Category: Work Life

Historical category no longer used.

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Work Life

Dealing with Low Wages in Iowa

At Sunset
At Sunset

In adding my congratulations to Mike Owen for his promotion as executive director of the Iowa Policy Project, I also suggest readers check out his latest blog post titled, “We promise: We won’t cook burgers.” It is about the spurious advice of Visa® and McDonald’s®, that their lowly paid workers should become financially sustainable by working a second job. Iowa Policy Project is one of the few Iowa think tanks that has done substantial work studying living wage, low wages, and minimum wage. It is a subject close to my interests, and Mike and his team’s work at Iowa Policy Project have informed some of my thinking on low wage workers. It will be good to have Mike as executive director.

With regard to the Visa® and McDonald’s® suggestion of securing a second job, it seems a bit reactionary to me. Another low wage worker employer, Walmart, has been consistently hammered by progressive writers (see Thomas Stackpole at Mother Jones) for advising their employees on how to leverage the governmental social safety network of energy assistance, SNAP, Medicaid and other programs. The second job suggestion is an alternate version of the Walmart story: we won’t pay a living wage, so employees are on their own to sustain financial viability.

There is more to working a low wage job than pay. There has to be because the cost of living, including health care, transportation, food, shelter, and interest on debt, is more than low wage jobs pay, even two of them. Little would change if the minimum wage were raised to over $10 per hour as some propose. Low wage jobs fall short of a living wage, so people have to adapt, and one of the ways they do is to take advantage of governmental assistance programs. Beside government programs and working additional jobs, what else is there?

Another payday for low paying work is building a social network to help meet basic economic needs— one based in direct human contact, unfiltered by electronic media. A host of services are available because of work relationships in a low wage job. A tattoo artist offers his ink at a discount, people of means offer loans, and gardeners offered to exchange vegetables and baked goods. There is ride-sharing, child care and a network of discovery of ways to escape low paying work for something better. Human society in low wage work places is like a living coral reef, where everyone’s needs can be met at a certain level. These things have little to do with the progressive argument about wages, but they are every bit as important.

The tone deaf suggestions of Visa® and McDonald’s® demonstrate a lack of understanding of how people operate. Namely, if the company articulates the deceit, people may start believing it, maybe they will stay with the company a bit longer, and the cost of employee turnover can be reduced. A cynical view? Not really.

Working two jobs may be a necessity for many, but if we are on our own, as corporations want us to be, life becomes less about the job and more about who we know that can help us when we need a hand. Thanks for the suggestions and financial planning tools corporations, but no thanks, we can get by with a little help from our friends.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Work Life

An Iowa Temp Worker Bill of Rights?

Fairness for Temp WorkersLAKE MACBRIDE— In a strip mall in Cedar Rapids, a temp agency opens at 6 a.m., ready to place workers in temporary jobs. A registered applicant can enter the waiting room, sign in on a clipboard at the counter, and wait for placement in a job in construction, hospitality or warehouse work— often the same day. There is no talk about careers or perquisites, and some days a person gets placed, others not. Every time I entered, someone was waiting for a placement— there seemed to be no shortage of labor. In a society where people need paying work, this is one place they find it.

Managing the bottom line for a large or small company, the cost of human resources stands out as a high percentage of expense. Owners and executives seek to manage these expenses— their argument is they have to to remain viable in the marketplace. They will do what is legal and necessary to optimize the dollars spent on people. One of the ways they do this is to transfer the risk and expense of having employees to other entities, like the companies that employ temp workers.

We hear a lot about outsourcing and off-shoring, but until lately little attention has been paid to temp workers: that group of low-paid people that works in our community, doing office work, construction, hospitality, light manufacturing, property maintenance and more. Large corporations have become masters of outsourcing, and when we ask where have all the jobs gone, some of them went back into the community in the form of subcontractors that use temp workers, and take expense off the bottom line.

Mike Grabell wrote an article in ProPublica titled, “The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed” which is worth reading. He wrote, “the people […] are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chain of many of America’s largest companies– Walmart, Macy’s, Nike, Frito-Lay. They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling from our trash, cut our vegetables and clean our imported fish. They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping containers and Asian garment workers.”

Massachusetts passed a temporary workers right to know law that requires temporary staffing agencies to provide basic information about jobs offered to temporary workers. Essentially, it is a temp worker bill of rights.

