Two weeks ago, Pope Francis published Evangelii Guadium, annoying
more than one supporter of the status quo. In that letter, the Pope noted,
pointedly, that “today we have to say
“thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy
kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person
dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? ...
Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest,
where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”
The pope’s comments left the normally humorless Forbes magazine resorting
to cuteness. They published a commentary calling the apostolic
exhortation “papal bull,” complaining that the pope was lending prestige to
“leftist/socialist whining.”
A week later the whining stepped up a bit, as across the
nation, fast-food workers walked off the job and supporters joined protests to demand that those who serve up America’s hamburgers and pancakes earn at
least $15 an hour—pay that is considered by many to be a living wage, one that would allow the worker to support her family.
FUERZA del Valle led the protests in our region. Fast-food
workers were invited to join the protest, and were, quite frankly, astonished
at the idea of receiving a living wage. Local reporters pushed back at the
idea, an inconceivable notion that restaurant workers should actually make
enough money to get by on. In a region in which many, many hourly workers are
not even paid minimum wage, $15 an hour would be unthinkable.
Hector Guzman, FUERZA’s irrepressible spokesperson, flipped
the conversation when he noted to a reporter that what McDonalds and Burger
King and Wendy’s were up to should be called the “socialization of poverty.”
“Those low wages bring huge profits to these corporations,
but those profits also come at a cost to the rest of us. Taxpayers are the ones
who have to cover the workers’ health care problems because they can’t afford
insurance. More than half of all fast food workers depend on public assistance
to get by,” he noted, “And that means that tax payers are subsidizing those
wages. This is a redistribution of misery—only it doesn’t touch the
company. Just the community.”
Alejandro manned the megaphone at the Brownsville protest. He had worked for Denny’s for five years. He
described it as grueling, non-stop work.
“I remember one Christmas season when I was the only cook in
the kitchen—the only guy there handling the rush,” he said, thinking back on
that time. “For five years I worked
there—and I only got a 35 cent raise, after all that time.”
Alejandro, for all of his work, was only able to increase
his pay from $5.15 to $5.40 an hour. He had had to hustle from one job to
another, never catching up, never getting ahead, and having to redefine for
himself, again and again, what it means to live from pay check to pay check.
I find it hard to characterize Alejandro’s complaints as
“whining,” nor the demand for a $15.00 base pay outrageous. Inconceivable,
perhaps, given our politics and our love, our fascination, indeed, our idolatry
of money. And in the context of blind
idolatry, the Pope’s words become prophetic, as they reveal that which the
mighty would rather remain hidden.
$15.00 an hour—improbable, but not impossible.
