work for peanuts

work for peanuts

To work for very little money. Geez, I need a raise—I'm sick of still working for peanuts after three years!
See also: peanut, work
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • in work
  • go about your work
  • I've got work to do
  • off
  • offed
  • go shares
  • off from work
  • be at work
  • be your own master/mistress
  • be (one's) own master
References in periodicals archive
Employees capable of validating the efficacy of gene-editing approaches in a petri dish don't work for peanuts and drug development expenses that start off as significant grow exponentially with each step forward.
Google Jumps Into Gene Editing: 5 Things You Need To Know
Nairobi's Kibera slum-dwellers and rural poor keep wages low by functioning as a reserve army of labour willing to work for peanuts. In Haiti garment manufacturers recently argued that a minimum wage rise to the equivalent of five dollars a day would kill their business.
Focus: Can we really end poverty?
Mr Cameron is wrong to want people to work for peanuts and if enough people protest even he will eventually get the message.
Cam piles on the pain; VOICE OF THE
There I was last fall, watching Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO, when a story came on about the plight of minor league baseball players, who work for peanuts (actually for less than what the guy who sells the peanuts makes) as they chase the dream of a major league career.
When life throws you a curveball
People don't want to work for peanuts. That's probably why bosses are going to Hungary to take on staff who are used to low money."
we're on bread line; Sandwich firm that snubbed Brits for foreign workers haggles over mere 6p an hour pay rise
This all results in experienced people leaving and being replaced by anyone prepared to work for peanuts whether they care about the job or not and whether they can do the job or not.
Out-sourcing is flicking the V
In fact, these very illegal Bangladeshi migrant laborers, who work for peanuts, can dramatically improve the cost advantage of India's low-end labor force if only they are provided with legitimate work permits instead of voting rights.
'Sari brigade' can boost India-Bangladesh ties
Kids with no shoes on their feet, families living in cockroach infested housing, parents forced to work for peanuts; good old Victorian values!
Learn the art of human values; FEEDBACK
So long as this continues to happen, the government knows that our profession is willing to work for peanuts and sell glasses to subsidise the GOS sight test.
PCTs--where's the care, where's the trust?
Bluntly, when all our engineering is done offshore by those willing to work for peanuts, how will America survive?
An offshore future
Researchers may sometimes complain they work for peanuts, but scientists at the USA's National Peanut Research Laboratory have shown that this is not always a bad thing: they have developed new high-tech grading methods that could dramatically boost the American peanut industry.
USA: researchers help peanut farmers with X-ray technology
It is difficult to know from the above if there really is a shortage of technical people or just a shortage of people willing to work for peanuts.
Who wants to work for peanuts?
1) They're good with numbers; 2 ) they don't suffer from collective amnesia; 3) they're quite to happy to work for peanuts and 4) if there's any sh** to be flung, they'll be the ones doing it.
off the Record
They work for peanuts compared with what they could get doing almost any other kind of legal work, including crossing the aisle and becoming a prosecutor.
Give them a raise