| New Jersey. Industrial GVs | Music | 00:00 |
|
| LONG: They call it The Garden State, but the slogan is at odds with the gritty industrial heartland of New Jersey. | 00:16 |
| Seaside Heights boardwalk | A year after Hurricane Sandy washed away the boardwalk here at Seaside Heights, it's once again been devastated by fire. | 00:24 |
| News report on boardwalk fire | NEWSREADER: [news footage] "And 48 hours after the fire, hundreds of people still came down here to the boardwalk, just to take pictures and relive those boardwalk memories". | 00:32 |
| New Jersey. Industrial GVs | Music | 00:41 |
|
| LONG: New Jersey will rebuild from the natural disasters, but the man-made economic disasters still rocking America, is proving harder to overcome. | 00:49 |
|
| Music | 00:59 |
|
| PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ: "The recession is not over for most Americans. | 01:03 |
| Stiglitz | Most Americans have basically seen their incomes stagnate or fall since 2008. In fact, if you look in the middle, the average typical American median income of a full time male worker today, is lower than it was 40 years ago". | 01:07 |
| New Jersey. Industrial GVs | Music | 01:25 |
|
| DR MARY GATTA: "Close to 50% of Americans are working | 01:30 |
| Gatta | and are economically insecure. And that means they can't afford their housing, their healthcare, their childcare, their transportation. They can do no saving for an emergency or their own retirement. Half of the country lives in economic insecurity". | 01:32 |
| Demolition shots/ GVs |
| 01:46 |
|
| LONG: You mightn't pick it, but New Jersey is the third richest state in the richest country in the world, yet it's possible to live full time here and live in poverty. The dominant story's been Obamacare and the debt ceiling, the enduring story is the struggle to make ends meet. The middle class in the US is shrinking as wages go backwards and secure jobs with good pay and benefits disappear. NATASHA VUKELIC: "I did not expect I'd be in this situation. | 01:52 |
| Natasha | I'd just turn 30, and when I turned 30 I started getting very nervous about the fact that I need to really get out of this now". | 02:29 |
| Natasha working in bar | LONG: Meet the new face of service work in America. | 02:38 |
|
| Smart, tertiary educated and working for tips in a bar - it's not the career Natasha Vukelic had in mind when she graduated with top grades from a prestigious university and landed her dream job in broadcasting - shame about the money. NATASHA VUKELIC: "When I was a reporter and anchor in Orlando and | 02:48 |
| Natasha | an associate producer in Orlando, I was making ten or eleven dollars an hour, and then I accepted a job as a news director and before taxes I was getting paid $28,000 a year". LONG: "Gross, before tax?" NATASHA VUKELIC: "Before tax and I remember every two weeks I would get my pay cheque and it was just over $800". | 03:14 |
| Stills. Natasha working as reporter | Music | 03:35 |
| Natasha working as anchor |
| 03:40 |
| Still. Natasha | LONG: The pay was so poor Natasha quit and moved | 03:46 |
| New Jersey skyline | north to Jersey in search of a job offering more money. Incredibly that was bar work. | 03:48 |
| Still. Natasha | In a fast paced bar she can earn good money on tips, | 03:55 |
| NJ. Night | but the base wages are appalling. | 03:59 |
|
| Music | 04:01 |
| Natasha and Long look at Natasha's wages records | LONG: "So this is what you are earning?" NATASHA VUKELIC: "Yeah, you can see right here my rate is $2.13, the hours are 28 hours. Without tax says it's $59.64 but after taxes it's $27.00". LONG: "Just 27 bucks is the base wage". NATASHA VUKELIC: "And this isn't a weekly pay cheque, this is | 04:07 |
|
| a pay cheque I get every two weeks. So that's my wage. So what is that... not even 15 dollars each week. This one right here, my hours are 37 hours so it's almost a 40 hour work week. After taxes my pay cheque is $32.00". | 04:23 |
| City streets | Music | 04:38 |
|
| LONG: The federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour, | 04:41 |
| Bar interior | but for restaurant and bar staff it's much lower - $2.13. Yep you heard right. Just two dollars and thirteen cents an hour. It's tips or starve". | 04:46 |
| NJ seaside | Music | 04:59 |
| Wine bar | At a seaside bar in Long Branch New Jersey we meet some of Natasha's friends and colleagues and shout them a drink. | 05:09 |
| Long with Natasha and friends in bar |
| 05:14 |
|
| NATASHA VUKELIC: "I want to know who set the bar at $2.13? Like is there a restaurant | 05:18 |
|
