You Can’t Win Anything Without Fighting for It

New York recently passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage of fast food workers from $8.75 per hour to $15.00 per hour across the state. After a three-year strike by New York fast food workers that began in the late autumn of 2012, in which the workers demanded an increase in the minimum wage, their efforts finally paid off.

It was February of 2014. When I first visited Texas as an exchange professor, the numerous hamburger and taco restaurants throughout the city were a sight to behold. Behind the counters of such restaurants, people of color were primarily frying and pouring ketchup and sauces. Mostly in their 20s, these people filled the lowest echelon of socioeconomic status in this country.

According to the announcement Governor Andrew Cuomo proudly made, the state of New York will see a raise in the minimum wage to $10.50 per hour within this year, followed by incremental increases of $1.50 per year, ultimately reaching $15 per hour by 2018. Eight hours per day, five days a week of work will net a worker $35,000 annually; it won’t be enough, but it will be a living wage and enable a worker to feed a family of four.

Fast food work being the most common form of physical labor in the U.S., the rise in the wages of fast food workers will undoubtedly have a huge impact on other areas of industry as well. As New York becomes the first place to push for minimum wage increases at the statewide level (with far more impact compared to Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angles and other individual cities that raised the minimum wage to $15 first), the wave from New York’s action will become an unavoidable trend that will sweep the entire nation.

When I first heard the news, envy gripped my heart — “The U.S. pushes ahead as well!” is the lament of one who’s lagged behind. How could it not? An empire’s labor system built upon the sacrifice of the low wages of Third World immigrants, primarily led by people of color and people from Central and South America, is initiating meaningful change.

Due to President Obama’s successful re-election, a lot of analysis points to further liberalization of this country, unlike our own political landscape in Seoul. As exemplified by the favorable Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage in June, top-down structural change in society is making progress. Soon, minimum wage, the foundation of the labor system, will be affected by it. Surely, just a change in the presidency, or lack thereof, does not warrant such sweeping changes in a country. After the downfall of neoliberalism, as exemplified by the financial meltdown of 2008, America’s entire ideological bloc, which contains both the politics and economy, is slowly but surely making a big left turn. Even so, the minimum wage increase is a historic accomplishment, achieved through the struggle of the workers who believe in the worth of labor that moves the world, and the solidarity of society that banded together around its values. As it was with the legalization of the workers’ union, as it was with the ban on child labor, and as it was with the eight-hour work day.

Naturally, my thoughts lead me to the land in which I stand now. Earlier this July, with its never-seen-before-in-the-world greed, the [South Korean] capital and the government (as its representative) unilaterally led the discussion of the minimum wage, deciding its fate. According to its decision, the minimum wage will only be increased by 450 wons ($0.39), making it 6,030 wons ($5.18) per hour; this was just an 8.1 percent increase. Basing the rate of increase on this year’s example, even if we are to see two consecutive years of increases, the minimum wage will not exceed 7,050 wons ($6.05). Assume a person takes a single day off during the week on Sunday, and works his or her bones off for eight hours a day. Even by 2018, the minimum wage-earners’ monthly income will be 1.47 million wons ($1,261.91), and their yearly income will only be 17.6 million wons ($15,108.59).

They say people are now well-off in Korea, but that only applies to the people who are actually “well-off.” Based on the minimum wage, which serves as a basic estimation of “human labor,” Koreans’ worth is only half that of Americans, now and in the future.

As a so-called professor, I still have difficulty funding two kids through college. My daughter, who will soon resume her school in the second semester, found a job with, obviously, minimum pay. The duress of physical labor knows no international boundaries, and whenever I see my child coming home, late at night, too exhausted, I always see the same face I saw on the American fast food workers. Yet again, I’m faced with the same reality that people far away across the Pacific Ocean faced: that without fighting for it, there is no way to change this world of mine and my daughter’s.