Minimum Wages: The New Economy

Minimum Wages

The New Economy with Bill Moyers

Produced and Directed by............................. ................... Tom Casciato

Co-Produced by ........................................................... Kathleen Hughes

Researcher ..................................................................... Kelly Venardos

Executive Producer ........................................ Judith Davidson Moyers

MARK BELLING, Radio Talk Show Host:

Good afternoon, Milwaukee. This is the Mark Belling late afternoon show on talk radio

GOV. TOMMY G. THOMPSON (R) Wisconsin:

We in Wisconsin have seen steady, continued growth in our state economy and today, our businesses continue to grow and to expand.

JACK NORMAN. Business Reporter, "Milwaukee Journal":

Milwaukee stands for working class America. It's the home of Harley Davidson motorcycles and Miller Lite Beer. It's a city of bowling and baseball and backyard cookouts.

GOV. TOMMY G. THOMPSON:

Our state is in a strong position to meet the challenges of this new era.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Milwaukee's new economy has been called "a miracle." During the 1980's, the city. like the nation as a whole, created more jobs than it lost. It developed a diverse service economy and added thousands of new, light manufacturing jobs.

GOV. TOMMY G. THOMPSON:

Today, our state stands at the forefront of our nation. Our unemployment rate has been substantially below the national average for 42 consecutive months.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) But the miracle is not all it seems to be.

ELLEN BRAVO, Executive Director. Milwaukee Chapter, 9 to 5:

People who count those jobs and who say, "Milwaukee's doing great," or "Wisconsin's doing great. Look at all the new jobs we have." They don't ask, "What kind of jobs are they?" They don't ask, "Can you make a living on that job? Can you support a family on that job?"

TONY NEUMANN, Unemployed, Former Briggs & Stratton Employee

Minimum wage will not pay the bills. If you figure it out, I mean, gas, electric, telephone bill plus food for a family-if you got a rent or a mortgage, it don't matter, it's still money. You figure it out, minimum wage will not make it.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Milwaukee today is often held as a model of how the nation must retool to compete in the global economy, but in Milwaukee as in America, we are creating a work force which can barely afford to buy the goods and services it produces.

(interviewing) Do you have any savings, anything in the bank?

STEVE LEREN. Security Guard. Former Briggs & Stratton Employee

No, nothing at all.

BILL MOYERS:

What do you got in your pocket right now?

STEVE LEREN:

Nothing-not a penny.

BILL MOYERS:

But you're working.

STEVE LEREN:

Uh huh.

BILL MOYERS:

And you have nothing?

STEVE LEREN:

Nothing, right-not until I can get a better job or a betterpayingjob.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) For more than a decade, changes in the global and domestic economies have lowered real wages, creating what some have called "a silent depression." Even in Milwaukee, a city the nation looks to as a model of the new economy, Americans are dividing into two groups, one that works for a living and makes it, and one that works for a living and can't make it. It's a division that threatens to leave hard-working people permanently poor.

STEVE LEREN:

Yeah, this is all.

BILL MOYERS:

For how long?

STEVE LEREN:

Well, this is-I've been here for about a year and of course, this is the only place I really can afford.

BILL MOYERS:

What do you pay for it?

STEVE LEREN:

I pay $210 a month and of course, everything's included except for telephone and-

BILL MOYERS:

Is this it?

STEVE LEREN:

Yeah, this is it.

BILL MOYERS:

Down the stairs?

STEVE LEREN:

Yeah, it's down the stairs. You got to go through the washroom and to your left.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steve Leren is 38. He's been laid off for over two years, one of 43,000 in Milwaukee who lost a good manufacturing job in the 1980's.

(interviewing) What kind of place did you have?

STEVE LEREN:

Oh, I had a two-bedroom apartment up on the northwest side of town and it was really nice. I mean, it was a nice neighborhood, nice green lawns, you know, low crime rate. Just everything about it was nice, you know, but of course, those apartments go for about $425 to $500 a month, of course, way out of my price range at this time. I couldn't afford to live there anymore, so I had to, of course, move it.

LOCAL NEWS ANNOUNCER:

Years ago, if you wanted a small

engine, you got a Briggs & Stratton.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steve was laid off from the Briggs & Stratton Corporation. The division where he worked was moved to Mexico where workers earn in one day what Milwaukee workers earn in one hour.

STEVE LEREN:

I thought I had a future with this company. I thought that it was going to be here in the state because it has been here for such a long time. I thought I could maybe retire from here someday.

JACK NORMAN:

Briggs & Stratton is the largest private employer in the Milwaukee area. It's a company that has been moving work away from Milwaukee, moving work to Missouri to a new plant, moving work to Juarez, Mexico, to plants that it has built there. Some of those moves were accompanied by some very long and loud fights with its union.

1st NEWSCASTER:

{local news report] At a membership meeting, workers rejected a company request for concessions.

BRIGGS & STRATTON WORKER:

They were asking for outrageous things, I think. We worked for six years without a pay increase. There's no reason why we should have to keep conceding.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Throughout the 80's, local news reports told of job flight and layoffs. Briggs & Stratton alone has moved 2,000 jobs out of Milwaukee.

STEVE LEREN:

They're making it too easy to take these jobs and move them out totally -overseas, down south, Mexico, China, Korea - and taking all the good-paying jobs with them.

BILL MOYERS:

What about the argument that, ''Well, that's just the way it has to work because we have to let people overseas do what they can do to lower the price and here, we have to readjust - it's just water finding its own level"?