| god that comes down and says in New Jersey we're going to pay you $2.13. I mean couldn't they make it $2.57 so at least so we're closer to three, you know?" LONG: But even among this crowd working hard for the money, not everyone's convinced about a bump in the minimum wage. | 05:22 |
| Mike in bar | MIKE DOYLE: "If you raise the minimum wage to make a significant dent you have to really raise it and unfortunately that would probably kill a lot of proprietors and I don't want to jump into their defence, but again, you're still going to rely on the volume of people coming and going". LONG: Like Natasha, Mike Doyle is a former career professional grappling with a new reality. MIKE DOYLE: "On slow days if you're getting zero in the way of tips, that's going to hurt". | 05:40 |
| Skyline at sunrise | Music | 06:06 |
| Mike and Long walk to ferry | LONG: It's sunrise and after serving drinks in a bar until the wee hours, Mike Doyle is off to work at his second job. | 06:21 |
| Mike on ferry | Music | 06:29 |
|
| LONG: Most days he still heads into Manhattan, 45 minutes across the water. Not so long ago he was a one percenter, at the very top of the income pile. Now he's working two jobs to raise a family and just getting by. | 06:35 |
| Mike and Long on ferry | "How often are you heading into the city to trade?" MIKE DOYLE: "I'll go in about four or five days a week. You know I can work from home. Sometimes if I'm working too late at night in the bar I'll work from home just because I get home at two in the morning and if I have to get up at five I need a few more hours than three hour's a night of sleep". LONG: "But bar tending's your main job now?" | 06:55 |
| [shot continuous] | MIKE DOYLE: "Yeah well it is my main source of income for the moment, yeah. I mean what I do in the city now is on such a smaller scale than what I used to do, that I, you know, a guy's got to do what a guy has to do to pay for the bills. | 07:15 |
| Statue of Liberty from ferry | Five years ago, seven years ago, I had the life of Riley. My hours were much shorter. | 07:28 |
| Mike and Long on ferry | I mean I would be leaving New York at three o'clock and I was done, and my income was ten times what it is now". | 07:32 |
| Ferry passes under bridge to Manhattan | LONG: Mike used to be a high flying Wall Street trader until the disgraced broking firm MF Global collapsed and his hedge fund was hit by the fallout. As we approach Manhattan he tells me his experience has changed his views a little. MIKE DOYLE: "Five, ten years ago | 07:38 |
| Mike | I would have been the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of guy but I think I'm... I don't know... I think I'm a little bit... more... | 08:00 |
|
| I guess my views have maybe shifted definitely more towards the centre. | 08:08 |
|
| I wouldn't call myself a liberal but I think I'm more concerned with how other people are able to provide for themselves. I think it's a real big issue now, especially with the fact that I think every family I know has... all these people have two jobs". | 08:12 |
| Stiglitz | PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ: "Well America's become a rich country with poor people. That's the irony". | 08:30 |
| Columbia University GVs | LONG: At the hallowed halls of Columbia University in New York, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has been charting the rising tide of inequality. | 08:36 |
| Stiglitz | PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ: "They don't know day to day how much they have to live on, so you make them bear the risk of this capriciousness of the people who walk through the door, on how much tips and how much they're going to order, whether they're generous or whether they're tight". | 08:48 |
| Columbia University. Students on campus | LONG: "So if we've got college graduates taking jobs as waiters, servers, bartenders, | 09:03 |
|
| what does that mean for the people who used to do those jobs?" PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ: "Well they move down the rung". | 09:10 |
| Manhattan skyline |
| 09:12 |
|
| LONG: It's a little over half an hour from Manhattan to Newark New Jersey - but it's a world away. | 09:19 |
| Tayzia cooking in apartment kitchen | In the shadow of a Newark public housing estate lives a young woman, with a young child, struggling to get by. | 09:25 |
|
| TAYZIA TREADWELL: "My name is Tayzia. I'm 20 years old. | 09:34 |
| Zenar playing in apartment | I have a one year old daughter. Her name is Zenar. | 09:37 |
| Stills. Tayzia and family | My mum growing up was a single parent. She had my brother and I. She was great. Like we didn't want for anything. In school I was great. Actually my grades were always good, A's and B's. | 09:40 |
