This is ongoing series where I ask a question a week to my readers. To see the post where this all started, check this out.
I have been a part of some of the largest WAHM (work-at-home mom) forums on the ‘net for a long time, and I have seen companies come onto the forums and ask for workers. “We pay $0.25 to do (whatever), it can be done at any time, day or night, and you can do as much as you want to. With the pay rate of $0.25 per item, you should make about $3.00 an hour. E-mail me at blah-blah.” And people go crazy over this! They’re e-mailing the companies, they’re posting responses, “I sent you a PM; did you get it?” They’re talking about how excited they are that they can get this job. It’s crazy, but I see it all the time.
Then you have the other posters who think this is nuts and so they get on and say, “How can you work for so little? It’s because of you being willing to take so little for this work that the pay for at-home workers just keeps going down. If you wouldn’t be willing to take so little, we would get paid more.” The debate will rage on for several pages, and eventually die out, until another company comes on and offers the same pay, and things go wild again.
My problem is, I can see both sides. There are a lot of mothers out there who cannot take full-time jobs outside of the home, or even part-time jobs. They have to be home with their children because child care expenses would eat everything they made if they worked outside of the home, and they don’t want to have their children raised by someone else anyway. They have to stay home with their kids all day. They cannot work a steady schedule because their kids aren’t robots, and won’t go down for a nap at the same time every day, and then of course you’re dealing with sick kids and bored kids and…well, all you parents out there know what I’m talking about.
So you have these mothers who need to make some money somehow, but they can’t do it outside of their homes, they don’t particularly want to sell something (like candles or make up or tupperware) and they can’t work a steady shift. They want something easy, like data entry, and they don’t look at the hourly rate they end up making, they just look at the flexibility. For them, $3.00 an hour is $3.00 more than they would have been making otherwise. This kind of a job is just what they want, slave labor wages or not.
Then you have the other side, the people who are staying at home without children, like me, and who are trying to earn a decent wage, not just “anything they can get.” They look at these jobs offering below minimum wage, and they get mad. How could anyone be willing to actually make so little per hour? It’s an affront to them, and they’re mad because they know with the law of supply and demand, the companies would pay more if the workers wouldn’t be willing to work for so little.
There is definitely two sides to this story, and I can see both of them. My “Question A Week” for this week is: How much are you willing to work for? Where do you bottom out at? Would you work for less than the federal minimum wage ($5.15 an hour)? I want to hear your thoughts, and your reasoning behind it. 🙂
Don’t forget–you can respond two ways: Writing a comment below, or by dropping me a line at Hava L (at) Families dot com if you prefer to keep your input anonymous. Thanks!