STEVE LEREN:

Well, what I have to say about that is that, OK, add those-well, if they have to do that and they're going to have those people produce those products at those wages and then take away American jobs, OK and-where are they going to seU those products that they do produce overseas? I mean, we're not going to be able to afford to buy them. I can't afford it, not at $4.eO an hour.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steve is typical of Americans who've been forced to leave factory work for service jobs.

STEVE LEREN:

I'm working as a security guard. First time in my life that I thought I'd have to actually work as a security guard, rent-a-cop. Of course, I'm getting $4.60 an hour, which is just a quarter more than minimum wage.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Like one-third of all new jobs being created today, Steve's pays poverty-level wages with no benefits.

STEVE LEREN:

And sometimes, I even have to pick up outside jobs just to feed myself because the prices of everything, as you know, keep going up and up and up.

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) What were you making at Briggs & Stratton when you were laid off?

STEVE LEREN:

Well, I was making $12 an hour.

BILL MOYERS:

So you're working for about a third now.

STEVE LEREN:

Oh, yeah, right, exactly. And it's rough ... This is a check for two weeks' pay, for 28 hours. And total pay was $127. Of course, after deductions, it's $96.79.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Because Steve works for a company that provides security guards for many different businesses, he can never be sure exactly where he's going to work or how many hours he'll get per week.

ELLEN BRAVO:

The situation in Milwaukee is really very similar to what it is in most of the country.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Ellen Bravo is Executive Director of the Milwaukee Chapter of 9 to 6, a national organization that researches trends in the workplace.

ELLEN BRAVO:

There was a conscious decision on the part of many business leaders - back in the mid-70's when the United States first started facing a lot of competition - to cheapen the workforce, that the way they would stay competitive was by lowering costs. And really, a lot of that meant labor costs. It meant investing overseas if they could get it. It meant making jobs part-time and temporary, getting rid of benefits, lowering wages, keeping the minimum wage low.

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) This is a good-looking resume. It's well organized, well-printed. Pretty good skills you got to have there.

STEVE LEREN:

Well, yeah, I do.

BILL MOYERS:

Machining of auto locks and keys, electroplating, metal services, plating line programming, routing, readouts, forklift operation, plastic injection molding machine, drill press, punch press, machine parts and blueprints.

STEVE LEREN:

Like I say, there's no such thing as being overqualified for any job.

(job-hunting) Yo, is Ed around? Dick Walters sent me-in the office. I'm supposed to speak to Ed.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steve spends his free time trying hard to get a better job. He's put in applications all over town.

STEVE LEREN:

When do you expect him?

1st MAN:

Probably Monday.

STEVE LEREN:

Monday?

1st MAN

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) He keeps lists of factories and construction sites, calling and visiting them often to see if there's any work.

STEVE LEREN:

Oh, I see. OK, there's no site foreman right now?

1st MAN:

No, the only ones on the site tight now are the Chrysler representatives.

STEVE LEREN:

I see. OK, thanks a lot.

1st MAN:

Right.

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) What's been the hardest part? What's been your lowest moment over the last year?

STEVE LEREN:

Well, when I haven't had enough to eat, when I had to actually -- had to go to --

BILL MOYERS:

Really?

STEVE LEREN:

Well, it's called a outreach program and I've had to go and go in and actually ask - ask somebody for food, OK? And that's been about the most embarrassing, dehumanizing part of this whole episode is going in and actually asking somebody for a handout. I'm kind of happy that I didn't start a family and I don't have one now and of course, I'm not planning on starting a family because, like I say, what could I offer even if I did? I'm not even sure if I could feed them.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) In the new economy, unions no longer just fight for benefits and higher wages. Nowadays, they often try to help members who've been laid off find any kind of job at all.

ROGER HINKLE, Allied Industrial Workers, Local 232:

[counseling Steve Leren] Now, this job you might want to look at, but it's still a low-wage start and it doesn't indicate for sure whether or not you would get benefits.

[to Moyers] No, his job's dead end. It's just dead end. I would - and I think most people that take those jobs view them as dead-end. Security guard jobs - a lot of times you can do those on third shift, make $5 an hour and then work another first shift, try to be a handyman or do a little construction work on the side or whatever, but that's a tremendously hard life and what that means, if you do those two things, you don't have time to do job search. You don't have time to do much of anything. You just barely have time to - you know, to put your clothes on in the morning and take them off at night to go to bed.

STEVE LEREN:

I wish I could do something. In other words, if I knew, if there was any kind of hope left, knowing that I could go and get another job like I had before, if there's even a chance, I wouldn't be feeling as depressed, angry and-I don't know.

JACK NORMAN:

Briggs & Stratton is a company that was founded in Milwaukee, goes back to the beginning of the century. It's headed by Fred Stratton. Fred Stratton is a man who's played a leading role in many of the civic organizations in town and that has also caused him some public relations problems because people will look at him and say, "Fred Stratton, you're chairing this committee and you're chairing that committee and you're taking a lead, supposedly, in improving Milwaukee at the same time that you're sending thousands of jobs out of the Milwaukee area."

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Fred Stratton refused an on-camera interview. A company spokesman said, "We are trying to get the unions to understand that the world is changing. Companies can no longer afford to pay high wages for unskilled labor."

JACK NORMAN:

A company like Briggs & Stratton, along with some of the other giant manufacturers-these were places where a person could be guaranteed of getting a good job right after high school that allowed people to have the dream working-class life. That worked for decades.

TONY NEUMANN:

I lost my job over at Briggs & Stratton. I was laid off a little over a year ago. I'm trying to make ends meet and trying to find another job.

[with his SON] See them raggedy edges? The other one has to get turned around.

