tl20021003-000 "ThE TOLUDTiliphb Baltimore's #1 College Paper - Published Twice-Weekly - www.thetowerlight.com Thursday, 10/3/02 Students create new magazine 5 Center responds to suicide report 5 Balinese dancers come to Towson 12 Audiences will eat up 'Dragon' Departments News 5 Nation 8 Police Blotter 8 Arts 12 1-ugh Road 14 In A Theater Near You 14 Sports 20 Punt, Pass & Pick 18 In This Corner 20 Classifieds 16 Opinion 2 Author raises economic issues Lisa Johnson The Towerbght Barbara Ehrenreich, author of ""Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America,"" spoke about working as a waitress and maid to research the book, which was the Book of the Year and freshman recommended reading. Ehrenreich criticizes Bush, endorses subsidized childcare during Tuesday evening's program Jignya Sheth The Towerlight After living in a ""tin can"" in Florida and a residential motel in Maine, author Barbara Ehrenreich spoke about the plight of American minimum wage workers Tuesday evening to an audience of approxi-mately 550 people in Stephens Hall Theatre. ""I've done lots of journalism that consisted of interviews, but here the question was not what are low wage workers like, what are their lives like; it was simply could I support myself on the jobs I could get?"" said Ehrenreich, journalist and author of this year's freshman recommended reading and TU Book of the Year, ""Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America."" Ehrenreich went undercover in the late spring of 1996 posing as a divorced homemaker looking for a job. She found work in Florida as a waitress, in Maine as a maid and in Minnesota as a Wal-Mart associate. ""My goal was to find a job, get. affordable housing, and support myself on my wages,"" she said. ""This was an incredibly difficult task on $1,000 a month, and I was just taking care of myself. I did not have the added responsibility of children like many of my co-work-ers."" Ehrenreich used the term ""living wage"" as an oxymoron. ""To live in the Bay Area in California, to pay rent, you would need to make over $25 an hour, and that is just not a possibility with minimum wage,"" she said. While in Florida, Ehrenreich lived in a singlewide trailer, which she described as ""a tin can."" Here she paid $700 per month for rent and utilities, plus gas to shuttle from interview to interview before she landed a job at a restaurant chain. In Maine, she was unable to acquire an apartment and was forced to live in a residential motel that cost $250 per week. In addition to safety concerns, she had no fridge or kitchen,.and all her meals ""were either fast food or from the conven-ience store."" ""What I learned was that no job is unskilled,"" Ehrenreich said. ""The work is exhausting, and it requires intelligence, skill, stamina, and a great deal of concentration. And the [jobs] were made harder by manage-ment. At most of the places I worked there was an atmosphere of suspicion and intimidation."" RAISING ISSUES Ehrenreich stressed that low-wage workers need to be treated with more respect by both their employers and society in general. ""They need to be recognized as people with dignity,"" she said. ""They should be treated as assets and not as disposable workers."" In regards to the staggering 41.2 million Americans who lack health-care, as based on the 2001 U.S. Census report, Ehrenreich said, ""We [the United States] are singularly backwards in that we don't have universal healthcare like many European countries."" She also endorsed subsidized childcare as well as a welfare system that benefits caretakers who cannot work because they must attend to an ill or disabled family member. Senior sociology major and member of the TU Student Worker Alliance, Matt Warfield, agreed with Ehrenreich's positions. ""She pushed some issues that definitely needed to be pushed, and she got people thinking about the realities of economic indifference in the U.S. [in addition to] what exists on our campus in terms of the See EHERNREICH, page 15 Today High 84 Low 61 Friday High 80 Low 61 Saturday High 83 Low 58 Sunday High 78 Low 54 Monday High 64 Low 51 "