| Tayzia | I graduated in 2011. I graduated from Big Picture Academy and a month or maybe three weeks afterwards I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter. | 09:52 |
| Zenar playing |
| 10:04 |
|
| She's the cutest thing in the world. She says everything from her first and last name, to her ABCs. She knows my name is Tayzia. | 10:11 |
| Tayzia | She's like the best thing that ever happened to me". | 10:20 |
| Zenar listening to music/Tayzia housework | LONG: Tayzia Treadwell was working on minimum wage in a fast food restaurant when her little girl came along. Her take home pay after taxes was about $170 a week. | 10:23 |
|
| TAYZIA TREADWELL: "I'm living in poverty, like it's a struggle. I will go without just so my daughter could have". LONG: A bone in Zenar's back didn't form properly during pregnancy. She'll need an operation when she's four or five. | 10:40 |
| Tayzia | TAYZIA TREADWELL: "I'm sure I'll have to pay something additional, so it's like do I start saving now cause I'm not sure of the exact cost yet but surgeries are normally expensive so...". | 10:56 |
| Tayzia catches bus to work | LONG: Tayzia is now working as a security guard on public housing tenements, earning a little more than minimum wage, $10 an hour, although the cost of commuting can eat into the money. Newark's a dangerous city. In the three weeks before we first met Tayzia, 16 people had been shot. | 11:08 |
| Tayzia | TAYZIA TREADWELL: "It's hard, that's really the most I could say about it, is like it's hard. | 11:32 |
| Tayzia on bus | I try not to dwell on things that I can't change. I mean I pray nights for better days. | 11:40 |
| Tayzia | I pray for a better job that pays more, but it's just hard". | 11:46 |
| Man cooking in diner kitchen |
| 11:52 |
| Tayzia and Long in diner | LONG: When you're struggling a visit to a cheap and cheerful diner can light up the day. | 11:57 |
|
| "What would you recommend? What's good?" TAYZIA TREADWELL: "I usually have the fish and home fries with fried onions. It's great". | 12:05 |
|
| LONG: "Okay, well let's make it two". TAYZIA TREADWELL: "Okay". | 12:12 |
| Man in diner | MAN WATCHING: Here we go, baby. | 12:20 |
| Long and Tayzia with food | LONG: "Oh that's me. Wow!" TAYZIA TREADWELL: "Thank you". RASHID (CAFE OWNER): "You want some ketchup?" TAYZIA TREADWELL: "No just syrup". RASHID (CAFE OWNER): Syrup? LONG: "I don't know how you can put syrup on it... | 12:23 |
|
| but it looks good. It looks really good and I am very hungry". | 12:35 |
| Rashid in diner |
| 12:41 |
|
| The café's owner, Rashid, overhears us talking about the minimum wage and weighs in with his view. | 12:46 |
| Rashid | RASHID: "My guys get above minimum wage. They all get different salaries, but they definitely get above minimum wage because... I'll tell you why. | 12:53 |
| Man cooking in diner | If I pay my guys the minimum wage and they're barely getting by, they're not going to show the same passion, they're not going to have the same drive, | 12:59 |
| Rashid | and they're not going to come to work on a consistent basis because they're barely getting by anyway. But you pay good, you get good". LONG: "You can't live on the minimum wage". | 13:05 |
| [shot continuous] | RASHID: "No you can't live on minimum wage. The average rental for a one bedroom apartment in, you know, New Jersey has to be anywhere from eight to a thousand dollars. That's their whole cheque for the month. You have to eat and you have to have a phone, you have to have lights, you have to have a car, you have to have - I can name everything - and no... you haven't even added food yet so, you know, you definitely have to raise the wage in New Jersey". | 13:13 |
| Christie at meet and greet | LONG: But not by much according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie's being touted as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016. Earlier this year, the Democrats put up a bill to raise the minimum wage in New Jersey by a $1.25 then link it to inflation so it maintains its value - but Christie vetoed it. He wants the rise capped at $1, phased in over three years but the fight goes on. | 13:35 |
|
| PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ: "Actually most Americans support the raising of the minimum wage. | 14:10 |
| Stiglitz | The minimum wage in the United States is at the level, adjusted for inflation, that it was in the ‘50s. That's 60 years ago!" | 14:15 |
| Gatto | DR MARY GATTO: "It is morally outrageous that we are in a country as rich as the US where we have such low, incredibly low, minimum wages". | 14:24 |
| Ganesh festival/Christie visits | Music | 14:34 |
|