SON:

This one?

TONY NEUMANN:

Yeah, OK. We got to drill a hole. How big of a hole do you want?

SON:

Not that big.

TONY NEUMANN:

Not that big?

SON:

That big.

TONY NEUMANN:

I've already gone into machine shops where they said I've been overqualified. Well, I've been at Briggs and I've been at these other factories and I have made $10 or more an hour and they're not willing to pay that kind of a wage. They're willing to pay me $6, $6.25. Little do they know I need to live also.

TERRY NEUMANN, Wife:

I was telling people that this is our second time around. He has lost a job before because they moved out of state and we were looking for buying a house before. Well, now he gets into Briggs and we think, "Oh, this is a good company, we can buy a house." And now, we're in worse condition as we were the first time because now we have the house, we have more bills, you know. But it's either rent for the rest of your life or own and we prefer to own. I mean-

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) That's supposed to be the American dream

TERRY NEUMANN:

That's supposed to be the American dream.

BILL MOYERS:

-a house, a good job.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Where is it? Where is it?

TONY NEUMANN:

Are you going to call him back?

TERRY NEUMANN:

Am I going to call him back? Yeah, I'm going to have to call him back.

TONY NEUMANN:

Well, you talked to him before.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Yeah.

TONY NEUMANN:

And I told him I don't care. If they want to foreclose, they can foreclose. I'm-if we don't have the money, we don't have the money. I would prefer you to call him, other than me.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Here we go.

TONY NEUMANN:

Mr. Carlos, the same guy who I talked to before.

BILL MOYERS:

How much is your mortgage a month?

TERRY NEUMANN:

It's like $820-

TONY NEUMANN:

Eight hundred and nineteen.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Yeah, $820 or something like that.

BILL MOYERS:

Have you been able to make all the payments?

TERRY NEUMANN:

No, and we're behind.

(on telephone) I did send a $1,000 check in a few weeks back, but the check was sent back to me with a letter stating, "We will not accept a partial payment." And when I tried to explain that over the phone, somebody called - I don't really think of that as a partial payment. I think of that as a basic payment and a good gesture. I'm trying to get caught up and it really upset me that, you know, this check was sent back and they wouldn't accept that.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Terry Neumann is 28 and her husband Tony is 30. Theirs is the first post-war generation of Americans expected to do worse financially than their parents.

TERRY NEUMANN:

[on the telephone] I'm trying to buy a little time so we can get on our feet again, you know, so we can get caught up. I would think that this is just going to be a temporary thing, not a permanent thing and I really don't want to lose my house-or are you just trying to tell me that you have to foreclose on the house if I don't have that full amount? $1,193. And if I don't have the $1,193, then they're going to foreclose? You would recommend it?

TONY NEUMANN:

And is he putting this on paper? I want to know, is he putting this on paper, dear?

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) After losing his job as a die-cast operator at Briggs, Tony enrolled full-time at a local technical college for retraining. A year later, he was certified as a pneumatics and hydraulics technician with perfect scores, but when he applied at factories, he was told he was overqualified or there were simply no jobs, so he lowered his expectations.

TONY NEUMANN:

Well, I've applied over at grocery stores, hardware stores, there's-

TERRY NEUMANN:

McDonald's.

TONY NEUMANN:

-Hardee's

TERRY NEUMANN:

Cole's.

TONY NEUMANN:

Super America, Pizza Hut, Wal-mart, Sam's

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over)Two hundred applications later, Tony had not one offer for more than $6 an hour.

TONY NEUMANN:

My aunt recently bought this house and I'm helping her fix it up. She pays me $5 an hour for doing odds and ends around here. I really would like to do this for other people and get paid more for it. She is just willing to do this just to help me and Terry out because she knows I'm having such a hard time, which is really nice, considering she's my aunt.

BILL MOYERS:

Are you working?

TERRY NEUMANN:

No-well, I'm doing Nu Skin selling.

BILL MOYERS:

What?

TERRY NEUMANN:

Nu Skin.

BILL MOYERS:

Oh, the door-to-door?

TERRY NEUMANN:

It's called Nu Skin International for personal care products.

[with daughter] And one of these and then they need a business card to call Mommy up.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Terry borrowed $1,300 from a relative to invest in beauty products. If she sells them, she makes a modest profit. If she doesn't, she takes the loss.

ELLEN BRAVO:

People think, "Give me a chance and if it's just up to me and my hard work and my initiative, I'll make it. I'll be OK. Well, the problem is, unlike other entrepreneurs, they don't have any capital and they don't have a marketing plan and they don't have help.

TERRY NEUMANN:

[selling Nu Skin] I feel our products are very reasonable because you are getting a very good product. There's a lot of healthy ingredients that have been proven to be healthy for your body.

ELLEN BRAVO:

They have these dreams that they'll be able to make a lot of money, but it's not real because the people that they're selling to, on the whole, who are they? They're their friends. They have the same amount of money they do. They can't afford to buy a lot of these products or they buy them once and they're not going to buy them again the next day. So their arena that they can sell to is limited.

SON:

They're dead?

TONY NEUMANN:

[examining a baby bird] Oh, they're

SON:

Ooh, water.

TONY NEUMANN:

Oh, water. Oh, what happened to his ear? Well, does he want to go back in his house? He doesn't like all you kids. He's yelling - oops.

SON:

He don't have no house;

SON:

Come here.

TONY NEUMANN:

Can you reach that high or you want me to do it?

SON:

I want to hold him all the way over there.

TONY NEUMANN:

OK, you can hold him all the way over there.

SON:

Come on. Come here.