Perhaps Iowa should consider a similar law, even if groups like the American Staffing Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council would be expected to fight it.

On the other hand, Iowa is a state where organized labor has struggled to pass any initiative in the legislature, notably the recently failed campaigns for fair share and choice of doctor. This when Democrats, the party that received substantial political contributions from organized labor, controlled both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion.

Temp workers are here to stay in Iowa. The protections they have are the bare minimum provided by the law. Companies push the envelope of the law to keep their bottom line expense of workers very low. For progressives, helping protect temp workers in Iowa should be on our short list of priorities. The situation lies mostly below the radar and is calling for justice.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa.

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Work Life

Shining Light on Low Wages

At Sunset
At Sunset

LAKE MACBRIDE— When people talk about suppression of wages in the United States, and the growing inequality between the richest Americans and the rest of us, Walmart and the heirs of Sam Walton have been the poster children with the biggest target on their back. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders notably said in a tone of moral outrage, “today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.”

The Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce recently published a report based on data about Walmart employees in Wisconsin who participate in federal social programs. The report quantifies the financial impact of Walmart employees on the U.S. social safety networks, and on the economy more generally. The report said, “rising income inequality and wage stagnation threaten the future of America’s middle class. While corporate profits break records, the share of national income going to workers’ wages has reached record lows.”

Thomas Stackpole released a story about the Democratic report on Mother Jones yesterday, and if a person is interested in the issue of low paying jobs, it is worth a read. The author circulated two of the progressive nostrums I mentioned in my article, “Working for Low Wages,” increasing the minimum wage and union organizing. Stackpole wrote, “Walmart’s history of suppressing local wages and busting fledgling union efforts is common knowledge.”

In my article, I made the case, based on my personal experience as a warehouse worker, that there is more to working a low wage job than the pay. There has to be because the cost of living, including health care, transportation, food, shelter, and interest on debt, is more than low wage jobs pay. Nothing would change if the minimum wage were raised to over $10 per hour as some legislators propose. Low wage jobs fall short of a living wage, so people have to adapt, and one of the ways they do is to take advantage of governmental social programs. It’s not the only way people adapt, but it is an expense to taxpayers to provide these programs, and because Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. they are used as the whipping boy for the impact of their low wages on the expense of social programs to taxpayers.

Unions have to become more relevant to low wage workers before they have a chance in companies like Walmart. The repeated failures of union organizing attempts at Walmart serve my point. Part of the failure to organize is the resources the company’s management brings to bear on any organizing attempt. Part of it is the failure of unions to provide what is perceived by a majority of targeted workers as value. Creating a Walmart employee union does not seem to be in the cards despite all the noise in the corporate media. Sanders’ moral outrage, and ours, goes unaddressed, and will until unions become more relevant to the needs of low wage workers, as those workers perceive it.

The debate over Walmart employees using the social safety net seems a red herring, especially at the granular, local perspective of a person who has recently worked a low wage job. It is doubtful that government, especially one with close ties to Wall Street, will be able to do much to impact working people in a meaningful and positive way. Nor is it the role of government to preserve and build the middle class. It’s the working class that needs help and the two aren’t the same thing.

When government creates a program like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), reduced price school lunches, subsidized housing, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), they address poverty in the way government knows how. That a big company has employees on government programs is neither surprising, nor a source of the same moral outrage that should be expressed about the the disparities between the richest Americans and the rest of us.

Participating in government programs is one of the ways low wage workers get by. Shining light on Walmart and Sam Walton’s heirs contributes little to resolving the needs of working people, even if some with a national perspective are fond of doing so.

Categories
Work Life

Working for Low Wages

Sunset
At Sunset

LAKE MACBRIDE— 52 days of work for a nearby logistics company was an eye opener. In a world of constant electronic contact with smartphones and computers— via social media applications, on-line corporate media outlets and Internet discussion groups— our perceptions of society lean toward generalities and abstraction. Progressive commentary, about increasing the minimum wage and union organizing, seems disconnected when one works with others for low wages. As a worker, it is obvious there are inequalities in pay for work, and that the disparity between the richest Americans and the majority is widening. Yet people need an income, so they give up part of their freedom to toil in the fields of corporate masters, voluntarily.

In my short span as a warehouse worker, an endless river of people flowed through the building, each finding value, at least enough to attract them to the work, in the manual labor. Whether it was the prestige of having a job, working with friends, or socializing with new people, the monetary compensation was inadequate to have made it the main attraction. Some said they worked there to pay bills, but the compensation alone could not sustain the simplest of lives on the Iowa prairie.

