By Agatha Farmer
“The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.” – Ezra Klein, Washington Post
If your day begins the night before with lunch and next day’s breakfast prep, your wake up call is at 6 a.m. and you are out of the house by 7:10 a.m., you have kissed your spouse goodbye who leaves at the same time or earlier, you have just enough time to wake up your kids who will be making their way to the bus stop an hour after you’ve left, or you take them with you at that ungodly hour to daycare where they can spend a useless hour waiting for school to begin.
If you are wondering why you have just dropped off your child at daycare to pay for care, or why your kids are eating breakfast on their own getting ready to walk to the bus/school while you should be there with them, you’re not alone. But you can’t be there for something as natural and instinctive as raising your kids because you have a full-time job which is at least steady, has benefits and a decent Monday to Friday schedule. You are very aware that even with just that you are already ahead of others who are struggling to find employment in the first place, or those who work two to three jobs in a 24-hour period. Now this is living! Kevin O’Leary has nothing on the exciting, high-stress lifestyle of the poor.
If you work 40-plus hours per week in the poor man’s private sector and bring in under $35,000 per year.
If you are at work from first thing in the morning and you don’t step foot in your front door until 5:30 p.m. or later.
If you are constantly budgeting money and food.
If you are wondering how you will pay this month’s hydro bill while still trying to catch up from last month’s hydro bill without making payment arrangements.
If you are wondering and stressing when you will make that walk to your boss’s office and blurt out the lines you have been rehearsing all morning because you need time off to take your kid to the dentist and dentists don’t work weekends.
If you are holding your breath when your car makes any unrecognizable noise because if you have to fix the car, hydro won’t get paid what you arranged, or you will be short on groceries because, no matter what, mortgage/rent needs to be paid or you’ll be sleeping on the street.
If you are anxious that after you have paid as much as you can to bills, loans, mortgage/rent and purchased the necessary food for your family which, not surprisingly with the price of groceries, is almost never enough; figured out how much you’ll need for gas to get to and from work; and accounted for all those school trips and any money the kids might need that week.
If you feel like you are working just to pay bills, waking up to the same never-ending cycle every day.
If you can relate to any of this, you are part of the working poor. You are a member of what used to be a middle class. Due to inflation, a housing market out of control, and wages stagnant since the mid 90s, you have thus earned a lifetime membership to the club of modern slavery. There is no way out unless we have massive economic and social reform.
If you want off the hamster wheel, out of the bureaucratic mess which are governments, off the toxic monetary system, there simply is no other option for you. Live, breathe the hamster wheel, be the property of your employer or die of starvation as food banks can not keep up with demand.
If you are ready for change and are more than willing to work and support yourself but without sacrificing your family. If you feel that employers need to offer more flexibility so that you don’t feel like a slave to corporate and have balance in your work/personal life. If you feel that you should have the right – without fear – to tell your boss that you need time off or, to meet the standard of living, need a wage increase (and as long as your work ethic is on par you should be entitled to that right without any negative repercussions). If you feel that prices need to stop climbing or wages in the private sector NEED to increase then you are one rebellious little peasant ? – keep pushing change forward because Ontario labour laws are hopelessly outdated and completely out of touch with what employees with families require in the year 2017.
Agatha Farmer is a wife, mother of two, personal trainer and local business owner. She is a self professed political junkie, centred very much in the ideological middle. After moving from Milton to Huntsville in 2015 and living through major life changes which have further shaped her perspective and opinions she doesn’t hold any punches. Her blog mantra “the planet does not belong to us, we belong to the planet” has shaped her ideological views for the past 10+ years.
Read more on her blog here.