TERRY NEUMANN:

They've made comments to like, "Mom, let's sell the bookshelf." They've got little baseball cards. "Mom, I'll sell these." And that hurts 'cause they're willing to sell their baseball cards to help their parents out. I just explain to them, "It's really hard right now and Dad's not working right now, Mom's not really working right now and we don't have the money to do the things that you want to do right now."

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) On Wednesdays, the Milwaukee Zoo is free. It's one of the few places Terry can still take her kids for fun.

SON:

Hey, Mommy, look at me. I'm holding a goat.

TERRY NEUMANN:

When Tony had a job, it was a little different because we could do the things that we enjoyed, you know, but now that the money's not there and that's another reason why I explain to them, why he may be feeling tense, because we used to go over for picnics, invite people over for dinner, you know, entertain a little bit, grill out on the grill or go to a movie, to a restaurant, just the two of us. And now, we can't afford it, you know, so we sacrifice our own, you know, for the kids because they do need it and they don't understand half the time what's going on.

SON:

You can't buy anything yet. We don't have enough money.

TONY NEUMANN:

Normally, I make good meals-the meat and the vegetables and salads and all the fixings, you know. It's not a large amount, but they're good, well-balanced meals. And now that I can't make well-balanced meals, I mean, that's-it gets the point where you sit there and think, "Oh, God, what am I going to make for dinner tonight?" You know, and it's just emotionally exhausting.

TONY NEUMANN:

You know what would be good on this? Cheese.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Oh, well - don't have cheese. So would garlic bread, too.

1st CHURCH WORKER:

No baby food, macaroni, definitely.

2nd CHURCH WORKER:

Cheese.

1st CHURCH WORKER:

OK.

2nd CHURCH WORKER:

Peaches and pears, we need.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Today, 10 percent of all Americans receive food assistance from the government, the highest rate on record. In Milwaukee, religious groups and relief agencies report that emergency requests for food have nearly doubled in the last five years.

TERRY NEUMANN:

It really bothers us that we have to depend on other people. I just want to get up and do what I have to do and just go in the car and go grocery shopping and have a normal life again. So I have to go to food pantries. I don't know if they're government funded or what-

TONY NEUMANN:

No, people donate food.

TERRY NEUMANN:

-but they donate food.

TONY NEUMANN:

People who are doing better off than others donate food to like, say, churches or synagogues.

CHURCH WORKER:

You get the peanut butter and the honey.

TERRY NEUMANN:

I don't like having to go and ask and say, "I have no food in the house," or something, "Can you help me out," where when you would go and work and get a paycheck and come home and support yourself.

TONY NEUMANN:

We would be giving this food to other people.

TERRY NEUMANN:

Right. You know, through church, we'd pick up food and drop it off at church. Well, now the shoe's on the other foot. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. I'd rather be on the giving side than the receiving.

CHURCH WORKER:

I don't know if you're going to be using all of these or not, Terry. They have peanut butter, flour. You can take what you like or-

TERRY NEUMANN:

I do a lot of baking and the kids eat a lot of peanut butter.

CHURCH WORKER:

And we have some pork here. I understand that if you put it over noodles or rice and maybe add a little onion that it's quite palatable.

TERRY NEUMANN:

What are you doing today?

TONY NEUMANN:

Fixing the doors and screens.

TERRY NEUMANN:

And the kitchen door?

TONY NEUMANN:

Yeah, I'll think about it.

(to BILL MOYERS) I've been getting very angry, lately. I've been losing my temper quite a bit. I don't know what it is. I try to get it under control, but it's just really frustrating. You got all these pressures on you and you don't have no way to release it, really.

BILL MOYERS:

How do you deal with this pressure, the anger and the

TERRY NEUMANN:

I can't. It's very difficult.

TONY NEUMANN:

Yeah, our marriage is really on the rocks. This is a really difficult time. This is a real difficult time. I've been thinking about divorce now for a while.

BILL MOYERS:

Why?

TONY NEUMANN:

I can't deal with the situation. I'm just having a real hard time dealing with it.

BILL MOYERS:

Divorce is an easier way out?

TONY NEUMANN:

Yeah, I think so. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm really at a loss.

BILL MOYERS:

You feel guilty?

TONY NEUMANN:

Yeah, I do. I feel I should be supporting my family.

BILL MOYERS:

You think he really wants a divorce or is this just an escape?

TERRY NEUMANN:

I think it's an escape and I just think he figures it's an easy way out, but really, the problems are still going to be there because he's still going to have to support us and I feel it's going to be

worse. I just feel it's just a tough time and if we can just get through this, you know, then we'll be back to the life that we had before.

PRIEST:

Good morning, everybody.

CONGREGATION:

Good morning, Father.

PRIEST:

We gather on this Sunday morning in faith, to praise our Triune God-in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.

CONGREGATION:

Amen.

ANNOUNCER:

(1978 Miller Beer commercial)] In Milwaukee, working is a way of living. Milwaukee gives the world work gloves and wheel barrows, outboards and motorcycles, nuts and bolts and beer nothing fancy, just the best. So when Miller Time rolls around tonight, we raise a glass to you, Milwaukee. You've earned it.

2nd NEWSCASTER:

(1983 local report) Words cannot describe it adequately - 16,000 to 20,000 unemployed men and women jammed State Fair Park in the bitter cold. All waited for hours for the chance at 160 to 200 welding and production line jobs.

