Quote:
A $15 minimum wage is a lifesaver.
Julio Payes was working 80 hours a week at two full-time jobs. A permanent resident from Guatemala who came to the United States on a work visa, Payes labored in Emeryville, Calif., a city of roughly 12,000 residents and almost 22,000 jobs, sandwiched between Oakland and Berkeley. He began his day with the graveyard shift at a 24-hour McDonald’s, where he served burgers and fries from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Afterward he had two hours to rest and shower. Then he’d clock in at Aerotek, going anywhere the temp service sent him between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. To stay awake, he loaded up on coffee and soda. Each job paid minimum wage.
“I felt like a zombie,” Payes told me. “No energy. Always sad.” Yet just to afford basic necessities, he had to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Back then, he and his mother and two siblings all shared a single, unfurnished room. They were a tight-knit family, but Payes’s work schedule kept him away. Once, his younger brother, Alexander, who was 8 at the time, told him he was saving money. “I want to buy one hour of your time,” Payes remembers his brother telling him. “How much for one hour to play with me?” Payes looked at his brother and wept. Not long after that, Payes fainted from exhaustion in the aisle of a grocery store.
It was around that time when the Emeryville City Council began to reconsider the city’s minimum wage. Oakland had just passed a ballot initiative to increase its minimum from $9 to $12.25 an hour, and Emeryville set out to match it. Then the mayor, Ruth Atkin, began asking if her city could do more, recasting the city’s minimum wage into something closer to a living wage. When Payes caught wind of this possibility, he began to pray. He prayed during Sunday and Wednesday revival services, where he danced and shouted as the spirit moved him. He prayed in quiet moments at home. “God, he believes in justice,” he said. “I have faith. But I also have politics.”
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He could go to work for a company like
Milliken and if he isn't an assbagger he could get a job doing on the print range. They do cloth for the automobile indutry and uniforms for all branches of the US military and Russia. If he is decent he can get in on 'wet side operator' position. He would be in charge of loading up the various paste mixtures and cleaning the equipment. Can be dangerous due to long, heavy blades.
Stand next to an industrial oven that runs between 200 to 400 degrees. No environmental controlls (hot as hell in summer and cold in winter) in the plant. When running auto cloth the paste is caustic and will eat your skin. He would have to wear a Tyvex suit that covers up his whole body, with neoprene gloves, boots, goggles and face shield for protection. Lose a lot of weight in the summer time.
Note: have to be able to visually pick up pen point sized defects in cloth running past you at 10-30 yards per minute. Failure to notice can cause eye opening amounts of money loss over a full run.
Make $14 per hour and can work 40-60+ hours per week. Would these wages go up in relation to his Micky Dees check?
02-25-2019, 10:20 AM
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