COLUMN ONE : Surviving on $4.25 an Hour : A young family skimps and scavenges to make it on the minimum wage. Saying 'no' to the children breaks his heart, their father says. But such sacrifices keep them afloat--and off public aid.

By NORA ZAMICHOW

April 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The children love fruit juice, but Samuel Pineda buys low-cost powdered drinks to flavor the water. His 3-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son have four toys between them, plus a stash of balloons that Pineda found in a trash bin. The family has gone to McDonald’s to romp in the playground, but has never eaten there.

This is life on minimum wage.

Pineda, 27, earns $4.25 an hour. Toiling from 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. as a janitor, he takes home $155.29 a week, well below the poverty level. He is a member of the working poor, whose invisible hands scrub toilets, wipe dried coffee off desks, sew zippers, eviscerate chickens and flip burgers.

In this world, priorities are constantly being recalculated: Pay rent or buy groceries? Risk having the utilities turned off or take an ailing child to the doctor? Survival means weaving an elaborate tapestry of makeshift financial measures, such as buying a refrigerator on installment payments swollen with interest or paying fees to a check-cashing company because you don’t have enough money to open a bank account.

It is not a world children understand. Pineda’s little girl, Lourdes, recently fixed her big, brown eyes on her father and asked him, “Papi, why don’t you buy me skates or Nintendo? Is it that you don’t love me?”

Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage from $4.25 in four years. California’s has been at that level for seven. President Clinton, contending that “nobody can live on just $4.25 an hour,” in February proposed raising it over two years to $5.15. Unless action is taken, he said, inflation will push the purchasing power of the minimum wage to its lowest level in 40 years by 1996.

If Clinton has his way, Pineda’s before-taxes check would eventually rise by $36 a week. How would he spend it?

“I would buy vitamins for my children,” he said, without skipping a beat. “I would buy the food they want.”

The children’s pleas rip through him like a knife. Pineda is trying to work a second job, moonlighting during the day as a mechanic. It means he gets little sleep. But he has grown used to his schedule.

Until two weeks ago, he and his live-in girlfriend, Maria Hernandez, 22, also a minimum-wage janitor, had been able to eke out a living. But Hernandez, who is three months pregnant, is under doctor’s orders to stop working because she suffered severe pains and began bleeding after several hours of emptying office waste baskets. Neither she nor Pineda get medical benefits from their employer.

The family now depends entirely on Pineda’s gross salary of $8,840 a year, or $6,301 less than the federal poverty line for a family of four. He hopes to earn another $300 a month as a mechanic, working in his South-Central Los Angeles front yard. That would be $3,600 a year if he’s lucky. He pays $13 a month for beeper service so customers will be able to reach him easily.

Business has been slow. Last weekend, Pineda netted $250 for overhauling an engine. Apprehensive about paying the rent, due Thursday, the couple again postponed buying a maternity dress for Hernandez, whose clothing cuts uncomfortably into her belly.

“I’m worried because I don’t know how we are going to make it on his income,” said Hernandez, a quiet woman whose anxiety is etched in her dark eyes. Although the children are Pineda’s from a previous marriage, she cares for them as if they were her own.

Clinton Administration officials estimate that 11 million people--71% of whom are over the age of 20--make less than $5.15 an hour and would benefit from a minimum wage increase. In California, 1.3 million people, or 11% of the state’s labor force, earned less than $5.15 an hour in 1993, the last year for which statistics are available.

Academic studies on the effects of a higher minimum wage are divided. Many Republicans contend that raising the minimum wage would kill jobs by discouraging employers from hiring new workers. But mainstream America may view a hike with more sympathy. A Los Angeles Times Poll in January found that 72% of Americans favor a minimum-wage increase, with 24% opposed. Clinton contends that a higher minimum wage would encourage more people to get off welfare.

Pineda is already determined to pay his own way. A proud, stocky man--here legally, like Hernandez--he scoffs at accepting food stamps because he believes he can support his family.

So we make sacrifices, they say. So we don’t do everything we’d like--at least the meals we put on the table are from money that we’ve earned ourselves.

“We’re young,” Pineda says. “We can work to survive.”

He has not bought a pair of pants in eight months. His family had never eaten in a sit-down restaurant until a reporter took them to one, and had never been to Disneyland until Pineda found tickets tossed in a waste basket. Lourdes and her brother, Herman, have been to a movie theater only once, when a neighbor took them to “The Lion King.” Pineda paid $10 for each child to go ($4 for the movie, $6 for treats). For weeks afterward, the kids tore around the empty dining room’s worn wood floors, singing what they could remember from the movie.

