Why Do We Need Low Wage Work?

Millions of people in US work long, hard hours for extremely low wages. Instead of spending time with their families, they serve others food, clean their offices and sometimes their house. They are described as unskilled laborers who never worked hard to free themselves from the poverty line. Different people have different opinions on low-wage work and why it even exists. Many companies benefit from low-wage work because they can spend less on employees which makes it easier for their companies to survive. Low-wage work is always unfair. For instance, some people are born into poverty and they are more likely to stay that way. The consequence of not having a proper education is that they cannot obtain high paying jobs that require strong
Orwell firstly describes the dirty texture of those who are employed when he works as a plongeur in Hotel X, Paris. He describes the outfits by saying, “Everywhere in the service quarters dirt festered –a secret vein of dirt, running through the great garish hotel like the intestines through a man’s body” (81). This appearance would only heighten the shame associated to the lower classes as a social excrescence, “They are a race apart –outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes…. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age but essentially despicable” (173). Even in the present time, it is sad reality about people’s behavior that they judge people by their appearance alone. To confirm such statement, a youtuber from channel named Model Pranksters conducted a social experiment about the effect of appearance on the way people treat strangers. The video revealed two different situation where a man on crutches was dressed like a business man and another one was dressed as a homeless person. The result was when the successful-looking man fell down, people reacted as fast as they could to help him stand up. Unfortunately, the same experiment was done with the man dressed as homeless man, the result was absolutely opposite. People were just watching as the homeless man struggled to stand up on his feet. But what’s more heartbreaking was the unexpected
This study shows that people turn to crime only if they learn that the income outweigh the consequences of committing that. Both in Orwell’s time and the present time, people living in poverty are more likely to commit crime. The next convention, being alcoholism dominates the lives of many, if not all worker in Paris (Down and Out in Paris and London). Considering the short amount of work that they do, there wasn’t much else to do but drink. One of excellent examples in Orwell’s is Henri who drew out all of his money and went on a drinking-bout that he ended in month’s imprisonment after his girlfriend cheated on him. Another example is Saturday night in bistro. A quote from Orwell how he explains the experience, “Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache” (96). Alcohol is the only virtue of inner pressure and symbolic of a family. The narrator makes it a point that many working men cannot afford to marry, hence this social group is a substitute, however unsatisfactory. Being trapped in this routine was all they had, as Orwell quotes “for many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living” (96). The article “Social-Class Factors in Alcoholism” by Peter Park contributes the point made