Below the Breadline: Living on the Minimum Wage [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Writers of middle-class extraction often get a hard time for reporting from the coalface of poverty, what is often pejoratively dismissed as holidaying in other people's misery. This might carry some force but for the fact that the authors of such accusations are generally comfortably off themselves, and have no wish to be reminded of the often precarious position of those beneath them in the social-economic scale, particularly if there is any possibility of this leading to them bearing any increase in either taxes, or the costs that they pay for a variety of services, some of which are essential even if generally deemed unglamorous.

The journalist Fran Abrams quite sensibly gives little thought to these "concerns" and in a British parallel to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-wage America writes about her experience of working at the minimum wage in three different areas of Britain.

The areas Abrams works and lives in are London (for a cleaning contractor), Doncaster (for a contractor - working in a pickle factory) and up in Scotland, north of Inverness (an old folks home). Her experiences include sub-standard housing (bedsit, caravan and a hostel); wages that are below the statutory minimum; illegal deductions from wages (for administration of bank payments, uniforms, etc); promised hours failing to materialise; "mistakes" in her pay (which is too say she is not paid for all the hours she works). Other issues she writes about are specific to the individual workplaces. Abrams is particularly interesting on the cultures in the three geographical areas she works in, and the three different types of jobs that she takes on. There are disturbing instances in them all, but none more than in the residential care home where the attitude of some of her colleagues towards their elderly charges is frankly appalling.

"Below the Breadline" covers issues relevant to working and living on low wages in a clear and un-sensational manner. I felt that it could have done with a good deal more general context than is in fact present in the text. Also the position of those on low wages, especially those working for contractors, often means periods of unemployment: a subject barely touched upon. That said, this is an area rarely covered in the media, least of all for those who work in the low-wage sectors of the economy, and on that basis it is worth reading.

I've never been to the United Kingdom, so I'm not so sure that I can totally relate to the types of things Fran Abrams encounters in her book, Below the Breadline: Living on the Minimum Wage, but I have tried to survive before on a minimum wage job, so I had a good idea of what, maybe, to expect going into the subject of existing on a meager income.

In fact, as the budget summaries at the end of each section in this book suggest, daily life is much more expensive in the United Kingdom than it is in the United States. How many single people here do you know that spend an average of £136.83, equivalent to over $260, in food costs every month? This aspect certainly adds to the intrigue of Below the Breadline, and helps you understand better the challenges Abrams faces, challenges much tougher than those of the inspiration for her book, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

As we meet Fran in the beginning of the book, she is going through the process of finding a job as a housekeeper at the Savoy Hotel in London at or around the minimum wage. This is a process we will see repeated twice more, once in a town called Doncaster, where she is a temp worker at a pickle factory, and then again in a town just outside of Aberdeen, in Scotland, where she provides care for the elderly residents of a nursing home facility called The Towers. Apparently there are ample minimum wage jobs no matter where you live, because Fran lands the first job she finds in all three municipalities.

The basis for having these minimum wage jobs is somewhat of a project for Abrams. Simply put, see if you can survive on a meager income for a month at (or most times, below) £4.10 per hour, while providing a roof over your head, ample sustenance, and keeping somewhat of a social life outside of work. Unfortunately, it seems that all of these issues never coincide with one another throughout Below the Breadline, and this was one of the major problems I had with this book. It really makes it harder to put her attempts at living this lifestyle in perspective when we read about each particular job for twenty or thirty pages, then finally get around to the living conditions she encounters outside the workplace for another ten pages or so, then reading for a page and a half about the social life she carries on in each city. There is a disconnect between professional and personal that makes it hard to combine the two into an actual account of what's going on from day to day.

One element that adds a nice twist to the book, and one that isn't really found in Ehrenreich's book, is the relationships and communication that Abrams seems to find in the workplace, something not normally found in minimum wage work, and it really takes away some of the darkness of the situations she finds herself in. The whole culture of minimum wage seems to be much different in the United Kingdom. This is definitely an area that is used to dealing with economic hardship and long-term unemployment much more than we do in the United States. Those with minimum wage jobs in the United Kingdom aren't the same people, typically, that you would find here. They, for the most part, are not first-timers to the workforce, and they also seem to be more transient, with many, especially in London, not native to the U.K.

The third section of Below the Breadline really serves as a good example of the relationships Abrams finds, because taking care of elderly persons is something that a great deal of people can relate to. Abrams has this wonderful ability to connect the reader to both her feelings about the residents of the Towers, as well as the emotions that many of the residents seem to show.

"What really matters, of course, is whether people actually feel better off." Abrams uses this quote to try and summarize the whole system of the "poverty line," but really the "poverty line" is just a percentage of annual income. The different economic conditions in each of the three sections of this book show just how hard it would be for the government to establish a "living wage." How can you create a "living wage," when you cannot create a cost of living that can be applied to the entire United Kingdom? And someone is always going to be living under the "poverty line." Abrams suggests that the minimum wage must be increased, but most certainly, as the wage goes up, so too will the cost of living. It is not as simple as increasing the minimum wage, but there are really no viable alternatives set forth in this book.

When reading Ehrenreich, I noticed that there is somewhat of a fictional side to her efforts in that the author only deals with one facet of living on minimum wage, and that is focused solely on that of the workplace. Abrams' account is similar to this in that she never seems to take advantage of social outlets like churches, private outreach services, or welfare programs, something someone trying to survive on the minimum wage would most certainly do. Instead, she seems to purposely "stack the deck" against herself, almost guaranteeing a result suited to her literary goals. This may ultimately sell more copies of Below the Breadline, but it definitely made me take her whole experience in a slightly different perspective than if she had been faithful to the project, which should have not ignored these glaring omissions. By doing this, she has been deceitful to those who are actually trying to survive on the minimum wage, and makes the reader less sympathetic to the problem.