Paying ‘too much’ for unemployment isn’t the problem. Paying someone not enough to work is

Leave it to Americans to project division in a global crisis. In reference to the CARES Act, a recent article in the Idaho Statesman suggested, “Some Idahoans still working may resent that they will now be making less than their laid-off colleagues and that the payments seem to provide an incentive not to work.”

As someone who is currently making more on unemployment than I was as a bartender, I resent that.

Every job takes its toll, but the “perks” of working in the service industry, if you are lucky, include a drink and a shift meal, often shoved furiously into your mouth while huddled in a corner on a brief break between waves of customers. On slow nights, it means filling your time with side work to combat a depressing sense of purposelessness or to avoid the manager who repeats, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.”

Well, now I have time to lean AND time to clean. I’m on a regular sleep schedule and I eat like a human being again — whole meals, sitting down! I have never felt better.

Ironically, without a job, I am also confident I can pay my bills! Yet I’m supposed to prefer working in a field where making rent is dependent on server wages and tips? And in which tips are subject to whether or not you were scheduled on the busy night that week, the weather on any given day or the generosity of your individual patrons?

Ah, yes: How dare I? How dare we chronically underpaid, typically uninsured people not want to return to these jobs?

How completely irresponsible of us to want to work less hard for more money! Have you heard someone say: “I would’ve taken that promotion, but that would mean working less and earning more — and I’m just not sure I want to send the kids to college or spend any more time with them than I already have to.” No. No one says that.

Reveal yourselves, corporate executives who have ever expressed something along the lines of, “I’m gonna forgo my bonus this year so I can pay my workers a livable wage, because people ARE more important than profits, and I do realize that our survival depends on our workforce. Plus, I don’t really need the yacht.”

In our society, it is acceptable for those who have a certain level of financial security to want to work less and earn more. But for the working class, the message is, “Stay in your lane, servant. How dare you discover how good life can be with a little extra cash and REM sleep.”

In keeping with the American tradition, the government is floating big corporations through the crisis at a much larger scale than the average American. Sentiments like the one in that article perpetuate an idea of division between working people. Is it really the workers earning less than those on unemployment who are resentful of this $600 per week bonus? Or is it those who depend on the working class to maintain their lifestyle, who really resent us for being marginally comfortable and not at their service?

Statements like, “these payments seem to provide an incentive not to work,” perpetuate the idea that once people’s basic needs are met and they feel a sense of security, that’s it; they are basically done with life. “Well now that I have all the food I need and a guaranteed roof over my head I finally have the time to ignore my children and stare at this here wall,” crosses arms behind head, leans back in recliner and Ms. Havisham’s it. That’s practically propaganda.

Working wages in America today are an embarrassment and our social safety nets are built on negative assumptions about people. Rather than our economic and public systems producing a sense of security, they produce a sense of shame.

The CARES Act attempts to address this but for many it isn’t providing the real value it could. Unemployment agencies are overwhelmed, ill-equipped and unable to distribute benefits in a timely fashion because they are navigating clients through a punitive system. Our systems are tripping over themselves and are proving to the masses what an unreliable source of security they are, not for lack of resources, but for negative and untrue beliefs we have about our own people. What I am saying is, people on unemployment and those working for low wages right now are on different sides of the same copper coin.

If an essential worker is earning less than someone on unemployment right now, that is the problem. The pandemic has illuminated the fact that the public depends on a robust workforce to survive, so why aren’t those people being paid enough to live?

And if you want to incentivize service industry people to go back to work, try offering more than curly fries and cocktails.

This story was originally published May 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.