ELLEN BRAVO:

In the 80's when so many manufacturing jobs - 86,000 manufacturing jobs - were lost in Wisconsin, there was the expectation that new jobs would be created, that people wouldn't remain unemployed for long periods of time, that we wouldn't have another depression because there were these other growth industries.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Milwaukee's miracle was a shiny new downtown, home to financial services, light manufacturing, shopping malls and tourism. Today, the region's unemployment rate is at an all-time low, but unemployment statistics can be misleading.

JACK NORMAN:

It used to be that unemployment was a statistic that told us about the health of an economy. I think that's not true anymore. So many of the jobs that go behind the unemployment statistic are jobs J that don't pay living wages. Income is a more important measure of the health of an economy.

In Milwaukee, the average income has fallen compared to the rest of the nation. In the decade of the 1980's, the per capita income in Wisconsin has fallen six percent. That's what globalism brought home to Wisconsin - companies that learned new ways of conducting their business, smarter ways and were able to do it with fewer people, paying them less wages.

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) All over Milwaukee, we've talked to people who say they look for jobs and they can't find jobs, that if they do find jobs, they find jobs that pay $4.60, $6, $6.60 an hour. They cannot support a family on that.

RICHARD G. SIM, Chairman and CEO, Applied Power, Inc:

Yeah, sure.

BILL MOYERS:

What about that?

RICHARD SIM:

People who don't have skills are not very attractive in this workplace and that's a harsh reality.

BILL MOYERS:

But what happens to them in this new world order?

RICHARD SIM:

Clearly, as a nation, if we increase our total wealth, we have an ability to help some of these people through services, providing medical care, other things that they need that maybe they can't earn on their own. To the extent that we, as a nation, don't do as well, these people are in even worse shape.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Applied Power is a global manufacturing company that employs 3,000 people worldwide, 500 in Milwaukee. Its jobs are nonunion and pay $8 to $10 an hour.

(interviewing) Can they support a family on $8 an hour?

RICHARD SIM:

Yeah, you can. See, I don't think that's the issue. Of course, you can. If you make $8 an hour in the United States and compare yourself to someone in Korea, you're a king, but that's not the way Americans want to compare themselves or should compare themselves. They're comparing themselves to their mothers and fathers and saying, "Hey, I want to do better." That's the aspiration we have to meet, so we got to restructure our society around other types of technology, other industries-

BILL MOYERS:

And lower the standard of living. That's what's happened.

RICHARD SIM:

I would agree, yeah. that's what's happened. It's - it's a very moot point and it's half-

BILL MOYERS:

Not to the guy making a dollar.

RICHARD SIM:

And the people feel that way. There's no question it's real from their point of view.

BILL MOYERS:

That's right.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Dick Sim acknowledges that the jobs at Applied Power don't pay the high wages manufacturing jobs used to pay in Milwaukee. He says it's going to take a national effort to recover that prosperity.

RICHARD SIM:

They've got to increase the rate of productivity improvement in this country. If we can do that - let me - let me give you a challenge. If we were to say to everyone in America - the President goes on TV and he says, "OK, next week, we're going to have an experiment. I want everyone in America to produce 10 percent more next week," and if even half the people responded, it would be awesome.

BILL MOYERS:

(interviewing) If the President did that next week, wouldn't you buy another computer, not hire two more men?

RICHARD SIM:

We'd do both. We'd do one of both. We'd probably hire - buy three computers and hire one guy, but that's the way it's got to be. You can't defy these laws of economics, 'cause these are like the laws of physics. They apply to the Japanese, they apply to the West Germans, they apply to us. We cannot make our own rules in terms of the realities of the market.

JACK NORMAN:

The market system that we have has no method for providing for any coordinated growth and prosperity and so individual companies are able to find their path to prosperity, benefiting their particular employees, at the same time leaving masses of people behind.

NICOLE STANLEY, College Student:

It freaked me out when Mom said, "Your dad's been laid off" And I was like, "No, Dad wasn't laid off." And I was starting thinking, you know, at the time, I was going to a private school and I'm sitting there, going, "Please, my dad's not laid off." I found out Dad was laid off. He took this lower-paying job and then Mom had the load on her. Then Mom got laid off. The income just went poof. I don't think any other family probably could survive. Our family is fortunate.

Keith is up under me. He's 14 years old. Klaudale and Claude is the set of twins - they're 11 years old - and my little sister, Omega is 10. My father's been laid off for five years. He went into waterproofing. My mother, she got her real estate license. I'm proud of both of them. I'm not saying that my parents are failures. What I'm saying is that I'm scared of following in their shoes. While I'm young, I want a degree. While I'm able to move about, 1 want to make something out of myself before it's too late, before I'm in my 30's and end up like them in a vicious circle.

CLAUDE STANLEY, Father:

When I got laid off at Babcock, they wanted me to be on the welfare, but I could not stand in that line. I just said, "It's not me. This is not me." They wanted to give me food stamps. I said, "This ain't me. I don't want no food stamps." I say, "I got my strength, my health. I will find me a job." And I found me a job.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) The job Claude Stanley got pays $6.50 an hour. He used to make up to $19 an hour. Then he was laid off, first from Babcock & Wilcox, which shut down in Milwaukee, then A.O. Smith, which has set up six factories in Mexico.

(interviewing) A lot of guys tell me that they've got work, but they just can't make it on the minimum wage, at $4.50, $6, $5.50, $6.

CLAUDE STANLEY:

They could make it, but, you know, they got to bring their living down, you know. You got to look at it on the real side. I cannot live like I was making $20 an hour, bringing a check home $600 a week, OK? You work Saturday or Sunday, something like that, you're making $800 a week. OK, that money not there, so you might as well get it in your mind it's not there no more. So, OK, bring yourself down.

