Minimum wage hike just small change

Martin Kuz

Friday, Dec. 26, 1997 | 11:02 a.m.

By 4:30 p.m., Sybil Meraz is sandwiched out. The rolls, the meats and cheeses, the condiments. They are all her enemy.

But customers keep shuffling into the Subway restaurant at Spring Mountain Road and Rainbow Boulevard, so Meraz keeps smiling. As she has since noon, Meraz patiently listens to their orders, piles whatever they want onto white or wheat, then rings up the bill.

On it will go for another hour and a half, Meraz trying to ignore her aching feet and stiff back. Making $5.15 an hour doesn't help much.

"It seems like these minimum-wage jobs -- fast-food places, convenience stores -- are the ones where people work the hardest," Meraz said. "And they're the ones that pay the least."

Those jobs pay somewhat more than when Meraz, 19, started working off and on at Subway three years ago. Still, a harsh truth endures for her and the estimated 3 to 4 million American workers making minimum wage today, almost four months since it jumped from $4.75 to $5.15. The boost looks great on one kind of paper -- re-election campaign fliers -- but considerably less so on paychecks.

The cycle is a familiar one. Amid an orgy of self-congratulation, Congress and President Bill Clinton rammed through a two-stage pay hike in 1996, taking the minimum wage from $4.25 to the current rate. While politicians trumpeted another victory for the average worker, newspapers and TV stations chimed in with heart-warming tales of minimum-wage slaves catapulted into relative prosperity.

In reality, for Meraz and others like her, the increase -- while certainly appreciated -- hasn't exactly left them wondering what to do with all their money.

Sitting down to finally eat a sandwich of her own, Meraz talked of her plight. She and her boyfriend, Jimmy Martinez, are expecting a baby in April. They live with his aunt and uncle, paying $250 in rent and buying their own groceries. With Martinez out of work at the moment, and Meraz attending night classes in pursuit of a general education diploma, the $5.15 an hour she makes at Subway is all that keeps the young couple afloat.

"It's stressful," said Meraz. "Everything's on me. I have to make sure everything's taken care of, and $5.15 isn't a lot of money to do that with."

"Other people think we're getting a lot more money because we're at $5.15 instead of $4.75," added Meredith Walchar, who puts in 30 hours a week at Taco Bell while working a second job as a bank teller. "We're not, really. It's been overstated."

Overstated, minimum wage workers contend, because the cost of living has climbed as companies look to offset the burden of paying employees more money. They may be right. While Nevada's cost of living index has dipped since September, it continues to outstrip the national average.

"At $5.15 an hour, you make an extra $20 a week maybe, but the cost of everything else has gone up, too," said James Walker, an unemployed roofer who picks up odd jobs to make ends meet while he lives at Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada. "Every little bit helps, but it hasn't helped that much."

There is some good news, however. Workers across Nevada generally pull down more than minimum wage. Competition for cheap labor spurred by a low unemployment rate -- about 4 percent statewide, a shade less in Clark County -- has compelled employers to up the ante above $5.15 an hour, said Zina Turney, chief of the research and analysis bureau for the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

The ripple effect has benefited Catholic Charities, with most companies that turn to the organization for workers flipping them $6 an hour "without any fuss whatsoever," said Ed Ficker, the group's job development manager. Even when some employers blanche at the higher wage, they often agree to pay $5.25 -- if only to round off numbers for bookkeeping.

At the same time, with statistics scarce, empirical evidence suggests the pay hike has yet to shorten lines at welfare offices.

"We haven't seen, as a result of the wage increase, a significant drop in case loads and no significant drop in applications," said Barbara Clark, social welfare manager for the Nevada Welfare Division's office on Charleston Boulevard.

"A lot of people are still having to work more than one job because they can't make it on the minimum wage," said Karen Conner, spokeswoman for the Building Trades Organizing Project, a band of 15 trade unions. "A lot of people who are working full-time are falling through the cracks and never get assistance."

That comes as no surprise to those floundering at the minimum-wage level, who are happy to earn 40 cents more an hour than they were on Aug. 31, but remain understandably frustrated that they still bob so close to the poverty line.

Ken Maxim, who moved to Las Vegas four months ago, has cobbled together a living by helping a cabinet maker and working assorted casual labor jobs. Although he earns nominally more than $5.15 an hour, Maxim, 49, called the wage increase "a slap in the face."

"It's done nothing. After you get done paying bills and buying groceries, you still don't have anything left. It's more of an insult than anything."

Which is why Meraz wants to escape minimum-wage purgatory. She faults herself for being there, mostly because she bailed on high school. And after a couple of hard-learned lessons in the school of life, Meraz realizes only education, not making another turkey and ham sub, will get her out.

So after earning her GED in a few months, she and Martinez plan to move to Phoenix, where Meraz's mother resides. There Meraz wants to go to college to study child psychology, as much to help others as to "try to pick up the pieces of my own life."

"I don't want to work at Subway forever. I have to get something better. I'm not going to be able to raise my child on this money. I'm not going to have the life I want."

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