Pineda’s family lives in a one-story three-bedroom house shared with his brother’s and cousin’s families, or a total of six adults and five children. Each family pays $330 rent and has its own bedroom, a room large enough for one double bed. As if by an unspoken rule, the kids take the bed and the adults sleep on the maroon carpet. The dining room is empty; the living room has a brown, secondhand couch. Despite the families’ efforts, roaches skitter about the kitchen with impunity. To the children’s delight, Pineda brought home discarded office chairs that have wheels that zip across the linoleum.

At 7, Herman doesn’t understand why their lives are so different from many of his friends on East 46th Street, whose fathers work for higher wages. Pineda fears that Herman, a bright, energetic, round-faced boy, is bored. Often he is angry that he cannot go to the movies or play arcade games. When he rides a bike, it’s a borrowed one. When he plays Nintendo, it’s at a friend’s house. At times, he will shove his sister, making her cry. Or he storms angrily into the bedroom and throws himself on the bed that they share.

Lately, Pineda has tried a new strategy: “You can go to the movie, but then you can’t eat later in the week--what do you prefer?” Herman always opts for dinner but the tactic pains his father.

“I feel ugly inside because it’s my fault that I don’t make enough money,” he said.

Lourdes is too young to understand. With ever-hopeful determination, she usually sneaks a hidden treat into the grocery basket while adults shop for food. One time she tried to hide a cap and a shampoo bottle bearing a picture of children’s TV star Barney amid the vegetables. Neither Pineda nor Hernandez said anything. At the checkout line Pineda deftly removed the items. Lourdes sobbed.

On the next excursion, Lourdes slid an 89-cent bag of jelly candies between the wrapped parcels of meat. This time, Pineda pretended not to notice.

“It’s tiring to always say, ‘ No ,’ ” Hernandez said.

About two months ago the children clamored to go to McDonald’s, which they had seen on television. Pineda and Hernandez finally agreed, shepherding the youngsters past the counter and out to the brightly colored playground. Herman was disappointed that he could not order even a drink. Pineda promised that they would one day return and eat.

Although he could not buy his son the bike that he keeps asking for, Pineda did get him a helmet so the youngster would be safe when he rode the neighbor’s bike.

Most Christmases, the family has celebrated by giving badly needed clothing to the children, things purchased at a street market called the Alley. On some birthdays, they splurge for a cake.

Once, Pineda caved in after Lourdes requested a Barbie doll for the umpteenth time. Just before Christmas he went to the nearby Alameda Swap Meet and bought a toy car for Herman and a doll for $10, or about half the normal price. When Lourdes gleefully pulled the Barbie from the box, she discovered it had only one eye, a defect hidden by the packaging.

Nonetheless, she was delighted. It meant that she now had two toys, a battered, white plastic horse and the Barbie. To Pineda it was a symbol of his ongoing struggle to meet his family’s needs. It was a bad joke.

“Even the doll came out with defects,” he laughed, shaking his head.

Pineda and Hernandez, both from El Salvador, met in Los Angeles two years ago. Neither speaks fluent English, an obstacle in the quest for higher-paying jobs. She came three years ago, joining her mother and sisters here after her father, a soldier in the government army, was killed, she said. Almost immediately, she landed a job as a janitor.

Her past follows her. Every month she sends $150 to her grandmother to take care of her 4-year-old son. “Mommy, mommy, send for me,” the boy pleads with her on the phone.

Pineda, a government soldier at the age of 14, has been here eight years. Like many immigrant workers he has held various jobs: carpenter, assembly line worker in a shoulder-pad factory, and mechanic--a position that enabled him to earn his highest wage, $8 an hour. But the garage closed after a car fell on a fellow mechanic, crushing his chest, and it was discovered that the shop owner had no insurance.

Pineda was driving Hernandez to her job at the Warner Center in the west San Fernando Valley, where she cleaned offices on two floors. So he got a job there, too, joining the ranks of Los Angeles’ estimated 10,000 janitors. To help pad the couples’ salaries, Pineda launched an impromptu taxi service, squeezing Hernandez and four other janitors into a two-door 1985 Toyota Corolla that now has 144,600 miles. The four janitors pay $20 once every two weeks, which covers Pineda’s gasoline, oil changes and the $35 spare tire that he bought after getting a blowout on the freeway.

