Written for a friend, John Smythe of Wallingford: If you'd asked me 3 years ago that today I'd be working as a temporary, receiving reduced premium health insurance, food stamps, energy or food bank assistance, and living in low income subsidized housing, I would've said "no way."
"Who me? College graduate on the Deans List, hard worker all his life, and son of successful middle class parents. There's no way an economic change could affect me." I would have replied.
Yet after faxing 234 resumes in the last 3 months and receiving no offers, I reluctantly accepted a temporary part-time administrative assistant position at $9.80 an hour for 15-20 hours a week to be responsible and pay my rent, student loans, etc. The client-employer pays $16.10 an hour for my skills.
But that's the problem. The money I make ($700-800 before taxes) is barely enough to live on. Thus, I now qualify to pay $10 a month for health insurance (remainder of my bill ($136) is paid by the "state"), food stamps ($55-120), energy assistance ($10), food bank ($20-50), telephone credit ($5), and subsidized housing (paying $125 instead of $600 for a newer one bedroom apartment).
Of course, none of these "benefits" are paid for by either "employer". No, they're paid by the rest of us, the taxpayers in the amount of $5,800+ a year.
If I was paid more, say $12-13/hr, I wouldn't be eligible for any "corporate welfare" secondary benefits. And the temp body shop could still earn a profit. So if you're an employer using one of many temporary companies or reducing your worker's hours (to save costs; whose, I might ask), you might want to ask yourself in a rare moral moment why taxpayers ought to pay for the cheapness of your company.
Because when temporary companies and their clients won't pay a living wage or provide enough hours, the rest of us have to make up the economic difference.
John Smythe, Wallingford