Free Essay About The Plight Of The Working Class And Low Wage Earners

Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Serving in Florida” and Kathleen.R. Arnold’s, “America’s New Working Class” both talk about the exploitation and the sad situation of the low wage earners in the United States of America. The most exploited are the immigrants, women and the desperate. With no legal papers and the state to protect them, these workers are paid below the minimum wage and have no ways of redressal. Both the works also talk about how these workers who earn a pittance doing physical labor and work more than the regulated hours are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty that they cannot get out of. The exploitation of these laborers irrespective of their nationality and ethnicity continues because the state sometimes turns a blind age and sometimes is actively involved in the process. both the works highlight the fact that the process of globalization and privatization had decreased the role of the government and has transferred previously held responsibilities of the government to the private sector. The private sector is more concerned about profits and not about the social security and health of the employees or citizens of the country.
Both the works also touch upon the biases, preconceived notions and prejudices that people have about the low wage earners. They are often thought of as lazy and incompetent but in reality and in many cases they are too overworked to look for something else and too poor to afford to get out of their situation. Instead of helping them move up, the authors say that the system does its best to keep them in the same place as cheap labor is always good for the economy and for the private interests. The works also have in common the issues of race, gender and ethnicity which are all interlinked and fuel the exploitative process.