Seven Days at Minimum Wage

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See what it’s like to live at minimum wage (if you don’t do it yourself already): Seven Days at Minimum Wage.

Acorn is doing an innovative vlog to promote raising the minimum wage featuring 7 people over the next 7 days struggling to get by on $5.15 an hour.

In Arizona, we have the opportunity to improve the situation somewhat for the working poor by voting YES on PROP 202, which would raise the mnimum wage in Arizona to $6.76 an hour and index it to inflation, so that workers aren’t paid less every year as inflation erodes their earnings.

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5 thoughts on “Seven Days at Minimum Wage”

  4. Thanks again for covering 7 Days at Minimum Wage. With Election Day finally upon us, I wanted to let you know what the project team is up to in support of the six minimum-wage ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.

    I won’t kitchen-sink you with all the details–you can browse the 7 DAYS project website for that, at http://www.sevendaysatminimumwage.org/site/?page_id=23 . But if you do click through, you’ll find information about phone banks, door-knocks, prayer vigils, canvassing, election observations, and watch parties sponsored by ACORN and AFL-CIO throughout the six key states. (You can also find a lot of this last-minute info on ACORN’s http://www.raiseswages.org and AFL-CIO’s http://www.americaneedsaraise.org ).

    It’s obvious why these increases are important: an hour of human labor should cost more than a Starbucks venti latte. That the federal government thinks it’s ok to pay you or me or anyone else $5.15 an hour is positively obnoxious–and most of those hours are below full-time and without health insurance.

    I know I’m angry about that, and sad for the way the people we interviewed are forced to live because the law says it’s ok to keep them earning below the poverty line. I know how deeply that fact affected me through my work on 7 DAYS. If the project touched just one other person out there to go to the polls and help raise their local minimum wage, then I know we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.

    Please remember the folks we interviewed when you consider your state’s or your city’s minimum wage…or the next time you tip anyone, anywhere, for that matter. Do click through and see how to support minimum-wage increases in your state. And most of all, thanks for watching. Good luck to everyone on November 7!

    Peace…

  5. Michael, thanks for your coverage of 7 DAYS. I originally wrote you that I was on the PR team for the project, but I also ended up as one of the people who interviewed the workers in the video blog. I’ll tell you, it’s damned hard to hear someone sit there and say that they have to decide whether they can eat dinner tonight in order for their kids to eat, because they’re trapped in a poverty-wage job. Even $10 an hour doesn’t go that far these days, especially in urban America. I just can’t fathom how some of the people we videoed actually make it.

    And the worst part is, some of the time, they don’t.

    Peace…

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