Posted on 08/31/2003 1:47:41 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
They clean hotel rooms, pour coffee, care for babies and the elderly. They do the simple, sometimes unpleasant, often invisible work that keeps the triangle's economy going.
The region may be known for its highly skilled, highly paid workers, but it is also increasingly shaped by the sales clerks, waiters, nursing aides and child-care workers who serve them. Over the next eight years, the fastest-growing occupations in the region will fall mostly in two categories: computer engineers and specialists, with average wages topping $30 an hour, and low-skilled service workers who make $10 or less, according to the N.C. Employment Security Commission.
"They go hand in hand," said John D. Kasarda , director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill. "If you build a research facility out at the park, you're going to need somebody to mow the lawn and clean the rooms."
Of full-time workers in the Triangle, about 16 percent, or more than 70,000, made less than $20,000 in 1999, putting them at or near the bottom of the pay scale. By 2010, 40,000 more workers will take low-paying service jobs, according to the ESC.
Officials at UNC-Chapel Hill stirred up controversy by assigning freshmen to read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed," a book about the difficulty of surviving on low wages. But on this Labor Day weekend, many Triangle workers can find themselves in her account, as the weak economy and competition erode wages and force some to juggle two or more jobs to pay their bills.
Belinda Jenkins , 32, of Durham puts in a full week inspecting newly assembled personal computers for $8.50 an hour, not enough to support herself and her three children. She receives help from the federal government and child support but she recently applied for a part-time job waiting tables at Northgate Mall, even though it means leaving her children with relatives more often.
"It's just to get a little extra income," Jenkins said.
Income for workers at all levels rose over the past decade despite the recession, according to the ESC; overall wages in the Triangle rose 56 percent between 1992 and 2002 to an average of $38,910.
But many service workers had smaller increases . The average pay of department store workers, for example, grew 43 percent to $16,415. Pay for dry-cleaning and laundry workers grew 33 percent to $15,408, barely more than the inflation rate of 28 percent.
With less money to go around, many low-income workers who used to be self-sufficient are turning to charities or the government to meet basic needs for themselves and their families.
"Income hasn't kept up with expenditures in this community," said Anne Burke , executive director of Urban Ministries of Raleigh. Of the 13,000 people the charity helped with food, medicine and shelter last year, 60 percent were working, most of them full time, she said.
Stuck at the bottom
Professional and management workers make up about 44 percent of the work force in the six-county region; only five metro areas in the country have a higher percentage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
So some economists such as Kasarda aren't worried about the growth in low-skill, low-wage jobs. They are the jobs that allow immigrants and the poor to get their start in the economy, making a better life for their children if not themselves, he said.
"I think the problem is greatly overblown," Kasarda said. "Without them, we wouldn't have the first step up the ladder for many people. They wouldn't even be able to get on the ladder."
But others say a growing number of people are getting stuck at the bottom, as better-paying, low-skill manufacturing jobs go overseas. With data processing and other white-collar jobs leaving the country as well, the competition for low-paying service jobs will only increase, predicts James H. Johnson , a management professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
"What you're going to find is enormous wage suppression in the U.S. economy, and I don't see that being reversed," he said.
Increasingly, people need a college education to find a spot in the middle class. And although the Triangle has one of the best- educated work forces in the country, more than 60 percent of people 25 and older don't have a bachelor's degree, according to the census.
"If they've got children, and especially if they've got children who need child care, it's very difficult for people without a college education to find a job to support their family on," said Sorien Schmidt , a lawyer with the N.C. Justice and Community Development Center, a nonprofit anti-poverty agency in Raleigh.
Cheap labor
Some employers say raising wages would force them to raise prices -- and lose customers.
Employees at N.C. Pre-School Academy & Day Care in Raleigh, for instance, start at about $8.25 an hour and move up to $9. They care for babies as young as 6 weeks old and teach older children to write their names, count to 100 and prepare for kindergarten.
"We're right now not making a profit at all, just breaking even," said Tina Octetree , the director. "And people [who enroll their kids here] just can't afford a tuition increase. We would love to pay our staff what they're worth."
Economists say the market determines what workers are worth -- simple supply and demand. "There is excess supply at the bottom end, and that keeps the wages low," Kasarda said.
A tripling of the unemployment rate in the Triangle since 2000 has increased the supply of people willing to work in retail, restaurants and other low-paying jobs.
The applicants for 430 jobs at the new Wal-Mart Super Center in northwest Raleigh include several former technical and pharmaceutical workers, said Melana Blanks , assistant manager for the store.
"We're seeing a lot of those folks take interest in this part of the world, people who never thought they would consider retail," Blanks said.
The openings at Wal-Mart include sales associates, cashiers and greeters. Blanks wouldn't say what the jobs pay, only that the wages are "competitive for the market."
Competition from recent immigrants might also be keeping wages down.
A recent study found that men in low-paying jobs that employed large numbers of recent Hispanic immigrants earned less than those doing comparable work elsewhere.
Lisa Catanzarite , a sociologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, used 1990 census data to analyze wages in fields such as construction, agriculture, landscaping and restaurants in 38 metro areas. On average, men in occupations in which at least a fourth of the employees were recent Hispanic immigrants made 11 percent less than comparable workers in metro areas with fewer immigrants.
In the Triangle, Hispanics account for at least a fourth of all carpenters, construction laborers, painters and food-processing workers, according to the census. Many, such as Isaac Huitron , 44, a Mexican immigrant who has held a variety of low-skill jobs in Durham for four years, feel the squeeze in wages, too.
In Mexico, Huitron said, he owned a small print shop but struggled to make a living. Now, he shares an apartment with other immigrants and walks to work at a restaurant where, he said, he makes about $5 an hour cleaning and setting tables.
