I made $7.25 an hour at my first job back in 2015, peddling candles and soaps and other good-smelling baubles at a French boutique near Rice University. It was a good job, as far as first jobs go; I was a junior in high school, and I did my homework behind the counter. I knew even then that $7.25 an hour wasn’t a dignified wage, one you could build a life on, a family. In the 11 years since, the minimum wage in Texas hasn’t budged.
In Jules Wernersbach’s new novel, Work to Do (out in April from University of Iowa Press), the entry-level workers at the Guadalupe Street Co-Op in Austin make $12 an hour. Though it’s more than minimum wage (as management loves to remind them), it’s one of many reasons why the staff is organizing a union. The book unfolds over one week in late August across three perspectives at the organic grocery store: Eleanor, the store’s founder, who’s never gotten over the ex she founded the store with; Roz, the senior floor manager desperate for Eleanor to give her some real power to modernize the co-op; and Randy, the middle-aged trans dairy manager leading the fight for a union. All three protagonists of Work to Do are starving for a sense of community and trying to find it through their work.
