Wage Rip-off

By: Daniel Nardini

Lawndale News Chicago's Bilingual Newspaper - CommentaryAccording to the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), the average Latina makes 40 percent less in monthly income compared to a non-Hispanic white male. According to data compiled by the LCLAA, Latinas earned on average $508 per week. That is the lowest per capita wage of any worker regardless of their ethnicity or race. By comparison, African American women earn $592 per week and non-Hispanic white women earn $684 per week. To make things that much worse, Latinas are more than twice as likely to have no health insurance compared to non-Hispanic white women. To put it mildly, Latinas are the most poorly paid and worst treated female workers compared to their racial and ethnic counterparts.

But the problem does not end there. The fact that Latin women are the worst treated and most poorly paid means that they are not earning enough to feed their families, take care of their financial or material needs, or seek medical attention when the necessity arises. How they are treated also impacts their quality of work. It means that they cannot do the quality and hard work that they would like to do in very important areas such as food preparation, cleaning services, taking care of someone’s children, providing quality care in our hospitals, etc. Think of what this means for us, the consumers who depend on people like this everyday! It is a sad truth that certain management does not care about how they treat their workers.

Many times, certain companies hire Latinas so they will not have to pay them much, not “put up with labor issues,” and throw them out of work when it suits the companies. This is a very, very important labor issue. This has nothing to do with immigration nor who is legal and who is undocumented. It has to do with treating people like people and not like disposable resources. Latina women do a lot of hard work, and without their labor many of us would not have the things we take for granted. Isn’t it time that companies acknowledge the contributions of Latinas and truly pay them and treat them for their worth?

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