Low-Wage America: Sandy Hicks

By Noah Adams

Published June 9, 2003 at 12:00 AM EDT

Sandy Hicks, housekeeper at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

NPR's Noah Adams talks with Sandy Hicks, a housekeeper at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for 25 years.

As summer begins and the students gone, she and her co-workers are cleaning all the dorm rooms in Melrose Hall. She's now making $8.98 an hour, is having trouble paying her bills, and worries about the physical demands of the job.

Still, she likes the students and feels she's an important part of the University of Tennessee.

Noah Adams

Noah Adams, long-time co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, brings more than three decades of radio experience to his current job as a contributing correspondent for NPR's National Desk., focusing on the low-wage workforce, farm issues, and the Katrina aftermath. Now based in Ohio, he travels extensively for his reporting assignments, a position he's held since 2003.

See stories by Noah Adams

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