In exchange, he picks up and drops off his colleagues at their homes, hopscotching from South-Central to Hollywood to Woodland Hills. It’s a journey that takes almost two hours during rush hour, puts 93 miles on the car daily, and gets him home about 4 a.m. (He then picks up his children, who spend the evenings with their mother.) The other night, Pineda realized that he was beginning to nod off at the wheel. He has no car insurance.

On a recent Saturday Pineda emerged from his room shortly after 10:30 a.m. He had been paid the previous evening. He drove to Nix Check Cashing Co., where he paid $9.80 to cash his biweekly paycheck. This time, he decided to forgo getting a lottery ticket, which he buys when he feels more flush.

There was no way to make the numbers work. An anticipated pay hike negotiated by his union, which will push him to $4.60 an hour in July, seemed negligible. Health insurance won’t kick in until 2000. “I’ll be dead by then,” he said, smiling.

In addition to the rent, he owed a monthly payment of $110 to Deardon’s appliance store for a new refrigerator. His installment plan would drive the total price of the fridge to $3,100, far higher than its value, far too steep for his tight budget.

Pineda is proud of the refrigerator, a huge gleaming beacon next to the chipped, tin-foil-covered four-burner stove. Should he return to El Salvador, he will take it with him, he said.

With no credit cards, Pineda cannot fathom purchasing any way other than an installment plan. Before Lourdes’ birth, he bought a stereo system for $2,800 and a VCR for $450 on monthly payments. Today those items seem like luxuries, but Pineda is glad to have them. Pulling out a recent mailer written in English from Columbia House, he excitedly explained in Spanish that he signed up to get 20 CDs for 29 cents each. He was unaware that the prices would rise after he purchased a certain number of compact discs.

Saturdays after payday, Hernandez and Pineda go through their usual routine. They shop for groceries at the Alameda Swap Meet, Best Buy supermarket or Superior store, depending on where prices seem most reasonable.

Two Saturdays ago they went to the swap meet and filled two cartons with vegetables, fruit, eggs and tortillas. The groceries must last two weeks, until the next check. Maria carefully selected bananas (32 cents a pound); tomatoes (four pounds for $1); and string beans ($1 a pound). Pineda bagged white onions, green peppers, zucchini and carrots. Pineda met Hernandez at the cashier. When she caught his eye, he wordlessly returned the watermelon that he’d hoisted on his shoulder. The tab: $28.70.

Next, to the butcher’s stall. There, Hernandez loaded up small packets of meat: beef shank for $1.59 a pound; ground beef, $1.79 a pound; beef cubes, $1.79 a pound, and oxtails, $1.89 a pound. The most expensive cut was the flank steak for $2.59 a pound.

Meanwhile, Pineda negotiated with Lourdes. He had selected a large plastic bag full of a generic cereal for $1.39. Lourdes tearfully begged him for Cocoa Puffs, which, at $4.99 for a 1-pound 3.5-ounce box was more than double the cost. But on this day, Pineda was no match for his little girl. The Cocoa Puffs won. The tab for meat, cereal, toilet paper: $82.17.

When the couple returned to their car, they were deflated and quiet. Hernandez said she had a headache. Lourdes was victorious, kicking her pink Bugs Bunny sneakers against the seat.

A downward spiral had begun. At home, fighting the tears in his eyes, Pineda’s cousin announced that he had been laid off from the shoulder-pad factory where he had worked for five years. The cousin had helped Pineda when he first arrived in Los Angeles. Of the three men in the house, his livelihood had always been the most stable. Now he didn’t know how he would pony up his share of the rent.

Pineda sighed. Hernandez held her belly. “It’s the fault of no one,” said Pineda. “It’s just luck.”

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Living on the Minimum Wage

Samuel Pineda supports his two children and live-in girlfriend, Maria Hernandez, by earning $4.25 an hour as a janitor, the minimum wage under both California and federal law. He brings home $672.93 a month. Pineda moonlights as a mechanic, which he hopes will net him another $300 a month.

Average Monthly Expenses

* Rent for one bedroom in a shared house: $330

* Phone bill (including calls to El Salvador): $150

* Utilities: $70

* Child care for Maria’s son in El Salvador: $150

* Food: $300

* Payments on refrigerator: $110

* Samuel’s beeper: $13

* Check-cashing fees: $22

* TOTAL: $1,145

* Monthly income, including estimated free-lance work: $973

California has not raised its minimum wage in seven years. But these eight states now have minimum wages higher than the federal standard.