The payday for low paying work is building a social network to help meet basic economic needs— one based in direct human contact, unfiltered by electronic media. A host of services was available because of the work relationship. A tattoo artist offered his ink, people of means offered loans, and gardeners offered to exchange vegetables and baked goods. There was ride-sharing, child care and a network of discovery of ways to escape low paying work for something better. Human society in places like this is like a living coral reef, where everyone’s needs can be met at a certain level.

Part of the learning was that such jobs are available, there is an ample supply of labor to fill them, physical stamina is required to perform the work, and a steady paycheck can play a role in a broader life. When we consider our choices in life— health care, a place to live, food to eat, taxes, loan interest and insurance— sustaining basic living can be problematic at $9.25 per hour without benefits. There is no simple resolution to this deficiency in pay for work.

Two progressive nostrums offer no help: organizing a union and increasing the minimum wage.

When I met Andy Stern, then president of Service Employees International Union, we talked about organizing logistics workers. Stern agreed labor unions lost the battle of maintaining union drivers and dock workers after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 deregulated trucking. He suggested there was a new organizing possibility in the logistics workers who are the next layer of employees in a global supply chain. He felt it fit well with what his union was doing organizing janitorial and health services workers. Having worked a career  for a company that made the transition from all union to non-union as deregulation rolled out, I was skeptical.

After my experience at the warehouse, Stern’s hope to organize logistics workers seems unrealistic. Not only is the corporation that was the ultimate customer for our work removed from employees, there were multiple layers of removal. A lengthy probationary period working for a temporary employment service distanced beginning workers from the company. Multiple temporary employment companies were used. Likewise, the logistics company to whom we were leased from the temp agency was a subcontractor for the company, working on successive three-year contracts. Colleagues often did not know for whom they would be working if they successfully made it through the temporary employment agency to the logistics company as employees. On a given day, people doing the same work received paychecks from at least three different entities. When combined with high employee turnover, union organizing would be nearly impossible in such an environment.

The progressive talk about raising the minimum wage is a case of barking up the wrong tree. At two dollars an hour above minimum wage, the warehouse work attracted former box store employees, fast food restaurant employees and other minimum wage earners. The earnings alone were not enough to live, even modestly.

When I heard former labor secretary Robert Reich speak in Iowa City, one topic was the widening inequality in society and concentration of wealth among the richest one percent of the population. He pointed out that the minimum wage was not the correct measure of how wage earners were doing. What matters more is that the median wage keeps up with the overall economy, something it has not done. He recently wrote, “the problem is we haven’t been living nearly as well as our growing economy should have allowed us to live,” and that if wages tracked the economy, the median wage would be over $90,000 per year today ($43.27 per hour for a 40 hour work week). Progressives may feel good about advocating for an increase in the minimum wage, however, an increase would not address the fundamental problem wage earners face on a daily basis. A substantial portion of their economic survival depends on social networking rather than their rate of pay from a single job.

The eye opener for me while working at the warehouse was that in a workplace where no one had ever heard of me, my work was accepted by management and by my colleagues without question. People find value in working a job at any rate of pay because the real value is in the social networking it enables. One doesn’t hear that in the social or corporate media, but maybe we should.

Categories
Work Life

Exiting the Land of Awesome

Paving the Road
Paving the Road

LAKE MACBRIDE— During the last two months my work performance with a temp agency was described as awesome more times than can be counted. It was a bit startling insofar as the word “awesome” was not a regular part of the vocabulary of managing people during my 25 year career in transportation. The tendency of managers and supervisors was to take people down a peg rather than lift them up. Yet in 2013, awesome I came and awesome I exited the temp job, with repeated entreaties to return if my situation changed. Things may change, so the door was left open.

The reason for the awesomeness was good work habits drilled into us by the nuns and clergy in elementary school. They taught us there was a way to behave in society and, separate from religious life, respect and diligence were expected and freely given outside the enclave of a Catholic grammar school. It was a matter of exercising our free will.

When agreeing to work for the temp agency, I showed up on time, made an effort to understand and comply with the work rules, and didn’t cause any trouble. This very basic outlook toward work is apparently lacking in the majority of people who find their way to temp jobs— hence, I was awesome.