BILL MOYERS:

Are you all in danger of losing the house now?

NICOLE STANLEY:

I don't know.

JACQUELINE STANLEY, Mother: :

We have fallen behind from time to time. Right now isn't a good time until the next few weeks. I have one of the biggest closings I've ever had and then I'm going to walk in and either pay the car off or pay the house up a year and that's real estate. When it comes in, it comes in like a ship.

(on the telephone) Hi, Joe. Yeah, this is Jacqueline Stanley from Homestead. OK, I just got in and it says, "ASAP." What did that mean?

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Jackie Stanley's deal fell through.

NICOLE STANLEY:

Mom's real estate is tough on her. I've seen her try to wheel and deal deals. They seem so good and at the last minute, they fall apart.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

(on the telephone) Tell her to please call me because we wrote this for-the listing was for September. It's already October.

NICOLE STANLEY:

That falling-apart is our mortgage. That falling apart is the car note. To someone else, it might not seem important that they decide not to buy the house, butfor us, it's a matter of-not life and death, but it's a matter of light and gas and that's scary.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

When the doors at Briggs closed on us and they handed us our pink slips, I knew that I'm out here and it's sink or swim.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) When Jackie was a Briggs worker, she took home about $32,000 a year. In a good year, her family's combined income was well over $60,000 and included health benefits. That security is gone.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

The reality is that it's rough. You have to sell yourself. Real estate, you have to change clothes a lot and you have to give that appearance of neat ‚àëand clean. And I'm always smiling in spite of electric bills, gas bills, telephones. They're due, just like anybody else's, but I can't afford to say, you know, "I'm having a rough time, please buy this house," no.

ELLEN BRAVO:

Selling real estate is another one of those jobs that people fall into when they've gotten laid off and again, it's one of those things where you think, "If I just work hard enough, then maybe I can make it and make enough money," but of course, it's completely dependent on the overall economy and the housing market. People aren't making money, they don't have money to buy houses, so what happened to you affects what happens to your customers and their ability to make you able to sustain yourself and your family.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

(at the office) You're going to have to show me how to do this. This has not expired. I pulled it because they had it a long time ago last year, listed.

WILLIAM BERLAND, Owner, Homestead Realty:

OK.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

It was on the market for a year and didn't sell.

WILLIAM BERLAND:

That's because they didn't have somebody as good as you.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

OK.

WILLIAM BERLAND:

People of color really have a much more difficult time in our business making a living than white people. It may be a situation where she may call for a showing and not get the courtesy of a call-back. Maybe her client that she takes into a mortgage lender has a much more difficult time - even if their credit is good - getting a mortgage.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

I can't sell suburbs. I can't sell the most affluent areas here and that hurts, but they'll call me for central city.

NICOLE STANLEY:

The boys pull together, I pull together, my little sister-and we're trying to see how can we accumulate some money in the house. My little brothers started their own lawn-care service. They cut grass, they do hedges. They do just about anything and they get paid and help out around the house. They're called Three Son's Lawn Care Service.

TOM CASCIATO, Producer:

How much money would you like to make when you grow up?

CLAUDE STANLEY Jr, Son:

Probably about $100 million, something like that - $300 million, something like that.

TOM CASCIATO:

Do you think you will?

CLAUDE STANLEY Jr,

Yeah.

KLAUDALE STANLEY, Son:

I seen my mom on the phone, talking to the bill collectors, asking them when they would take - the mortgage company or whatever about to take our house, she was pleading with the mortgage company. She asked the bill collectors to keep the light and sometimes the gas on and that makes me want to do more, a lot more.

KEITH STANLEY, Son:

See, I don't really know how the system works, but I wish that most of our companies like Briggs & Stratton and most American companies that was first here would have stayed here and helped - I think it was really money that made everybody move, 'cause it was low in Mexico. People work much less in Mexico and other places. And I wish they would have stayed here and realized what the problem was in America, why was these companies leaving, just because of money and they forgot about all the little kids and the grown-ups that work real hard.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Nicole Stanley is a university freshman majoring in business finance. She plans a career in international banking. At times, her studies have been interrupted by illness.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

Earlier today, I got a phone call from my daughter. The results came in from her thyroid and they're not saying it's cancer, but what they're saying is the fact that they found more lymph nodes or whatever, something in her throat.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Nicole has been diagnosed with a benign cyst on her

thyroid gland. Treatment has cost the family $600 they don't have. It will cost more if the condition persists and requires surgery.

JACQUELINE STANLEY:

Nicole's job has small insurance for her and we didn't have any. Now that this has hit, I'm worrying. And I know I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to pray and believe God's going to work it out, but you can try going into an operating room and tell that to the surgeon.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Ten years ago, 75 percent of full-time workers had full health coverage. Today, less than half do.

DAVID WATERS, M.D., Community Health Center:

Well, we're a community health center, we're a neighborhood clinic which services the people that live in the surrounding community. We see a large number of

the working poor, people who have a job and make a low enough income that they can't afford to buy health insurance on their own. It's no problem for them to come to this clinic and be seen, but if they need referrals, they need hospitalization, they need other services that we cannot provide for them on site, you actually have to play the game of finding out where you can basically slip them in between the cracks to have them seen. A lot of people who work are poor, I mean, the working poor. There's -what is it? -33 million people in the United States who don't have health insurance and most of those are the working poor.

TOMMY G. THOMPSON, Governor of Wisconsin:

There's plenty of jobs available out there if the people are trained to be able to assume them and the biggest rap on anything going on today, when you talk to employers, is they can't find qualified workers.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Retraining - many say it's the way to push the nation's workforce toward higher-skilled, higher-paying positions. The Milwaukee Area Technical College is training close to 80,000 people, many of whom hope to qualify for better jobs.

