A living wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A diet. A stress reliever. It is a contraceptive, preventing teenage pregnancy. It prevents premature death. It shields children from neglect.
IN 2014, Julio Payes was working 80 hours a week at two full-time jobs. A permanent resident from Guatemala who came to the United States on a work visa, Payes labored in Emeryville, Calif., a city of roughly 12,000 residents and almost 22,000 jobs, sandwiched between Oakland and Berkeley. He began his day with the graveyard shift at a 24-hour McDonald’s, where he served burgers and fries from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Afterward he had two hours to rest and shower. Then he’d clock in at Aerotek, going anywhere the temp service sent him between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. To stay awake, he loaded up on coffee and soda. Each job paid minimum wage.
“I felt like a zombie,” Payes told me. “No energy. Always sad.” Yet just to afford basic necessities, he had to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Back then, he and his mother and two siblings all shared a single, unfurnished room. They were a tight-knit family, but Payes’s work schedule kept him away. Once, his younger brother, Alexander, who was 8 at the time, told him he was saving money. “I want to buy one hour of your time,” Payes remembers his brother telling him. “How much for one hour to play with me?” Payes looked at his brother and wept. Not long after that, Payes fainted from exhaustion in the aisle of a grocery store. He was 24.
It was around that time when the Emeryville City Council began to reconsider the city’s minimum wage. Oakland had just passed a ballot initiative to increase its minimum from $9 to $12.25 an hour, and Emeryville set out to match it. Then the mayor, Ruth Atkin, began asking if her city could do more, recasting the city’s minimum wage into something closer to a living wage. When Payes caught wind of this possibility, he began to pray. He prayed during Sunday and Wednesday revival services, where he danced and shouted as the spirit moved him. He prayed in quiet moments at home. “God, he believes in justice,” he said. “I have faith. But I also have politics.”
Payes became active in the Fight for $15 political campaign, participating in marches and other shows of collective force. “The first time we did a strike, I felt very nervous,” he said. But when he showed up in his work uniform and saw a mass of fast-food workers, thousands strong, he found his voice. It felt like church.
[To read the rest of this article by Matthew Desmond, click here.]
[Illustration by Tracy Ma]
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