While tempted to linger on, I would have gone broke keeping the temp job. What was attractive about it was no one knew or had heard of me before I walked in the door. It was a clean slate where employees were judged on the quality of work, with clearly defined processes and measurements. The conversations I had with colleagues were genuine and fulfilling. It was a form of acceptance that was severely lacking in other experiences.

The temp job provided valued insight into a world of labor and management in contemporary Iowa. After exiting the land of awesome, there is freedom to write more in public about outsourcing, labor and management based on my experiences. As understanding and recovery from the manual labor comes, I will.

Categories
Sustainability Work Life

Revolution in the Home Kitchen

My Great Grandmother
Great Grandmother

LAKE MACBRIDE— The idea that a revolution should take place in the home kitchen is not unique to this blog. My focus on the relationship between the home kitchen and local food— that the latter won’t be viable in the way it could be without changes in the former— is not unique either. However, a recent New York Times article, “Pay People to Cook at Home” by Kristin Wartman demonstrates the disconnect between what is going on at the grassroots level regarding local food and priorities in urban cultural centers.

Wartman, a nutritionist and blogger, posits the following,

“Those who argue that our salvation lies in meals cooked at home seem unable to answer two key questions: where can people find the money to buy fresh foods, and how can they find the time to cook them? The failure to answer these questions plays into the hands of the food industry, which exploits the healthy-food movement’s lack of connection to average Americans.”

Her solution, as the title of the article suggests, is to pay people to cook at home, “(to place) a cultural and monetary premium on the hard work of cooking and the time and skills needed to do it,” including a government program. My suggestion is she hop on the shuttle from her home in New York City down to Washington, D.C. and witness the vast sea of farm industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill. She may then realize that hell would freeze over before any help in paying home cooks would be forthcoming from the federal government.

One can agree with the idea of placing a cultural premium on the value of home cooking, although we don’t necessarily want to return to the era of my great grandmother and her kitchen garden (see photo). The question is how, as a society, do we get there?

The future of local food and a revival of home cooking with whole foods is more dependent upon economics than upon time. If the economics are great, people will find the time. It is common knowledge among local food enthusiasts that the current economic paradigm regarding food, cooking and eating depends upon cheap energy.

Wendell Berry recently asked Michael Pollan, “what will be the effect on farming, gardening, cooking and eating of the end of cheap energy? Are physical work and real cooking going to remain optional?” Readers can listen to Pollan’s answer here. The gist of it is that as cheap energy fades from view, people will be required to become more self-reliant as a form of adaptation to the environmental crisis. This would likely drive more of whatever were least expensive, including local food and home cooking if they provided superior value, something it is not clear they do, at least for now.

The relationship between local food systems and cheap energy is important. I dismiss so-called food miles as an overly simplified argument. There is a complex but valid argument about the relationship between artificially low energy prices and high prices in local food systems that is worth pursuing. It is further complicated  by the fact that the end of cheap energy will be delayed due to the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing and the abundance of natural gas it produces. The complexity of the relationship between energy prices and local food requires further exposition in another post.

People can agree that obesity is a national and local problem. They can agree that chronic diseases, related to eating habits (including salt, sugar and fat consumption), drive a segment of higher health care and related health insurance premium costs. Where there is difficulty agreeing is in answering the question whether to take a homemade brown bag lunch to work, or spend the 30-minute break going to the gas station to have $1 per slice pizza for lunch. Today, the economics of direct food prices drives the decision at one of my workplaces.

The revolution in the home kitchen will begin once we deal with the environmental crisis, cheap fuel and the false notion that there is not enough time for what is important. The economics of food are driven by these things. That won’t happen anytime soon, not until the importance is escalated by some imminent, existential reality. It is not as simple an answer as creating another government program.

A better answer may be to seek ways to recognize the value of all work in society. That too is a complex problem wanting an answer. Something this blog is working toward.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Saturday Miscellany

Lettuce Patch
Lettuce Patch

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— The editors are in Jamaica on vacation, so work at the newspaper was rearranged to finish the proof reading today and create tomorrow as my first day off paid work since Good Friday. The fill-in copy layout person wanted Mother’s Day off work, so I finished my part of producing the weekly newspaper before lunch.

I called Mother today and had a long chat. For the first time in a long while, she had listened to some of my advice and reported she took it. The two of us are not much for the Hallmark Holidays, but we have a special call each year on or before Mother’s Day. I am thankful to be able to hear her familiar, octogenarian voice letting me know what is going on in her life.

