The Union Raise
And the consequences
There’s a certain sentiment that people living in poverty should just make more money. Have you tried making more money? I am, in fact, always trying to make more money. But more income can come with complications when you’re receiving assistance. In our case, the 3.25% raise I got in July worked out to a 10% pay cut, and we have felt the effects of that in the last few months.
+$134.00, paycheck
As a state employee, part of my onboarding process was HR giving me a Zoom link to the union orientation, which I tried to attend three times before giving up. (No one ever started the meeting!) A few months later, a youthful and enthusiastic union outreach person came to my door with a pitch about why I should join and a paper form to fill out for deducting 1.5% of my paycheck for union dues. At my starting salary, that worked out to $58.90 a month. I’d already been working in an office that had several pandemic protections that the union helped put in place, so I was more than happy to pay.
Being in a union is a privilege, but it’s not something I think of often. The dues come out of my paycheck, I get postcards reminding me to vote in union elections, and that’s about it. But the union is always working in the background to help its workers, and at the start of this fiscal year they negotiated a 3.25% pay raise, which means I get an extra $134.00 a month in my gross pay. Which is lovely, but it did push us over the income limits for our Basic Food assistance.
-$632.00 / +$10.00, food
When we moved to Washington the woman at the WIC office told us to apply to SNAP so we could get a $0 benefit letter, which would make the process of getting WIC benefits easier. What she didn’t say (or maybe didn’t know) was that because of the state’s emergency pandemic declaration, that temporarily qualified us for the maximum allotment. For a family of four, that meant $632.00 every month for groceries.
The maximum allotment took me months to understand, but the USDA, who gives SNAP money to states, gave states permission to give out supplements ($$$) beyond regular benefit amounts ($). States had to apply for maximum allotment extensions on a monthly basis. As a person receiving benefits, the only way to follow this process and know if the maximum allotment would continue to the next month was to refresh a somewhat obscure page on the USDA’s website.
With my higher income, we’re now eligible for $0 in monthly SNAP benefits. As of this May, having a $0 benefit in Washington no longer entitles you to the emergency allotment. Historically speaking, current grocery prices might make this the worst time to lose access to that benefit, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
The person on the phone who did my follow-up interview was able to offer us $10.00 a month for Working Family Support. (Confusingly, receiving more than $0.00 still does not qualify us for the emergency maximum allotment.) To be honest, that amount of money is barely worth the anxiety of remembering which grocery store has the self-checkout machine smart enough not to decline the card because I’m buying more than $10.00 of groceries. But I’ll take it!
+$90.16 / +$172.80, diapers
Always be closing though, because after several failed attempts, I finally managed to get diapers for our children covered through Medicaid. If your children are 3 or older and they have a condition that contributes to potty training issues (Autism in our case) Medicaid will cover as many diapers as they need.
You have to get a prescription from your doctor, however. Our doctor sent a prescription to a local pharmacy where it languished for a week before someone called me and said they didn’t know how to fill it. I called the doctor’s office back and they didn’t know what to do next.
It took a ten-minute Google search (and a dramatic inner monologue that ended with a hair toss and an “I’ll do it myself!”) until I found a random PDF brochure with instructions from a nonprofit in a city I don’t even live in. Turns out the key was contacting the correct medical supply agency first and letting them contact the doctor directly. Who knew? (The PDF and literally no one else.)
This is a huge help because there isn’t really formal assistance for diaper needs. There are diaper banks, but as your kids get older, it gets harder to find larger sizes, at least in my experience. Once they’re into Pull Ups, good luck. I calculated the amount of money this is putting in our pocket by multiplying the per-unit cost at Target by how many we’re getting shipped to our door by insurance and was floored. I’m not totally sure how we were managing to pay that much for diapers every month. It’s a hustle.
Anyway, here’s my current emotional state as illustrated by a task from series 11 of Taskmaster.