| LONG: The Christie campaign hits Plainsboro, home to a large migrant community of Marathi Indians. They're holding a festival in honour of Ganesh - the god of wisdom, good fortune and prosperity. | 14:47 |
|
| Music | 15:02 |
| Christie addresses Indian community at festival | LONG: The audience is rapt as Governor Christie evokes the American dream of social mobility. GOVERNOR CHRISTIE: "There are universal truths | 15:12 |
|
| that we want a safe and secure world, a world filled with opportunity that rewards hard work, a world where our children and grandchildren can look forward to a brighter future | 15:19 |
| Youth on street | for themselves than we had for our families. That's what gives me such great hope for our future. Bright, happy, enthusiastic children - their lives completely ahead of them - believing that tomorrow will truly be better than today". | 15:35 |
| Camden GVs | Music | 15:55 |
|
| LONG: That promise has been dashed in Camden. Camden New Jersey holds the grand slam of terrible titles. It is the poorest city in the United States. It has the highest per capita crime rate, the highest violent crime rate and the highest homicide rate in the country. | 16:01 |
| Boarding up abandoned house | On State Street, the Board up Crew is sealing up abandoned homes to stop them being used as crack dens. | 16:20 |
|
| Music | 16:29 |
| Long in car with Mike Brennan driving through Camden | MIKE BRENNAN: "There's gunfire, just random gunfire, not so much shooting at you but you never know what's coming". LONG: Our guide in Camden is Mike Brennan who lives just outside the city. MIKE BRENNAN: "Right before Halloween they would have Hell Night, | 16:35 |
|
| and parts of the city would go up in flames". LONG: Mike used to work for the New Jersey Labor Department in a special team | 16:50 |
|
| sent into shutting factories to help workers find new jobs. But he lost his own job when the program was cut back by the Christie administration. Camden, he explains, | 16:56 |
| Factory murals | was once a manufacturing metropolis - home to the New York Ship Company, to RCA and to the world famous Campbell soup. MIKE BRENNAN: "Well, | 17:11 |
| Brennan driving around Camden | manufacturing industry has not been replaced. What we see growing or thriving would be the scrap metal business..... scrap metal, scrap wood". LONG: "So they're basically recycling the abandoned factories". MIKE BRENNAN: "Yes. | 17:21 |
|
| Close them up, tear them down and ship the parts to smelters across the ocean". | 17:38 |
| Police car | LONG: Police and emergency services is another thriving industry and so is the drug trade. | 17:46 |
| Brennan driving around Camden | MIKE BRENNAN: "People that worked in these manufacturing facilities, to the extent that there was employment for them, they have to take a bus to the suburbs, work in a fast food restaurant, work in a retail store for a minimum wage and people can't survive on that so I guess they resort to more unsavoury activities". | 17:55 |
| LA General views | Music | 18:14 |
|
| LONG: If you think these problems are confined to New Jersey, think again. Across the vast continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, working people are living in grinding poverty. | 18:26 |
|
| Music | 18:39 |
|
| LONG: LA, the City of Angels, city of dreams, with its lure of fame and fortune. | 18:42 |
|
| Music | 18:49 |
|
| LONG: But away from the beaches and the glamour of Hollywood, | 18:53 |
| Juan's apartment | out in the San Gabriel Valley, this is family accommodation for the working poor. | 18:55 |
| Juan shows Long apartment | JUAN BECERRA: "This is pretty much where we sleep". | 19:02 |
|
| LONG: "This is your room?" JUAN BECERRA: "Yeah. Me and my wife on this side, | 19:10 |
|
| my son Jeremiah on this side and my baby right here, and then we have my daughter on this side, on top". LONG: "And so what's happened to the bed here?" JUAN BECERRA: "It's actually broke right now, so we usually just lay it on the floor and she sleeps on the floor". | 19:12 |
| [shot continuous] | LONG: "So normally there's five of you sleeping in this room?" JUAN BECERRA: "Yes". LONG: "Wow... wow". | 19:29 |
| Juan with baby |
| 19:36 |
|
| LONG: Juan Becerra works for Walmart, the world's largest retailer, the world's biggest private employer. After three years his pay rate has just risen from $8.40 an hour to $9.20. Juan says the company wants staff to be openly available for shifts -- on call 24/7 -- but he generally only gets 25-30 hours work a week. | 19:41 |
| Juan | JUAN BECERRA: "I'm making five hundred dollars every two weeks". LONG: "Five hundred dollars..." JUAN BECERRA: "And that's on a good cheque - that's a high cheque. On a regular cheque it's like about $430.... $430 every two weeks". | 20:13 |