Otherwise, today has been a miscellany— some of which is worth recounting, the rest, not so much.

Censored on the Internet
Tweet Expunged

For the first time, one of my tweets on twitter was expunged. A person is not saying much, if from time to time, someone doesn’t react negatively to it. Don’t know why it is gone, but I suspect someone ratted me out to the twitter-gods on the Internet. It was likely over the use of a question mark rather than a period. The reason I have a copy is Iowa City Patch re-tweeted me, generating an email with the content.

Rand Paul gave a speech at an area fundraiser today, giving credence to the idea that his presence is to help Republicans organize for the first in the nation 2016 Iowa caucuses. Paul’s visit was intended, at least partly, to generate some interest among no preference and Democratic voters. From reading other accounts of the event, the Republican party faithful represented most of the attendees. Rand Paul ≠ Ron Paul, and there could be trouble for the Republican organizers trading on the Paul name. Trouble would be fine with me.

In our state representative’s weekly newsletter, he outlined the reason for his opposition to new nuclear power, especially in rural Wilton, where he lives. It is more than the NIMBY (not in my back yard) approach he mentioned at the Morse town hall meeting. He suggested, perhaps unintended, that the issue will be a live round during the second session of the 85th Iowa General Assembly.

Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” plays on the kitchen radio Saturday nights beginning at 5 p.m. I have been listening off and on since graduate school. For a while, one of Keillor’s prominent sponsors has been Allianz, the German financial services company. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) pointed out that Allianz owns 4.45 percent of the shares of the top 20 producers of nuclear weapons. Allianz has investments in Alliant Techsystems, BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman,  General Dynamics, Honeywell International and others.

ICAN has called for divestment in these securities, and I have been pondering what to do since hearing. Long standing behavior is hard to change, especially when part of our lives is built around it. I have invested a lot in “A Prairie Home Companion.”

It is habit and memory that turns on the radio. Memory can’t be changed, but habits can. Familiar and comforting as ” A Prairie Home Companion” is, I’ll find something else to do while preparing our Saturday night meal. It is a disappointing development in a world full of wonder.

Categories
Work Life

Saturday Morning after TGIF

Screwdrivers
Screwdrivers

LAKE MACBRIDE— There was a time when our life on the Iowa prairie resembled what now is referred to as the middle class. My mother worked at home and at the school cafeteria, and my father had a shift job at a meat packing plant, Monday through Friday. We kids went to school and church, played in the neighborhood, and from time to time, our maternal grandmother came over for Sunday dinner. We had little money, and didn’t need much. After Dad’s death I found one of his pay stubs in his basement workshop indicating $89 per week.

Dad was involved with our family, the union, politics and getting ahead. After work on Fridays he would head to Pete’s Midwest Tavern to socialize, and blow off some steam. On Saturday mornings he slept as late as he ever did, his wedding band and watch on the bedside table until he rose. As he struggled to get ahead, he took up golf as a means of socialization and networking, although he didn’t call it that. Eventually, Saturday morning sleep-ins were replaced with an early tee-time. It turned out he was good at playing golf, not quite a scratch golfer.

It’s been a lot of years since Dad passed on— it is difficult to tell, beyond the gene pool,  whether I am like him or not. He would likely disapprove of my current temp job as a shift worker, as he had better things in mind for me. He never said exactly what, but provided career advice, “don’t become a grease monkey— keep your hands clean.”

After a week of warehouse work, my workmates and I do thank God when Friday arrives. It is a bit lame that I don’t know if bars are open after midnight. Always, I have headed home, although someday my younger cohorts may invite me out after work. I would go if they did.

My hands swell from the manual labor I perform. I take off my wedding band and place it on the dresser near where the watch I haven’t worn since the 1990s rests, its battery dead. I sleep in on Saturday morning, and it’s okay to break from society and its conventions.

The way the phrase “middle class” is used today seems spurious. A marker for a political agenda, rather than a condition or status in society. Demographically, the term is meaningless because of the vast range of economic status of the group falling between the haves and the have nots— the have somethings.

I feel working class when sleeping in on Saturdays, tired from the preceding week of manual labor. Whatever one calls it, luxuriating in being who we are is important to maintaining our sanity in a turbulent world. Even if it only lasts for the brief time between sleeping and waking on Saturday mornings.

