A recent article from the New York Times describes the difficulties faced by low-wage workers experiencing poverty despite being employed. The author documents Vanessa Solivan and her three teenage children, who have experienced chronic homelessness for three years after they fled their New Jersey home due to neighborhood violence. Until the Solivan family was able to secure an apartment in public housing, they stayed with relatives, at cheap motels, or in their car. The entire time, Ms. Solivan kept a job and cared for her entire family. This story outlines how housing insecurity manifests in the lives of employed people and their families; the market also disregards care-giving labor, which women tend to provide, that remains on the margin of the American economy.

Low wages, high rent

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 44% of people experiencing homelessness are employed.  A popular opinion in America is that job availability and creation can eliminate poverty; but, in order to afford rent on a two bedroom apartment in New Jersey, Ms. Solivan would have required an income equivalent to $28.17 an hour for a full-time job. The minimum wage in New Jersey is $8.60.  With such a disparity, it seems as though low-wage workers like Solivan and her children are condemned to an existence of economic precarity until their interests are properly represented through collective bargaining.

For the entirety of her experience as a homeless parent, Ms. Solivan was employed as a home health aide at Bayada Home Health Care, an agency with nearly 23,000 full-time and part-time employees. As a caretaker for the sick and elderly, Ms. Solivan was paid $10 to $14 per hour and was limited to working 20-30 hours a week due to her unpaid labor as a caregiver for her children and father.

National implications for care-givers

Progressive politicians Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say that adults working over 40 hours a week deserve a living wage; however, this does not account for millions of American adults who, like Ms. Solivan, cannot meet the 40-hour quota due to unpaid care-giving responsibilities, or whose jobs fail to guarantee predictable hours. A potential solution to this crisis is twofold: direct action from workers to ensure fair wages, and government policies to classify care-work as paid labor − even if the person being cared for is a relative.

Care-giving work is becoming increasingly important as the Baby Boomer generation enters retirement. According to the US Department of Labor, the economy will add more than 1.6 million jobs in occupations related to adult care by 2024.  Since women of color will fill the majority of these jobs, care-giving work is both a racial and gender issue. As a home health care aide, Ms. Solivan’s yearly income was $10,446.81 in 2017. This figure is significantly lower than the national poverty line of $29,420 for a family of five.

Strengthening collective bargaining

In this regard, existing policy is not the most useful tool for raising wages. The Fight for $15 movement has resulted in policies which have raised the wage in several cities, but it has taken years of advocacy before it was implemented. For all the national controversy this policy aroused, $15 is still $13 less than the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates a person would need to afford rent in New Jersey.

Furthermore, raising the wage incrementally via policy does not necessarily help workers build power. The legislative wins of the Fight for $15 movement showed how a vertically organized campaign by a union can improve wages and working conditions on particular industries or for all workers. However, these political wins and this structure of organizing leave little structure left to replicate or enforce any such wins, which is especially difficult in precarious, low-wage industries with high turnover.

An alternative, horizontal, worker-led organizing model pitted in direct action and power of workers, such as the solidarity union model, in which employees take actions against their employers without mediation from government officials or paid union representatives, can provide for sustained improvement of wages and working conditions. Ms. Solivan and her co-workers can only make gains in salary and benefits by organizing either formally, with a recognized election from the National Labor Relations Board, or unofficially, with solidarity unions that primarily utilize direct action. Other healthcare workers have had great success with strikes, slowdowns, and other collective bargaining acts.

At Mercy Hospital in France, healthcare workers did not want to strike because doing so might hurt patients; instead, they refused to file billing slips for drugs, therapy, and lab tests. The patients received better care unhindered by paperwork, and the administrators gave in to worker demands after three days because the hospital’s income was cut in half. Solivan’s employer Bayada is one of the largest home health care providers in the country. The decision to keep wages stagnant for years is not itself an insurmountable hurdle, if the workers that provide these crucial care-taker services come together strategically to fight for higher wages.

Policy as a means of recognizing care-giving work

While organizing can help workers gain power and receive fair wages, it does nothing for people whose work is not recognized as “legitimate labor.” As of now, someone like Ms. Solivan cannot negotiate a higher salary for being a caregiver for family members, even though a babysitter or a nurse would have a standard rate to charge. Representatives Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) introduced legislation in 2017 to create a Care Corps program to provide financial support for caregivers of disabled and aging Americans. In fact, many other countries provide parents with child allowances: no-strings-attached cash payouts that provide parents with security throughout the entire year, in contrast with the annual Earned Income Tax Credit. For her work as a caregiver to strangers, Ms. Solivan was compensated with a minimum wage. When she performed this same work for her own loved ones, she was not, but the work was no less important.

Ms. Solivan spent years as an extremely “productive” parent, worker, and caretaker to an elder parent, but did not reap any of the benefits her otherwise prosperous society had to offer.  If the modern American economy cannot meet the needs of individuals like Solivan, then it not working for millions across the country.