angeles, with the loss of not only long-lamented aerospace jobs, but also of well-paying and unionized jobs in the auto, rubber and other industries.
Other factors: so-called "welfare-to-work" reforms leading mostly to minimum-wage, dead-end employment; a drastic decrease in employer-provided health care; and the college-divide between the haves and have-nots, which has become the graduate and professional school divide, along with the government getting out of the social welfare business.
"In some ways, I think the increase in the working poor comes from the undercutting of the old ideal of a New Deal, where government plays a really important role in humanizing the economy," she explains. "In the last 20 years, government has just stepped aside. Instead it's, 'Let's bend over backwards and give corporations whatever they want and it will trickle down. And it actually has done the exact opposite --- it has trickled up!"
Janis-Aparicio points out that the working poor, like many of society's other victims, are often blamed for their predicament.
In a free market system, conservative talk show hosts as well as some businessmen like to point out that there are always winners and losers, she says, and if there's poverty, well, it's the people's own fault. If they only got a better education, or worked three jobs instead of two, or ….
Invisible population
"I think we're almost desensitized to the poor," she remarks. "They've become invisible. I don't think people have any idea of the staggering numbers of people who are not able to put food on the table, who are not able to pay rent, whose kids never go to a movie or never have any basic fun in their lives."
LAANE did a systematic survey of Angelenos who have been impacted by the city's 1997 landmark living wage ordinance. And some of the findings even surprised seasoned urban researchers.
Most of the people in $7-, $8- and $9-an-hour jobs weren't teenagers, but middle-aged men and women in the prime of their working lives. A large percentage had families and were disproportionately Latino, African American and Asian, with very few Caucasians. Many were women.
"It's not what people expect," she says. "It's a lot of older people in their 30s, 40s, 50s who are working in a McDonald's or a hotel or as a security officer or in a retail store like Wal-Mart."
Janis-Aparicio sits on the board of L.A.'s redevelopment agency. She points out that cities have "tremendous powers" to regulate industries, first with their own employees and then with all the companies they contract with. Moreover, cities have control over land use, determining regulations for every parcel of municipally owned real estate.
"So if you think about all of those ways of helping to lift up certain industries, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs," she explains. "So when you take an assertive city government that's intent on a win-win situation, it can make a huge difference.
"In some ways, the City of Los Angeles --- and even the county to some degree ---has asserted its rightful role as a protector of the people, especially in the last 10 years."
But while there has been more empowerment of workers through living-wage laws and worker-retention ordinances, Janis-Aparicio also cites an increase in local poverty and suffering. She fears if more isn't done to help workers raise themselves up from poverty, the consequences will be broad and deep.
"There's a consequence to everybody of living in the midst of so much inequality and injustice," Janis-Aparicio observes. "Ninety thousand homeless people and so many others living in such dire situations has an impact on me and my family. And I think it has a moral impact on us as a city, as a society." Editor's note: This three-part series on a relatively new form of poverty in Southern California and the nation examines how an increasing number of individuals and families with at least one household member who works full-time still find themselves struggling to survive.
|