Categories
Work Life

Plasma Sales and Politics

LAKE MACBRIDE— The Cumulus radio station in Cedar Rapids was advertising how a person could earn up to $340 per month selling their plasma. It’s enough money that it was worth a look to see if plasma sales could fit into our bottom line. It sounds kind of grim, but people do it all the time.

Plasma is the pale, yellow liquid portion of blood that helps our bodies control bleeding and infection. When one donates plasma, our blood is removed and the plasma separated before blood is returned to our body. We generate more plasma within a couple of days so twice a week donations are usually possible.

Donating takes about an hour and plasma collection centers make it easy with a straight forward, step-by-step process. Importantly, they explain how payment is loaded on a debit card. It is literally using one’s body as an ATM.

Several self-employed and low-wage earners in my circle use plasma sales to supplement monthly income. Got a toothache? Better schedule some sessions at the plasma center to get dollars to pay the dentist. One suspects residents of our nearby college town use the cash for cigarettes, sugary drinks and beer, but in any case, plasma sales can be a reliable and steady source of income if one meets the requirements for donating.

The money could be put to good use. For example, it could be used for political donations. That way, when a political telemarketer called, I would know my approximate annual budget, and be able to say, “Yes. I’ll donate that $100, which will take me four plasma sessions.” Politics would literally be based on blood money then.

We could go a step further and say that all financial contributions to politicians had to originate in plasma sales. There would be a natural limit to how much a person could donate, and a restriction could be placed on corporations that said something like, corporations can make political contributions, but such contributions must be paid via the plasma of shareholders, imposing a natural limit to money spent by corporations during political campaigns. I bet corporations would exercise their free speech differently under such a rule.

If my modest proposal about political contributions through plasma sales seems a bit edgy, I am pretty sure it would work. Importantly, it would set a human limit on political contributions. Having skin in the game would take on a whole new meaning. Most Americans are asleep at the wheel of politics, and would not contribute, so there is little danger of a glut of plasma on the market.

If times get tough, I’ll re-visit adding a plasma sales income line to our household operating budget. For now, I’m just glad I don’t have to do it.

Categories
Work Life

On Manual Labor

LAKE MACBRIDE— A priest used to joke with me about doing manual labor. It was a pun comparing working with your hands to the common Spanish name Manuel. The context was work we were doing with undocumented immigrants, many of whom were from Mexico and countries further south. When one explains the pun, it loses something, and all that is left is hard work that someone has to do— and the living people make while doing it.

The kind of labor new immigrants perform, farm work, landscaping, roofing, housekeeping, restaurant work and others, is a basic component of society’s economic model, including in Eastern Iowa. From reading Peter Kwong’s book The New Chinatown, the propensity for immigrants, documented and non-documented, is to take any kind of paying work to pay for their passage, which sometimes included coyotes or snakeheads, and secure the possibility of American-style freedom. Some of my more cynical friends might say that America offers the freedom to work for less.

During my career as a manager, I performed little physical labor. Sure, we hauled groceries collected for the local food bank to the trucks, and after the 2008 flood hit Cedar Rapids, we helped employees muck out their homes, but the main work we did was office work. That I would now include manual labor in the mix of a sustainable life on the Iowa prairie is indicative of three things.

Manual labor jobs are available. In my case, from the conception of the job opportunity until hiring was less than a week. Once I began work, conversations with others revealed many job opportunities in a variety of settings. On some days it seems like every one of us is on the move from this job to a better job, and the manual work we perform is a compromise to bring in some cash now.

A certain level of fitness is required. Endurance, use of the extremities and normal musculoskeletal development are all important. My life has been blessed with good health, and relevant to manual labor, has been free of back injury. I can do the work.

When jobs pay below a living wage, the presumption, often unrealized by the worker, is that a broader social support network is needed to take care of the rest of life not covered by wages. Those that have such a social support network are more likely to get what they want out of working with their hands.

The sustainability model I described previously wouldn’t make sense unless there were some activities dotting the matrix. Manual work serves the need to prime the pump, enabling the model and allowing for entry into a progressive path to prosperity.

One comment. The literature on immigration and how people get started on a path toward the American dream is well documented by others with much better credentials than mine. What is different, and why I write about it here, is the transformational effect of having the experience, rather than living it vicariously, filtered by other writers and the media. This may be the only way to fully understand what manual labor means to economic progress. It may be the only way to sustain economic progress.