ELLEN BRAVO:

Retraining, of course, is important. What's the job at the other end? That's the problem. In most cases, job training means getting people into existing jobs and many of those existing jobs are low-paid.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Students in this class hope to get work in the medical field as health unit coordinators. In Milwaukee, they usually start out making $6.85 an hour. While some jobs do go unfilled because workers aren't trained for them, the real story in the Milwaukee region is that up to 60,000 people are competing for only 8,000 jobs.

(interviewing) One of the documents we're using is this Crisis of Working People in Milwaukee by the Social Development Commission and it says-let me give you a quote right out of it-

[reads] "There simply are not enough jobs to provide employment for all those who are out of work." So if you retrain them, what are we retraining them for?

GOV. TOMMY G. THOMPSON

Well, at the same time we're retraining them, we have to do the same thing that I'm trying to do and I think the City of Milwaukee is trying to do and the County of Milwaukee is trying to do, is attract business into the inner city of Milwaukee.

3rd NEWSCASTER:

[local news report] Rosalyn Alwey was a nursing assistant, so she's used to working with her hands, but she never dreamed she'd be using them to do this. Rosalyn is one of 15 workers who are now completing a special welding course at MATC so they can work for Steeltech.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steeltech is a minority-owned company capitalized by government and private investors. In order to qualify for a military contract, Steeltech had to agree to train local workers.

3rd NEWSCASTER:

Fifteen people began this training program and all 15 will graduate on May 31st. Their commencement -perhaps unlike any other graduation that we will see this summer - will not only change their lives, but their community as well.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steeltech is the experimental project business leaders point to when asked about solutions to inner-city unemployment.

(interviewing) What's your ambition? How much do you want to make?

JAMES WRIGHT, Production Welder, $7.50/hr:

Twenty-one dollars an hour.

BILL MOYERS:

Oh, those jobs are gone.

JAMES WRIGHT:

But I figure, you know, the longer you stay here, the more you make, so I'm patient. I want to put in a lot of years here. You know I come from a family of welders.

BILL MOYERS:

Oh, yeah?

JAMES WRIGHT:

They're there,

BILL MOYERS:

This is your first welding job?

JAMES WRIGHT:

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

Was your father a welder?

JAMES WRIGHT:

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

How much did he make an hour?

JAMES WRIGHT:

Seventeen dollars an hour.

BILL MOYERS:

Seventeen?

JAMES WRIGHT:

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

Think you'll ever make that, welding again?

JAMES WRIGHT:

I think I'd make more.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steel workers in Milwaukee traditionally started at around $10 an hour and made up to $20 an hour. The starting wage at Steeltech is only $5.50. If the company does well, salaries are expected to increase and some already have, but there's no guarantee work here will ever pay a family-supporting wage.

(interviewing) Outside of Steeltech, for a black man, middle-aged like you, working-looking for work in Milwaukee, what are the opportunities?

CHESTER GANDY, Team Leader, $8.50/hr:

I would say it's very bad because most of the jobs-most of the work are outside the city limits and there's a lot of us who don't have transportation or you know, transportation problems and then you have to compete with the next person that's looking for a job.

JACK NORMAN:

Unemployment in the black community remains exceedingly high, a rate five times that in the white community. Steeltech, like every other program that's up and running now or that's even talked about for helping the unemployment problem in the city, it's a drop in the bucket. For example, in Milwaukee's black community right now, there's a need for at least 25,000 jobs. Steeltech is going to hire 100. That means to meet the need, there have to be 250 Steeltechs.

STEVE LEREN:

(checking the classified ads) We've got cleaners here, $4.50 an hour; machinists, $5 an hour; counter person, crossing guards-that would be really interesting. I can't become a waitress - different sex. In other words, it looks pretty bleak for the working man out there. The only thing I could suggest or advise is getting in at the top management.

MIKE WASHIC, Unemployed Middle Manager:

I think I've learned a lot about the economy. They're cutting managers and all of a sudden, when I go to a job, it's not me and 10 people that are applying that are qualified. There's 500 people applying for the job and there may be 100 people that are qualified.

BILL MOYERS:

[voice-over] Mike Washic is an information systems manager who was laid off from a nursing home chain when his department was consolidated. He's spent the last eight months looking for a new position. For many managers, the situation is becoming as painful as for blue collar workers. While they make up only five to eight percent of all workers, middle managers now account for 17 percent of all layoffs.

MIKE WASHIC:

I feel bad. I feel-some of that gets across to me. "Hey, did I do a bad job," even though I know myself I accomplished a lot, I did a lot, I felt good about what I did. But because I didn't recognize this situation coming in my life, I didn't see the pre-clues, I feel bad. A lot of times, you don't know that you're stepping a little too far on your aggressiveness 'cause you really want the job. I mean, it's not something that you can wait a month or you can't have. You need that job. My family, I think - it was a support situation. Now, it's not a support situation anymore. They're angry. They're my board of directors that are angry at my performance. Our savings, on a very large, $1,500 negative cash flow per month, is going down, you know, like quicksand. And my wife is working in a part-time job and all she's doing is supplying the health care for the family. I mean, that's a lot, it's necessary - it's almost $300 a month - and she resents me. We looked at 60 houses and it took us about three months and we finally found this house and we really liked it. And my wife liked it and we decided to get the house and it was a mortgage about twice the level of what we had before. Now, we're at the point where we have to decide whether to cash in our IRA's or we let the mortgage default and hope that within three months I get a job.

