My Low Wage Life

My Low Wage Life

I am fortunate enough to have been raised by parents who worked in relatively high-paying jobs; I grew up with a nanny, cleaning ladies, and landscapers. Amongst these people, I was, for obvious reasons, closest with my nanny, Steph. She spent quite a bit of time with me daily from the time I was three until I was about eleven, watching my brother and I from when we got back from school until my parents got back from work. I am still close with Steph to this day; I last saw her a few days before flying out to school here at Santa Clara. However, I am not going to write about her for this post, simply because I have a more glaring example of low-wage life within my reach right here at SCU.

One of my most common experiences with low wage workers while at Santa Clara University is with the landscapers. I hear snippets of their conversations as I walk (or longboard) around campus, up to this point always entirely in Spanish. Usually, the dialogue includes simple requests for different tools to be used, i.e. “Can you use that edger over on this side?”, but occasionally it is regarding something more meaningful like “How’s your mother’s arthritis doing, Juan?” Because we see these people around campus every day, often busying themselves mowing one of the lawns or weeding a flowerbed, it is easy to become accustomed to the sight and simply disregard their presence. It is easy to forget that these are people too; that they go home at night to families and friends not so different from our own, but doing so is simply ignorant. Rather than simply let the men who take care of our campus’ landscape fade into the background, it is much richer and more rewarding to look around at the mission gardens or the lawn behind O’Connor and notice that it always looks immaculate. I cannot point to a single day where I have seen a lawn look unkempt or a flowerbed appear faded and weed-choked. The fact that these men manage to keep a campus full of college students looking like a resort is no mean feat. Every time I walk by the mission or the Saint Ignatius lawn on the way to class, I take a moment to appreciate all the effort that goes into making this campus look as beautiful as it does.

After looking into the matter further, I have learned that the average annual salary for a landscaping crew member is around $23,000, which is below the poverty line for a family of four. Frankly, I am extremely grateful that these men are willing to work for so little and that they continue to do such an excellent job maintaining the campus; If I was being so inadequately compensated for a job which takes some degree of skill and knowledge (i.e. planting and caring for flowers), I would be likely to do a shoddy job. Looking at the SCU grounds crew in this light has really made me grateful for all that I have, and for the fact that, for now at least, I don’t have to live a low wage life myself.