Low-Wage Work Is Not Charity

To the Editor:

I appreciate Barbara Ehrenreich’s guest editorial (“The Shameful Treatment of America’s Poor,” September 20). I agree with many of the points she makes, but I think she mischaracterizes as a “gift” the goods produced and services provided by a worker who works “for less pay than she can live on.”

A gift is something voluntarily given. The vast majority of low-wage workers have no choice in the matter; they are forced to accept whatever value our economic system places on their labors. The result is systematic exploitation of and economic discrimination against the working poor, not philanthropy. The most important and effective vehicle for changing this chronic condition has been organizing efforts by the workers themselves, sometimes with the support of a handful of progressive foundations, to challenge the inequity and to win improved working and living conditions (something Ms. Ehrenreich acknowledges when she mentions “strikes and disruption”).

Poor and working people, of course, are donors, giving both their time and their money to organizations and individuals of their choosing. However, I doubt that very many consider their low wages and no benefits to be their form of charity. To the extent that Ms. Ehrenreich’s words motivate funders and others with resources and influence to support workers’ struggles for a living wage and to support wholesale changes in public policy about the inequitable values placed on labor, the “shame” she identifies can be a meaningful force for progress.

Larry Kleinman
Board Chair
A Territory Resource Foundation
Woodburn, Ore.