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This article is especially important in towns like Huntsville where the income divide is extreme. It is very sad to see the established local families being pushed off the lakes because of high taxes. Prospective homeowners with middle class incomes are forced to rent because housing prices are overvalued and supply of appropriate housing is short. The housing bubble in Toronto will perpetuate inequality in Muskoka, and the locals will suffer. The only people who stand to truly profit are the landowners, the tax collectors, the realtors and the financiers. This money will not trickle down to the majority of the people who work and live here. Public sector services will be overwhelmed by the influx of tourists, especially at the hospitals. Kids will grow up suffering from the effects of inequality, and this puts stress on the school systems. Police forces will be overwhelmed by the violence of poverty, further understaffed in the summer due to the huge population growth. Road workers will risk their lives because people are in such a rush to relax. Some small business owners and people who survive on tips will temporarily profit from seasonal revenue, but their operating/living costs will remain higher than average. Businesses will struggle to find quality personnel due to a qualified labour shortage as skilled wage workers can’t afford to live here. Their property taxes will be inflated, thus driving up the cost of doing business and further forcing the working poor to shop at the big box stores. Sadly, Muskoka is not a place for the middle class to thrive.
Thank you for this powerful piece, Agatha. FYI: Just under a quarter of those who use the Manna Food Bank in Bracebridge are the working poor. They work, but they need help putting groceries on the table.
It is not just the “working poor”. Small business also feels the middle class crunch.
I pay more than minimum wage, not much more but more.
I can see that for a person to drive a vehicle 40 or 50 km each way to get to my place of work will cost them a significant chunk of the pay I may be able to give them.
I can also see and have seen, many examples where my workers depart for other jobs, maybe better paying, maybe closer to home, or maybe they just don’t like the hours. All I know is that if they do this after I have spent a significant amount of money and time to try to train them and get them compliant with all the government regulations then it is just an extra cost to me for little actual help.
Sorry about this. I work for much much less than minimum wage and no government officials seem to care about this fact since i am the owner/operator. My time is valueless in the government eyes it seems.
Sadly, I have to constantly make the choice between providing a service to my customers by hiring more staff of just letting that service go. Most of the time these days what gets dropped is the service to my guests. We used to do more when labor was relatively cheaper. Nowadays we can’t.
Then you get the “cost of compliance”. It used to be enough that common sense did the job but not now. Now everything needs to be “documented” with a paper trail, a trail that usually accomplishes very little but requires a significant cost to create and maintain.
Again a choice must be made. Can I update a physical facility to better meet the ideals of a tourist looking to stay at a resort or do I just toss some paint and a new mattress into the cottage and try to make do.
Well, when it takes years and thousands of dollars in fees, application costs and permits to do anything you can bet what has to happen far too often.
$17,000 in development fees before a small house can go up.
$15,000 to create and provide site plans so that the municipality can better figure out the amount for fees and permits in future.
An example might be the Ministry of Environment and (get ready to be depressed here) Climate Change. MOECC for short. These folks have taken the art of being not responsible to new heights and in the process found the single most expensive and least efficient way to try to accomplish their goal. A dose of “reality” here would be a huge improvement and if you think these prescriptive and detail bound employees are going to save you from climate change… dream on.. because I seriously doubt they will have any positive effect.
It’s ok, for them though they get paid, and well paid actually, regardless of results or the future viability of a business. They get paid by YOU! To pay these types of costs, young and able workers do not get a job. A choice had to be made and the working poor get 2 hour shifts at a burger counter or no work at all, so small business can pay a fee of thousands of dollars to do studies for the MOE, studies that accomplish very little in many cases.
If one has to have a business partner it really is nicer to have one that has some vested interest in the success of the business and these clowns don’t have that. The word “leach” comes to mind too often.
I agree Agatha. I consider that one of the most disturbing economic indicators is the increasing number of working poor. The number of people who identify as working class or poor has gone up from about 30% to approximately 44%. And I believe that a living wage would at least help to address it.
I do not consider it happenstance. It is the result of policy decisions that has made life easier for those at the top of the economic heap while the poor are allowed to scramble to survive with precarious (part time, low wage, casual labour, no benefits) jobs.
This type of work is increasingly being used to replace direct, permanent jobs, allowing employers to cut back and even forgo any responsibility to their employees.