SUE WASHIC, Wife:

Now we've got the [unintelligible] store bill.

MIKE WASHIC:

Holy cow-$128?

SUE WASHIC:

Well, that was from buying shoes, something for Julie.

MIKE WASHIC:

Clothes for school, huh?

SUE WASHIC:

Right. My mom will probably reimburse us for some of it, though.

MIKE WASHIC:

That'd be nice.

SUE WASHIC:

Do you think we'll be able to send anything to Nancy this year?

MIKE WASHIC:

I don't think so. I figured on an I.O.U.

SUE WASHIC:

Well, maybe if you have a job by that time.

MIKE WASHIC:

Well, I'm positively optimistic.

SUE WASHIC:

Well, I hope so, you know-maybe. Otherwise, it will be kind of a dreary Christmas.

MIKE WASHIC:

I have a lot of skills. I'm a middle manager. I built these skills over 15, 16 years of effort and I put in 50 hours a week and got paid for 40 and I did this consistently throughout my career. I mean, we're talking a big investment on my part, personally and the company got a lot of benefits. And I said, "I can go out and even though there's a recession going, I can peddle my skills and people are going to want me 'cause I can solve problems. I have two daughters. One's 12 and one's 6 and they really enjoy their school. It took them a while to get used to moving and we just moved about a year and a half ago. And they're a little leery now. Now, they're afraid they're going to lose all this.

[with his younger daughter] Oh, wow, you did all this arithmetic? Look at that.

DAUGHTER:

And I got a 100.

MIKE WASHIC:

A 100?

DAUGHTER:

On every sheet, see?

MIKE WASHIC:

One hundred on every sheet?

DAUGHTER:

One hundred, one hundred, one hundred, one hundred, one hundred.

MIKE WASHIC:

Holy cow.

(to MOYERS) It's been eight months now that I've been looking for a job

and since I haven't found a job and they realize this has gone a long time now, they're starting to think about the consequences of having to move.

(with his younger daughter) Now, this is harder. It's in cents.

DAUGHTER:

Five.

MIKE WASHIC:

One cent plus four cents.

DAUGHTER:

Five cents.

MIKE WASHIC:

I had an opportunity earlier in my job search. It came early. It came at a time when I thought there'd be a lot more opportunities. In fact, I had a lot of opportunities going at the time. It was just one offer came from the Chicago area, which requires about three hours of travel back and forth every day. I liked the opportunity, but I told them no and I told them no because I felt that there was a lot of other opportunities that, from a family perspective, were close to home and I could have the quality family life and still have my career. So when I look back at it now, I say, "Boy, I blew it."

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Recently, Mike began looking for jobs that pay well

below what he had been earning.

MIKE WASHIC:

Usually this job pays about $35,000, $45,000. It's about 20, 26, 30 percent below what I was making before. I have seven years of experience that has carried me beyond this job. In fact, I had four system analysts working for me and I had other managers working for me and I had 12 programmers working for me, so when I look at this, it's hard to make a legitimate effort at this position, but I'm looking at it in terms of now I have to be realistic.

2nd WOMAN:

Patty, human resources.

2nd MAN:

Bob, engineering.

3rd MAN:

Gary, quality.

4th MAN:

Bob, career change.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) As a nation, we are creating a disposable work force where once we found the backbone of our economy.

5th MAN:

Brad, accounting and finance.

6th MAN:

Bruce, engineering.

3rd WOMAN:

Lori, marketing.

7th MAN:

Don, software engineering.

8th MAN:

Chuck, manufacturing.

9th MAN:

Bill, graphic design.

10th MAN:

Wayne, marketing planning.

11th MAN:

Mike, MIS management.

4th WOMAN:

Liz, marketing.

JOB FORUM LEADER:

[reading a Dr. Seuss book] You have brains in your head / You have feet in your shoes / You could steer yourself / Any direction you choose / You're on your own / You know what you know / And you are the guy / Who'll decide where to go.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Mike continues his full-time job search. He'll soon begin cashing in his family's retirement account.

JOB FORUM LEADER:

[reading] Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Steve has been laid off from the security guard agency. He's out looking for work every day.

JOB FORUM LEADER:

[reading] Wherever you fly / You'll be the best of the best / Wherever you go / You'll pass all the rest.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Tony finally found a job at $10 an hour. He doesn't even know if it will allow him to keep their home.

JOB FORUM LEADER

[reading] I'm sorry to say so / But sadly, it's true / That bang-ups and hang-ups / Can happen to you.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Terry still needs to sell $1,100 worth of Nu Skin products just to break even.

JOB FORUM LEADER

[reading] Just never forget / To be dexterous and deft / And never mix up your / Right foot from your left.

BILL MOYERS:

(voice-over) Jackie continues to sell Milwaukee real estate where home prices in the inner city have declined considerably in recent years.

JOB FORUM LEADER

[reading] You'll come down from a lurch / With an unpleasant bump / And the chances are then / You'll be left in a slump / And when you're in a slump / You're not in for much fun / Because unslumping yourself / Is not easily done.

BILL MOYERS:

[voice-over} Today, making it in America means more family members working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. If the trend continues, it will change radically America's workforce and America's future. Economic progress will come to fewer and fewer of us, the divisions among us will grow and millions will find that poverty and a paycheck go hand in hand. Our prosperity requires a workforce that can pay for its goods and services. Our society requires the simple justice that rewards hard work. As a nation, we face no problem more vexing than people who can't support themselves and families that barely survive even when they are working hard.