Jean Reynolds is 51 and earns $11 an hour. Jerry Longoria, 42, earns $12. Mary Venittelli, 41, earns $2.13 plus tips. Barbara Brooks, 36, earns $8.25.
These are the values the market places on the men and women who care for our infirm elderly, guard our office buildings and juvenile offenders and serve our restaurant meals. Roger Weisberg’s affecting documentary “Waging a Living,” which has its premiere on the PBS series “P.O.V.” tonight, follows the struggles of these four working poor for more than a year. Their stories present a discouraging picture.
Possibly the film’s single most heart-rending story concerns Ms. Brooks’s little son, one of five children she is bringing up alone, who develops breathing problems. She takes him to a doctor, who prescribes medicine that costs $195 — an expense Ms. Brooks cannot afford.
Ms. Brooks’s story is simultaneously the most hopeful and the most frustrating of the four. At the beginning of the film, she is working at a juvenile detention center (where she was once a resident) and attending school to get her associate’s degree. She soon has a job as a nursing home assistant in Huntington Hills, N.Y. (she lives in Freeport), and her income begins increasing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/arts/television/29gate.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=television&adxnnlx=1156914242-KJCtfi0RzaVbK2zquw4kHA
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