Sharecropping in 21st-century America

Today, in The New York Times, I read a story about "A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Spin."

In the story was this paragraph, from a retail consultant:

“It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours.”

Sharecropping! In 2012 America, millions of people trying to make a living have essentially been shrunk to the status of sharecroppers.

The story initially caught my eye because of its dateline: Spring Valley, CA. Spring Valley is two miles from my house. The story began with information about Shannon Hardin, who works part-time at Fresh and Easy, a grocery store at the intersection of Campo Blvd. and Kenyon. I go past it almost every day.

Fresh and Easy pays Shannon Hardin, who is 50 and, at times, essentially the store manager, $10.90 an hour for an average of 28 hours of work per week. "I can't live on this," she says.

"While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers," the story says, "employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of Americans who want to work full-time, reducing their pay and benefits."

Reduced pay and benefits always improve the company's bottom line. In Shannon Hardin's case, the reductions in pay and benefits improve the bottom line of Fresh and Easy's owner, Tesco, the largest supermarket company in Britain.

Before you vote on Nov. 6, please read this story. Then read again another story from today's Times, "Some are More Unequal Than Others." The two stories dovetail in telling the story about economic inequality in the U.S., "an issue," writes the author, economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, "that not even the Republicans can ignore. It is no longer just a moral issue, a question of social justice."

The question is, what will the next administration do about sharecropping in 21st-century America?