| Ariana in kitchen | LONG: The Becerra's rely on government food stamps to feed their children. They used to rent an apartment with two bedrooms, then Juan's wife had to quit work. Ariana was carrying heavy trays in a diner and got carpel tunnel syndrome. They couldn't pay the rent on one wage and had to move in with her parents. ARIANA BECERRA: "It's taken a strain on our marriage, | 20:28 |
| Juan and Ariana with baby | And fortunately we've worked together, we've sought marriage counselling and we stayed together. I mean that wasn't easy". LONG: "I think any marriage would be under strain if you had two adults and three children living in a room this size. This is basically a single room". JUAN BECERRA: "Yeah". ARIANA BECERRA: "It isn't easy, it really isn't". | 20:56 |
| Juan driving to work | LONG: 6pm and Juan's heading off for the evening shift. He'll finish after midnight and back up for another shift the next morning. He wants to go to college and get a degree - find a better job - but he can't afford it. | 21:18 |
|
| Music | 21:36 |
|
| JUAN BECERRA: "People come over here to this country for the American dream, but when they can't even give their citizens the dream, it just hurts. It's like I work for a living to provide for my family, to live the American dream. With the poverty wages that Walmart gives us, I'm just going to be stuck at the bottom". | 21:43 |
| Juan arrives at work | Music | 22:00 |
| City skyline |
| 22:16 |
| People on street | LONG: America's working underclass has no sick leave, no holiday leave, no healthcare benefits in a society where medical aid is prohibitively expensive. | 22:18 |
|
| Music | 22:29 |
| Natasha on beach with dog | LONG: As career jobs with decent benefits dwindle, graduates like Natasha Vukelic are living the perils. NATASHA VUKELIC: "Basically what happened was I was attacked by a pit bull | 22:33 |
| Natasha | and it was a really bad attack and I was in the hospital for a month. | 22:47 |
| Stills. Natasha's injured leg |
| 22:52 |
| Natasha | I was so concerned they were going to remove my leg, because my leg looked like it was falling off when the attack happened. And I was also so concerned because I didn't have health insurance and so I kept on saying to the doctors and to the men in the ambulance - I was kind of going in and out of consciousness - and I was like, you know, ‘You cannot... you do not have permission to remove my leg.... you do not have permission to remove my leg'. | 22:55 |
|
| But then I would also say ‘I don't have any health insurance'. So I kept on going back and forth from ‘don't remove my leg' and ‘I don't have health insurance' and I was absolutely freaking out about both things". | 23:17 |
| Seaside |
| 23:27 |
| Natasha walking on beach | LONG: The hospital bill? $250,000. It would have bankrupted her, or left her with decades of debt, had the hospital not decided to treat her as a charity case. "There's an irony here - because you were | 23:33 |
| Natasha | off the books, cash in hand, you actually could apply and get charity assistance, but if you'd been on the minimum wage with tips, you wouldn't have been eligible". NATASHA VUKELIC: "Right. I consider it one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me". | 23:49 |
| Tayzia's graduation |
| 24:05 |
|
| LONG: Across in Newark it's a special day for Tayzia Treadwell. On top of work and parenting, she's been studying at business college and done well. | 24:09 |
|
| Tayzia graduates today with a certificate qualifying her as a medical assistant. She's hoping one day she might become a nurse. | 24:19 |
| Tayzia | TAYZIA TREADWELL: "I want the life, like the good life, the good life that everyone dreams of. Like when you're in school and you draw the little house and the picket fence and dog, like... I just want a happy ending and I don't want to struggle. I want to wake up knowing that my daughter has everything she needs, I have everything I have, and then come back, give to my community like where I grew up. I just.... I want to live the good life". | 24:32 |
| [shot continuous] | LONG: "You want the American dream". TAYZIA TREADWELL: "I want the American dream". | 24:55 |
| Statue of Liberty | Music | 24:58 |
| Tayzia's graduation/Statue of Liberty | LONG: I'm wishing, hoping that Tayzia's dreams do come true, but the cold hard facts don't bode well. The American national myth is that anyone, of any class who works hard will prosper, but more and more, for so many people, it's just that - a myth. | 25:02 |
| Credits: |
| 25:26 |
|
| Reporter Stephen Long Camera: Ron Ekkel Editor: Garth Thomas Producer: Michael Maher Executive producer: Stave Taylor
|
|