"Now that there are more Hispanics, the owners of various businesses, from my point of view, they benefit from this situation by reducing wages," he said. "It's not easy."
Cheap labor benefits consumers, too, at least in theory. It allows Burger King to sell a triple cheeseburger meal for $3 and helps Harris-Teeter stock everything from mangoes to sushi.
But Russ Stewart , 50, a masonry contractor from Garner, thinks some people are getting rich off cheap labor. Stewart said builders have grown so accustomed to paying Hispanics cut-rate wages that they have slashed pay for all contractors -- without reducing the price of houses.
Stewart estimates he needs to make at least $325 per 1,000 bricks that his company lays in order to pay his 10 employees and make a modest profit. But builders now pay as little as $250 per 1,000 bricks, he said.
That has forced Stewart to cut his own salary by two-thirds.
"I'm laying brick for what I did in the '80s right now," he said. "I've had to cut my prices and cut my prices. I just can't continue to work that cheap."
Gaining little ground
Even workers who have received raises feel squeezed.
Nina Fogg's income has more than doubled since she began working as a certified nursing assistant in 1985. Today, the 36-year-old single mother takes home $382 a week, after taxes, working nights at a Raleigh nursing home. But when adjusted for inflation, her hourly pay of $9.55 represents an increase of only about $3 an hour since her first job.
Fogg buys clothes at thrift stores and Kmart , and she opted out of her employer's health insurance because of the $60 monthly premium. A few months ago, she and her children were evicted from their apartment when they fell behind on their $750-a-month rent. Today, the family lives in transitional housing provided by a local ministry.
Between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., she goes from room to room turning patients in their beds, taking vital signs, emptying catheter bags, and consoling those who are depressed or confused.
Nursing homes in the Triangle pay workers an average salary of $20,784 a year -- about half the average salary for all workers in the region. It hurts Fogg to think that her job isn't valued more.
"We're the ones who bathe your mother," she said. "We're the ones who comb her hair, give her a glass of water and speak kind words to her. It's important work."
regina brown, retail
Regina Brown and her 19-year-old son, Kevin, arrived before the doors opened at Urban Ministries of Raleigh. Like the 20 others lined up quietly along the wall of a warehouse north of downtown, Brown came for a handout.
She doesn't see any choice: She has a job that pays $8 an hour and three teenage kids, one of whom needs $200 worth of seizure medicine every month.
"I dip and dab into the system to get the help that I need," she said. "But I work every day."
Brown, 40, sells pumps and sneakers at a Payless Shoe Source in North Raleigh. She's been working as a sales clerk and cashier since she started in the sportswear department of a Bloomingdale's in New Jersey 20 years ago. She likes the work, loves helping people, but wishes she made more money.
"I'm looking for somebody to pay me $13 an hour, because I'm worth it," she said. "I'm looking, but you know what? The market is not good for me at this time, at my age. I feel it more and more every day. They're looking for someone younger."
Kevin Brown said he wants to help his mother with the bills, but he didn't finish high school. He said he hopes to find work in construction or at Burger King.
After others filed out of the warehouse with plastic bags bulging with bananas, melons, beans and bread, Brown emerged with the piece of paper she came for: a $100 voucher to fill a prescription for Kevin's medicine.
"To me, my mom is like Wonder Woman," he said. "We can have no water, no lights, and she can scrounge up a meal from nothing."
ramiro gonzalez, farm worker
Around 6 a.m., just as the night turns to day, a pickup truck stops outside Ramiro Gonzalez' apartment complex in east Durham. It will take Gonzalez, a 54-year-old Mexican, to the tobacco fields off U.S. 70 for another long, hot day in the sun.
Gonzalez had to fall back on a $6-an-hour tobacco harvesting job after work in the construction industry dried up this year. It has been tough to absorb the 36 percent cut in income.
He put on hold his dream to buy a house for his family, and he can't afford a car or health insurance.
Gonzalez's wages help support his wife, Isabel, and two teenage children, Otoniel and Mari Cruz. Two older children, who also live in the family's two-bedroom apartment, work, too: his son, Juan Carlos, who hangs plasterboard for $12 an hour, and his daughter, Veronica, who earns $6 an hour working in a store.
Together they make enough to maintain his son's car, buy groceries and clothes and pay $525 in rent plus utilities -- but not much more.
"We're just trying to survive right now," Gonzalez said.
When he moved to Durham 15 years ago, there were few Latinos in the area and no stores catering to Mexican palates. Gonzalez had to cook his own tortillas, but he made enough money to send several hundred dollars a month to his parents in the Mexican state of Michoacán . Today, every penny goes to support his family in Durham.
And with stiff competition for jobs in the tobacco fields, his prospects of making more are dim. His boss, who contracts out farm workers to tobacco growers, has told him $6 is all he can afford to pay, Gonzalez said.
Staff writer Richard Stradling can be reached at 829-4739 or rstradli@newsobserver.com.
Researcher David Raynor contributed to this report.
I'm sure it's for the great wages.
Blame the cowardly Democrats AND Republicans in the Congress who keep the borders open and the pay low.
Rather than increasing the minimum wage, an order to freeze immigration for 5 years would allow a great surge in the value of labor and incomes would rise substantually for every worker!!
Supply and demand at work will create work!!
Sad stories.......
:-(
Anyway,.......please,....enjoy a movie!
Don't miss "Open Range"......playing Now in a theater NEAR you!!
:-)
"If they've got children, and especially if they've got children who need child care, it's very difficult for people without a college education to find a job to support their family on," said Sorien Schmidt , a lawyer with the N.C. Justice and Community Development Center, a nonprofit anti-poverty agency in Raleigh."
It wouldn't surprise if he he sponsored his parents and they immigrated here and get SSI and Medicaid now --- he didn't just let them starve I bet when he quit sending them money.
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