(Note: Links connect you to PDF files.)
While there are days when I’m either bored or stressed by my 9-5, at the end of the day (like today, for instance) I know there’s a paycheck and health benefits waiting for me. I can pay my bills and get sick at the same time.
If I were still a struggling actor or had made the full leap to underpaid, overworked food service industry worker, and were plying my trade here in NYC, I might not be so lucky.
Two studies released this week speak to the difficult conditions facing artists and restaurant workers in New York, and they ain’t pretty. A report by the Freelancers Union on how arts funding overlooks the needs of individual artists, showed that 75% of creative workers avoided seeking medical care as a result of being uninsured and 58% save nothing towards retirement each month.
Meanwhile, a survey conducted by the New York City Restaurant Industry Coalition drew a link between public health and working conditions in the city’s restaurant industry, basically showing that when employers cut corners by understaffing their kitchens, not training workers for their positions and forcing them to continue to work while sick or injured, it puts all of us at risk. Examples cited in the report talked of food handlers cutting themselves and being forced to continue working, possibly contaminating the food they served to customers.
It’s hard y’all. Kinda makes pimpin’ look easy.
1 comment so far ↓
Taxes (on my mind lately, for some reason) are tougher for less-regularly-paid workers too.
(Aside: Can you let folks know those reports are PDF links?)