The job market has always been segmented and stratified by race, class and gender. This point was brought home to me when, on Labor Day, I thought about my earliest work experiences, and realized how infused they were with my awareness of race and class. Then I thought about who does this kind of work today -- not just as summer jobs, but as their primary means of subsistence.
My first job was in the informal economy, as a babysitter. My brothers also worked before they turned 16, but they got to have a paper route, which felt like a real job. The route was handed down from brother to brother, but skipped me, because it was considered "boys' work."
Today, in Los Angeles, middle- and working-class girls undoubtedly still work as babysitters, but the women who do this work full time are mostly undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America. So too, are the newspaper delivery "boys," who are really mostly men.
My first job in the formal economy, when I turned 16, was in a hospital cafeteria. I prepared food trays and delivered them to patients. The following summer I cleaned bedpans in a nursing home.
When my father was recently hospitalized back East, and then sent to a nursing home, I studied the staff. The more skilled nurses were immigrants from the Phillipines and the Dominican Republic; the orderlies and nurses' assistants were mostly from Haiti.
During high school and college I also worked in a number of eating establishments. At Rustler's Steak House the most important job was to grill the meat, but only boys got to do that. I had to wear a cowgirl mini-skirt uniform and tend the salad bar. Later I worked as a waitress in an Italian restaurant, where I learned that wearing mini-skirts helped me get better tips.
The restaurants in Los Angeles are filled with young, white, mostly female waitresses -- many of whom are trying to make it in Hollywood, and who may or may not wear mini-skirts to increase their tips. But the dishwashers and kitchen staff are mostly Mexican men. Many are undocumented immigrants from indigenous communities in Oaxaca.
I had other jobs in college: as a work-study student in the school cafeteria, an office clerk, and a research assistant, transcribing tapes for a psychologist. I also cleaned the houses of "rich people" (or so they seemed to me) in the local community. I remember feeling envious of the people who lived in those fancy homes.
Now I am a college professor who lives in a nice (albeit rented) home myself. I get my newspaper delivered to my front door each morning. I frequent restaurants and enjoy salad bars. I have hired people to care for my children and tend to my house and yard. I also employ work-study students to transcribe tapes for my own research projects. Most are the children of immigrants. Their more privileged middle-class peers spend their time studying and partying, not working for long hours to support themselves in school.
The stratification of the job market is even more acute today than it was in my youth, as the gap between rich and poor grows wider. Adult immigrants are trying to raise families on the kind of jobs I did as a way of contributing to my college expenses.
Some may take this essay as evidence that immigrants are taking "our" jobs. But just whose jobs are they taking? How many people are lining up for minimum wage, dead-end, bottom-rung jobs with no security and no benefits? For sure, working-class kids are finding it harder to secure part time and summer employment than I did when I was a kid. But how many middle-class Americans -- even young college students like my own children -- will take a job cleaning bed pans or someone else's toilet, changing diapers, or delivering newspapers before dawn, for minimum wage or less?
As the movie A Day Without a Mexican illustrated a few years ago, the lifestyle that middle class Los Angeles residents enjoy is sustained by the work of undocumented immigrant labor. On Labor Day, I remembered my earliest jobs with a mixture of pride and relief. I was proud to have had these experiences; through them I learned to honor and respect all work, even that which is considered "menial." I was relieved that I don't have to do that kind of work day-in and day-out in my adult life.
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Illegals are taking the jobs of Americans, you say so in this article!